LONGVIEW — A former Woodland woman who accused a now-retired Woodland police officer of abusing his power to stalk, threaten and improperly investigate her has settled her lawsuit against him for $275,000.
But Jody Wattier called it a painful victory.
“The money is not going to make it any better. I struggle every day,” she said.
Wattier said she lost custody of her children, ages 9 and 10, and had to rebuild her life because former Officer Brad Gillaspie orchestrated a campaign of intimidation and slander against her while she was divorcing her husband, who was Gillaspie’s friend.
The settlement concludes a federal civil rights lawsuit Wattier filed two years ago in U.S. District Court in Tacoma. Wattier and her Portland attorney, Sean Riddell, accused Gillaspie and current Officer Brent Murray of maliciously investigating her. She also accused the city and former Mayor Grover Laseke of failing to intervene to stop Gillaspie’s actions.
“No one would listen to me so I looked crazy,” she said Tuesday. “I (still) have to make a decision at this point in my life (whether) to go see my kids at school, or not have anxiety. I literally can’t go into Woodland, because I’m afraid of running into Murray or Gillaspie. … It was like a death to me. I grieved my career. And then I grieved my house, my safety. And then I grieved for my kids. What else do you take from someone?”
Woodland City Manager Peter Boyce confirmed that the city’s insurer will pay the settlement reached in September. He said the city itself had no role in the settlement and was not held liable. He lauded the city’s current policing.
“We have a new police chief now,” Boyce said. “He’s implemented his own policies in the department, and we’re very satisfied with what he’s done. I think in general, the city’s happy it’s behind us. We’re looking to the future to provide great police service to the community.”
A year of harassment
The lawsuit alleged that Gillaspie, who was close friends with Wattier’s ex-husband Steve Petersen, harassed and intimidated her for about a year while the couple separated. That alleged harassment included initiating a police investigation with the goal of harming her employment and giving Petersen an advantage in custody hearings for their children.
Wattier was a police officer in North Plains, Ore., at the time, she said, and resigned from the department in 2015 after talking to her chief about how the investigations into her had complicated her job.
An investigation by Murray recommended charges of malicious mischief and telephone harassment against Wattier, but the city prosecutor declined to file them.
U.S. District Court Judge Ronald Leighton dismissed Wattier’s complaints against all defendants except Gillaspie in August 2017. He ruled that Murray’s investigation, which he was ordered to undertake, was not biased. Leighton dismissed the city and Laseke as defendants because he found no evidence that either had a policy or practice that deprived Wattier of her civil rights.
However, Leighton wrote blistering criticism of Gillaspie and denied the former officer’s request to dismiss most of Wattier’s claims.
“Gillaspie’s actions do amount to an egregious constitutional violation. By stalking (Wattier’s) home, threatening her, belatedly initiating an investigation that resulted in her losing her job, lying to (a court-appointed divorce investigator) about her parental abilities, and tarnishing her reputation in the community, Gillaspie egregiously influenced and interfered with Petersen’s divorce and child custody proceedings,” Leighton wrote.
“A reasonable jury could find he was motivated by malice and a perverse sense of friendship, not by some ethical sense of duty,” Leighton concluded.
Wattier has since remarried and lives in Tacoma, while working in the state Attorney General’s Office.
Neither Gillaspie, who retired from the department in June 2017, nor Petersen returned requests for comment.
But in trying to dismiss the case against his client, Gillaspie’s attorney wrote in August that Wattier hadn’t proved that Gillaspie’s actions were part of an official police investigation. In other words, Gillaspie claimed he was not acting under his authority as a police officer, and he called Wattier’s claims “baseless.”
