TIVERTON — Three discrimination suits against the town filed by female employees in Police Department resurrect the controversy involving former Town Administrator W. Glenn Steckman 3rd and his failed attempt to fire Police Chief Thomas Blakey.

Blakey was reinstated by the Town Council nearly a year ago.

Both Steckman and Blakey are named as defendants in the civil rights complaints filed by two civilian dispatchers and a former patrolwoman during the past six months in U.S. District Court, Providence.

The dispatchers and the police officer all allege that Blakey subjected them to sexual harassment and, once they complained, varying degrees of retaliation. The police officer, Amy Barboza, was fired.

Taken together, the complaints allege that Steckman, the former town administrator, twice rejected the women’s complaints regarding sexual harassment before he moved to fire Blakey in November 2006.

In August 2006, Steckman told dispatchers Carolyn Gallant and Linda Hancock, as well as six other women working for the department, that their letter of complaint to him as town administrator “violated … the rules and regulations of the police department,” according to the women’s complaints.

Two months later, in October 2006, Steckman similarly rebuffed allegations from Barboza, then a probationary patrol officer, according to Barboza’s complaint.

Steckman told Barboza that Blakey’s alleged sexual harassment “would likely result in a mere slap on the wrist,” according to the suit.

The town administrator indicated “that he did not believe that Defendant Blakey engaged in sexual harassment,” and that Blakey was “simply trying to be [Barboza’s] friend.”

The lawsuit quoted Steckman as saying Blakey was from “a different generation” and that the police chief believed his conduct was all right.

But by mid-November, Steckman did move to fire Blakey.

Hancock’s and Gallant’s suits say the mistreatment of female police employees “had reached a crisis stage.”

They were asked to give statements and testify regarding Blakey’s alleged misconduct.

Hancock and Gallant agreed to testify, according to their complaints.

Barboza’s lawsuit does not say whether she was asked or agreed to testify against Blakey.

But it says that at the end of October, she was summoned with no notice to a meeting with the Deputy Chief, Nicholas Maltais, and a male detective, who asked her personal questions.

According to the narrative in the complaint:

Barboza felt intimidated in the meeting with the two male police supervisors. She was subsequently directed to meet with Steckman.

Steckman allowed Maltais to attend the meeting but denied Barboza’s request that a female officer accompany her for support, contrary to prior assurances Barboza had received.

It was at this meeting with Barboza that Steckman expressed skepticism about Blakey’s misconduct.

Steckman “also suggested to [Barboza] that it was a strange coincidence that female employees … were coming forward at this time, when the conduct of dispatchers was being reviewed.”

Among other things, the narrative in the complaint continued, Steckman told Barboza that he knew Barboza had had problems during her probationary period, but that she had “worked hard to prove herself and demonstrate that she is a good officer.”

Barboza had been notified in August, prior to her complaints about Blakey, that her probationary period had been extended from the end of November 2006, to the end of February 2007.

According to the complaint, Barboza viewed Steckman’s comments as “a clear threat that, if she continued to complain about workplace conditions, her job would be in imminent jeopardy,” regardless of the probationary period.

Within a week she was summoned to a meeting with the deputy chief, a lieutenant and a sergeant, where she was advised to resign, especially if she intended to look for another job with another police force.

As a result, Barboza contacted a lawyer, who sent Steckman a letter saying Barboza was being subjected to “discriminatory treatment based on gender, sexual harassment and retaliation.”

Barboza’s complaint said Steckman placed her on administrative leave the day he received the letter, Nov. 17, and fired her ten days later, on Nov. 27, 2006.

Steckman, meanwhile, also had placed Blakey on administrative leave. He fired Blakey in January 2007, triggering Blakey’s appeal to the Town Council.

The council conducted about 35 hours of closed-door hearings before reinstating the chief last April on a 4 to 3 vote.

Since Blakey’s reinstatement, the town has “implemented certain workplace rules and restrictions” that adversely affect women working in the Police Department, according to Gallant and Hancock, who still work as dispatchers.

“While ostensibly geared to protect female employees from interactions with the Chief,” they allege, these rules “have unreasonably interfered with their working conditions, and in effect have served as retaliation against female employees for asserting their protective rights.”

In addition to Blakey and Steckman, who resigned Feb. 22, the defendants named in the lawsuits are Town Council President Louise M. Durfee, and James Amarantes, who was town treasurer at the time the alleged misconduct occurred.

The town maintains that Barboza, who filed suit last September, has failed to back up her claims.

Barboza alleged that from the time she joined the police force, she was “treated in a disparate manner compared to her male counterparts” and was held to a different standard than applied to the men. She was disciplined without justification, given contradictory instructions, and otherwise subjected to conditions of employment “intended to obstruct and frustrate [her] opportunity to complete her probationary period,” the lawsuit said.

The town has not yet responded to the complaints from the dispatchers, who filed in mid-February.

After Blakey’s reinstatement, cracks emerged in the relationship between Steckman and the Town Council, which ultimately bought out about 11 months remaining on his contract for $40,000.

The council, on a 4 to 3 vote, approved the agreement last December, with council members Jay Edwards, Brian Medeiros and Donald Bollin opposed for various reasons.

The terms of the agreement were sealed until after Steckman’s last day, on Feb. 22. They include a stipulation that the town will pay Steckman’s expenses in connection with his role as a defendant in any lawsuits brought against the town.

gmacris@projo.com