A former Riverside University Hospital Behavioral Health nurse announced Dec. 4 that he intends to sue Riverside County on allegations of discrimination, retaliation and harassment.
James Cook, who joined the hospital system in 2001 as a nurse and worked his way up to management, said he supervised 56 beds at the County’s Arlington campus. He claims that he suffered from racial harassment due to being Black and that he was fired without proper cause Sept. 28 after filing a formal complaint against a supervisor.
“I spent 30 years trying to be the best nurse and nurse manager that I possibly could have been, and to have that taken away, it was like life is gone for me. I have given Riverside County my heart, and I worked hard to be the manager that even the citizens can be proud of,” Cook said at a Dec. 4 press conference.
Riverside County spokesperson Brooke Federico did not respond to a request for comment.
Cook will not be able to formally file his complaint for another month and a half due to the claims process against public entities.
Cook claims he was harassed throughout his time in management for trying to bring equitable pay to the UHBH’s Arlington campus, which is staffed predominantly by Black employees. He claims employees at UHBH’s Moreno Valley campus, who are mostly non-Black, receive additional pay and promotions that are denied to Arlington’s employees.
Cook said that nurses at the Moreno Valley campus received a pay increase due to COVID-19 that his Arlington nurses did not receive until after he fought for them. He also claims that he brought a Behavior Emergency Response Team protocol to the UHBH and introduced it first to the Arlington campus. He claims employees at the Moreno Valley campus received a pay increase for participating in BERT cases, but that employees at his Arlington campus still have not received theirs.
He claims that the Moreno Valley campus also received preferential position treatment, and that he was denied a position that was falsely described as being designed for someone at the Moreno Valley location.
Cook’s complaint names Chief Nursing Officer Lean Patterson as a defendant alongside Riverside County.
Cook was going to receive a Daisy Award for Nurse Leadership, he said. Patterson canceled the award ceremony after learning that she would be awarding Cook the prize, Cook claimed. He also said he was denied a promotion to an executive director position that he was the most qualified for, and that Patterson told him that the position was designed for someone from the Moreno Valley campus.
The situation came to a head when an employee under Cook’s direction called Cook while Cook was off work and with his family. Cook called Patterson with the employee’s question, per hospital protocol, and Patterson chastised him, he said. Patterson then opened an investigation against him, and he responded with his own formal complaint.
Patterson said his complaint was denied Sept. 27, the day before he was fired.
His attorney, Joe Richardson of McCune Law Group, did not say what reason the County gave for Cook’s termination.
“Often, Mr. Cook made the decision to be what some people would call ‘gun shy.’ But what he really wanted to do is service patients and do his work, and looking for the good in people actually had him apply a whole lot of deference, even to inexcusable imperfections on behalf of those that worked over him,” Richardson said.
