BY SAL GRECO
Delinda Giraldo’s lawsuit echoes what SalGreco.com and The Sal Greco Show have repeatedly highlighted: allegations of harassment, retaliation, tribalism and failures of internal accountability that ultimately leave New York City taxpayers holding the bill.
Another lawsuit. Another NYPD employee alleging harassment. Another accusation that resisting inappropriate conduct was followed not by protection, but by scrutiny, discipline and retaliation.
At what point does the conversation stop being about isolated incidents and start being about culture?
That was the central question raised during Episode 221 of The Sal Greco Show, when Sal Greco and Jack Stern discussed the newly filed lawsuit brought by NYPD Police Officer Delinda N. Giraldo through attorney Eric Sanders.
The 96-page Verified Complaint, filed August 20, 2026 in Bronx Supreme Court, names the City of New York and numerous current and former NYPD officials and employees, including Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, former Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey, Internal Affairs Bureau Chief Edward Thompson and others.
The allegations have not been adjudicated, and the defendants will have the opportunity to respond in court. That distinction matters.
But so does the pattern alleged in the complaint.
Giraldo Says Saying “No” Came With Consequences
Giraldo, a Colombian Latina police officer with more than 12 years of service, alleges she encountered a sexually charged and retaliatory environment in which supervisory authority was used to create access to her—and professional consequences followed when she rejected unwanted attention.
The complaint alleges that then-PSA 3 commanding officer Elton Cohn directed unwanted sexual attention toward Giraldo. After she rejected that attention, Giraldo alleges her assignments changed, disciplinary matters became public workplace conversation and she became subjected to increasingly adverse command decisions.
According to the lawsuit, a similar dynamic later developed under Sergeant Fernando Dominguez. Giraldo alleges Dominguez repeatedly created opportunities for proximity, selected her to drive him, introduced graphic sexual discussions into those interactions and objectified her in front of other officers.
The lawsuit alleges that when she would not reciprocate, the relationship shifted from attention to hostility. Giraldo claims Dominguez subsequently discussed her discipline with coworkers, created workplace conflicts, spread false narratives concerning her work and attempted to use body-worn-camera footage to humiliate her.
That alleged transition—from attention to retaliation—is significant because it mirrors exactly what Greco and Stern discussed on Episode 221.
Stern described the fundamental problem as the enormous leverage supervisors possess over someone’s career: assignments, promotions, overtime, discipline and professional opportunities.
When sexual attention becomes intertwined with that authority, there is no genuinely equal playing field.
The complaint itself makes essentially the same point. It explains that supervisors can control schedules, tours, evaluations, discipline, overtime, specialized positions, transfers, recommendations and professional opportunities—and that this authority can magnify the consequences of rejecting unwanted behavior.
The Quathisha Epps Allegations Add Another Disturbing Layer
The Giraldo lawsuit goes considerably further than one officer’s allegations concerning her own treatment.
It also addresses the alleged circulation inside the NYPD of an intimate video involving then-Lieutenant Quathisha Epps.
According to the complaint, Giraldo was exposed at PSA 3 to what the lawsuit describes as Epps’s “coerced” sexual video. The lawsuit alleges that the video had originally been provided only to then-Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey in connection with Epps’s own allegations of sexual misconduct.
By the time it allegedly reached PSA 3, however, the lawsuit claims it had become workplace fodder.
Giraldo alleges that Lieutenant Alexandru Anghel and Police Officer Mohammad Abdelfattah discussed the video, disparaged Epps and mocked her sexual-harassment allegations.
The importance of that allegation extends beyond vulgar workplace gossip.
If proven, it illustrates something far more corrosive: the possibility that intimate material connected to allegations of sexual misconduct involving one of the Department’s most powerful executives could circulate within the very institution responsible for investigating misconduct.
The complaint alleges Commissioner Tisch, IAB Chief Thompson and IAB Executive Officer Joseph DiBartolomeo failed to stop the continued circulation and degrading workplace use of the material or adequately confront the broader culture that allegedly permitted it.
She Transferred. The Allegations Didn’t Stop.
Giraldo eventually transferred from PSA 3 to PSA 7 in May 2026.
According to the complaint, she was attempting to escape an environment she considered sexually hostile and professionally corrosive.
Three months later, the lawsuit alleges, Detective Elizabeth Olivero intentionally grabbed Giraldo’s left buttock inside PSA 7.
Perhaps equally disturbing is what Giraldo alleges happened afterward.
When she told another officer what had occurred, she was allegedly told, in substance, that this was simply something Olivero did, that nobody said anything about it, and that this was “just how she is.”
If those allegations are proven, that response gets directly to the cultural issue.
Normalization is how misconduct survives.
When unacceptable behavior becomes something coworkers shrug off, when complaining can allegedly make an employee a target, and when people believe remaining inside the tribe is safer than challenging it, an organization creates the conditions for the next lawsuit itself.
Sanders: When Does Individual Misconduct Become Institutional?
In his August 20 press release announcing Giraldo’s lawsuit, Sanders framed the central issue directly.
“At some point, this stops being a story about individual bad behavior and becomes a question about what the institution has normalized.”
Sanders added that supervisors possess extraordinary control over a subordinate’s career, including assignments, tours, overtime, discipline, opportunities and reputation, arguing that such authority cannot be turned into a mechanism for testing sexual boundaries and punishing employees who refuse to participate.
Read Eric Sanders’ full press release
That statement could almost serve as a summary of what SalGreco.com has been documenting across multiple stories and what Greco and Stern were discussing on Episode 221.
This Lawsuit Itself Points to a Larger History
One of the most revealing portions of Giraldo’s complaint is a table on page 23 titled “Representative NYPD Sexual-Harassment, Grooming, and Retaliation Matters.”
It doesn’t describe only Giraldo.
The complaint identifies multiple other cases involving allegations of sexualized supervisory conduct, unwanted touching, grooming, discrimination, retaliatory scheduling, undesirable assignments, weaponized internal processes and retaliation following complaints.
That is precisely why dismissing each new lawsuit as merely another disgruntled employee or another attorney suing the Department misses the larger question.
Different plaintiffs. Different commands. Different supervisors. Different attorneys.
Yet allegations involving retaliation, favoritism, harassment, selective discipline and the use of institutional authority repeatedly surface.
During Episode 221, Greco made the point plainly: “It’s a cultural problem. It’s tribalistic also.”
That tribalism deserves more attention.
Police departments necessarily depend on loyalty, teamwork and trust. Officers depend upon one another in situations where mistakes can have life-or-death consequences.
But organizational loyalty becomes destructive when loyalty to the group becomes more important than confronting misconduct inside the group.
That is where legitimate camaraderie can mutate into tribalism: our people versus their people; favored versus disfavored; insiders versus outsiders; those who remain silent versus those who complain.
Once employees believe challenging someone with institutional power can damage their assignments, overtime, promotions, reputation or career, accountability becomes exponentially more difficult.
And Who Ultimately Pays?
There is another party rarely mentioned when these controversies erupt:
The taxpayer.
Every preventable employment lawsuit carries potential costs—outside counsel, Corporation Counsel resources, discovery, depositions, employee time, settlements, judgments and years of litigation.
And the individual taxpayer had nothing to do with the alleged misconduct.
The person paying property taxes in Queens didn’t make the inappropriate comment.
The small-business owner in Brooklyn didn’t retaliate against anyone.
The family paying New York City taxes didn’t decide whether an internal complaint should be investigated.
Yet when municipal liability results in a settlement or judgment, the financial burden ultimately falls upon the public treasury.
That makes institutional accountability more than an internal NYPD employment issue. It is a matter of responsible government.
If supervisors are abusing authority, correct it.
If internal investigative mechanisms aren’t functioning, fix them.
If retaliation is occurring, stop it.
If employees are afraid to report misconduct because they believe their careers will suffer, determine why.
And if the same categories of allegations continue appearing across commands and across years, leadership has an obligation to ask whether it is confronting individual misconduct—or managing a cultural problem.
Episode 221 Asked the Question the City Should Be Asking
Toward the end of the Episode 221 discussion, Stern said there was little reason for confidence in accountability because of the Department’s repeated history with allegations like these.
Greco responded by pointing to the sheer number of lawsuits and emphasizing that they are not all coming from one attorney.
That distinction matters.
The issue isn’t Eric Sanders.
The issue isn’t one plaintiff.
It isn’t one precinct, one PSA, one chief, one commissioner or one lawsuit.
The question is why variations of the same allegations—harassment, retaliation, selective enforcement, favoritism, weaponized discipline and fear of challenging authority—continue appearing.
Giraldo’s allegations remain allegations unless and until they are established through the judicial process. But the existence of yet another detailed complaint should trigger something beyond another round of litigation and another defense paid for by the City.
It should trigger examination.
Because if misconduct is preventable, retaliation is preventable and ineffective supervision is correctable, taxpayers should not repeatedly be asked to finance the consequences of an institution’s failure to correct them.
And perhaps that is the most important takeaway from Episode 221:
When the same allegations keep appearing under different names, in different commands and in different lawsuits, asking whether the NYPD has a cultural problem isn’t an attack on the Department. It is a question the Department itself should be willing to answer.