“I am writing this to you because I made a terrible decision that I followed with a series of additional terrible decisions, and I have created a giant mess,” reads the opening line of the email from Sherman to Katie Porter, the deputy city attorney advising the Department of Human Resources.

“I shouldn’t have gotten into this to begin with, and should have, at so many points along the way, tried to make this right. I resigned this morning and will fully cooperate with whatever the process is from here on out.”

Mission Local obtained the letter via a public records request. Within it, Sherman describes a discrimination case filed in 2017 by a Black female Municipal Transportation Agency worker. She states she felt that her own colleagues in the DHR’s Equal Employment Opportunity office and at MTA viewed the employee “as not credible … generally a complainer” and felt her complaint “had no merit.” Sherman disagreed: “I wanted to investigate.” She additionally stated that “the prior investigation was rushed and I did not believe the record supported the conclusion.”

2020-09-11 R. Sherman Email by Joe Eskenazi on Scribd"