Cop Who Busted Mel Gibson in 2006 Sues, Citing "Discrimination"

USMagazine, Wednesday, September 8, 2010, 5:54am (PDT)

Mel Gibson is involved in yet another lawsuit.

Deputy James Mee, the policeman who arrested Gibson in July 2006 and reported the actor's drunken, anti-Semitic rant, has sued the L.A. County police department for an undisclosed sum, TMZ reports. Mee's charges: that he was "unjustly denied" a promotion for leaking the shocking story. Mee, who is Jewish, cites "religious discrimination and retaliation for plaintiff's religion and his report of Anti-Semitic remarks by [Gibson]."

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The lawsuit also charges that Gibson was a "close friend" with the L.A. County Sheriff -- and that authorities accordingly tried to cover up Gibson's rant by erasing a videotape documenting his violent rage after his arrest in jail.

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See also says he was instructed by his superiors to rewrite his initial report of the arrest, omitting Gibson's racial epithets. His suit also charges that he was unmercifully interrogated, and received a bad job performance report as a result of the brouhaha.

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"We are looking forward to telling the whole story and the whole story is not being told in this lawsuit.  Ethnicity and gender have nothing to do with any of this," a Sheriff's spokesperson tells TMZ.  " An investigation was launched by the Sheriff's Department to try and discover who was leaking official documents without authorization.  That is a crime."

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