Los Angeles police officer Matthew Garza, a former bodyguard to Mayor Eric Garcetti, testified that he worried he would face retaliation if he reported the sexual harassment that he alleges he endured by a former top aide to Garcetti.

“I would have been ostracized,” Garza said in a deposition taken last month and reviewed by The Times. “I would have been removed from the [security] detail. If I made that big of a deal of it, if I had sought out a complaint with the sexual harassment division within the city, I no doubt would have been retaliated against. The mayor and his staff is extremely vindictive.”

Garza sued the city in July, alleging that former aide Rick Jacobs made crude sexual comments, massaged his shoulders and hugged him between 2014 and 2019. Garza alleged that the harassment happened in front of the mayor, but that Garcetti did nothing to stop it.

Jacobs, who left city employment in 2016 and no longer advises the mayor, has denied the allegations. Garcetti said in his deposition that he did not witness inappropriate behavior by his former aide.

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