A new lawsuit accuses an Orange County Sheriff’s Department supervisor of Photoshopping sombreros onto pictures of Latino employees, watching pornography at work, publicly posting Nazi photos and discriminating against female and Latino workers.

The three civilian commissary employees who filed the lawsuit last week say they’ve already faced retaliation for complaining internally and that management has taken little action. Two of the three have repeatedly had nails and bolts put in their tires in the work parking lot, the lawsuit says.

The complaint filed Aug. 25 asks an Orange County Superior Court judge to order the county to remove employees found to have broken the law.

Juan Alvarez, 49, and Sam Castellanos, 46, say they faced discrimination for being Latino, and Diann McCloskey, 52, says she was discriminated against because she’s female. All three say they were denied overtime shifts that white male employees got, while Alvarez says he was denied a promotion.

Their lawsuit, which seeks unspecified damages, alleges harassment, a hostile work environment, discrimination and retaliation.

“At this point, to my clients, it’s a feeling of helplessness,” said Matthew Roston, the attorney who filed the case. He said he advised the three not to speak to the media.

Lt. Jeff Hallock, a Sheriff’s Department spokesman, said he could not comment on any pending litigation. He said the department had not been served with the complaint Thursday afternoon.

Their 12-page complaint says employees were subjected to “Heil Hitler” salutes and “crude and vulgar jokes.” Complaints drew little sympathy, according to the lawsuit, which says one manager told the three “that they are lucky to have jobs and reprimanded them for making complaints.”

Retaliation has included false accusations of poor job performance and negative performance evaluations, the lawsuit says.

The three say they’ve faced blowback for complaining about their own treatment and that of Jeffrey Robinson, a 54-year-old fellow Sheriff’s Department employee.

Robinson, who’s also represented by Roston, filed a lawsuit last year saying he faced discrimination for his age and for being African American. His complaint says a supervisor and co-worker called him a “black old piece of (expletive),” made offensive comments about his cancer diagnosis and put nails in the tires of his car.

Robinson’s lawsuit and the new one accuse the same supervisor of wrongdoing, but he is not listed as a defendant and the Register is not naming him.

In court filings in Robinson’s case, the county has denied any wrongdoing. A trial is scheduled for March.

Like the three plaintiffs in the new case, Robinson says he faced retaliation for complaining – including negative performance evaluations – and that supervisors failed to conduct a “meaningful investigation.”

A department memo shows the Sheriff’s Department started an internal investigation in 2012 into allegations made by Robinson and others. The results of that investigation are redacted in the version of the memo the department turned over to Robinson, which is included in the court file.

Over the objection of the county, a judge recently ordered the department to turn over the unredacted memo to Robinson’s lawyer. But the judge ruled it cannot be made public yet.

The redacted memo also shows there were allegations that Robinson “was creating a hostile and fearful working environment” and that he was reprimanded for calling a colleague a “rat” and challenging him to a fight.

The memo says employees who were interviewed about the problems disagreed about who was to blame, but “that there is a perception amongst all the parties that management is aware of the problem and is doing nothing about it.”

Contact the writer: ehartley@ocregister.com or 949-229-5950