The Tacoma News Tribune reports:

A veteran Washington State Patrol trooper claims he’s faced discrimination and hostility in the agency due to his sexual orientation — issues that reportedly reached a breaking point when WSP personnel created and circulated a demeaning video of him generated by artificial intelligence.

Collin Overend Pearson, who’s a Pierce County resident and gay, alleges that he’s been subjected to “repeated instances of discriminatory and unconstitutional conduct by WSP and its officers” during nearly two decades of employment, according to a lawsuit filed Dec. 19 in Pierce County Superior Court.

In December, WSP personnel created an AI-generated video that depicted Pearson and another uniformed, male trooper kissing on a roadside, the lawsuit claims. A voiceover in the video states, “this is SWAT training, no homo,” — using a derogatory phrase that insinuates “homosexuality is inferior or insulting,” according to the suit.

Read the full article. Per Pearson, the video was the “final straw” in a prolonged campaign of anti-gay harassment unaddressed by his superiors. In the 2010 video below, he receives a “Law Enforcement Award of Merit.”