Inglewood Mayor James T. Butts, accused of grabbing a teen cheerleader at a city hall event, carries a record of misconduct allegations stretching back more than three decades, and has survived every one.
Residents and activists began pushing for Butts to resign after the mayor was accused of grabbing the buttocks of a teenage cheerleader while posing for a photo with a group of cheerleaders at a community event at Inglewood City Hall. His office denied any misconduct. No formal charges have been reported in connection with the incident.
But the cheerleader accusation did not land in a vacuum. It arrived on top of a record that includes a 1993 criminal referral alleging he molested his own young daughter, a wrongful termination lawsuit from a former executive assistant who accused him of stalking and workplace sexual coercion, and retaliation claims from the city's elected treasurer, who saw her salary slashed after she raised alarms about Inglewood's finances.
Butts has denied wrongdoing at every turn. And at every turn, the cases have collapsed, been dismissed, or been blocked by legal technicalities, leaving the mayor still in office and still in charge of a city he has led since 2011.
The earliest and most serious accusation against Butts dates to 1993. His then-estranged wife, Minnie Butts, a police sergeant, alleged that their daughter told her Butts "touched and penetrated her vagina with his finger," the New York Post reported, citing the Los Angeles Times. The local district attorney declined to press charges, citing insufficient evidence. Butts denied wrongdoing at the time.
Two years earlier, in 1991, Minnie Butts had alleged that Butts choked her to unconsciousness. No prosecution resulted from that claim either.
Butts went on to serve as police chief of Santa Monica and later as head of security for the LAX airport authority. His law enforcement career ended in 2006. By 2010, he was running for mayor of Inglewood. He won in 2011.
Before his election, Butts told the Los Angeles Times that Inglewood was "in a precarious financial position" and needed "someone who has operational, executive, and public safety experience... Not just a politician." He positioned himself as the competent outsider. What followed in office tells a different story.
In 2012, one year into his tenure, Butts awarded a $100 million contract to a waste management company. That company had hired Butts' brother months before the deal went through. Later reports indicated Butts personally profited from the arrangement. The specifics of how he profited, the name of the company, and the name of his brother have not been publicly detailed in the available reporting.
No criminal charges resulted. The contract stands as one of the earliest red flags in a mayoralty that has created controversy at a steady clip for more than a decade.
Melanie McDade-Dickens first met Butts in 2010 as a volunteer on his mayoral campaign. After he won, he hired her as his executive assistant. What began as a professional relationship, according to a wrongful termination lawsuit McDade-Dickens filed in 2021, became something far darker.
The lawsuit alleged that Butts solicited McDade-Dickens for workplace sex, demanded she do his laundry, and required her to massage his "aching feet" up to four times a day. Her salary rose from $135,069 in 2013 to $349,077 in 2019, an increase the lawsuit attributed to additional responsibilities she had taken on.
When McDade-Dickens tried to end the relationship in 2018, the lawsuit alleged, Butts turned to stalking. The filing stated:
"When Ms. McDade attempted to end the relationship in 2018, it turned to stalking and obsession by Butts. At first, Butts would not 'allow' Ms. McDade to break up with him. He called her hundreds of times, would go to her house, uninvited, sneaking in through the garage and stand over her bed watching her sleep."
McDade-Dickens was fired at the end of 2019. She filed suit two years later and held a press conference in 2021.
At that press conference, she described compartmentalizing her work life while enduring what she characterized as abuse:
"I showed up at work every single day, I didn't miss an assignment, I was at every meeting that he eventually allowed me to be in. I still maintained all of my daily activities, I never slacked. I would close my door sometimes and cry and bite my tongue, but I compartmentalized my work and my relationship."
In 2022, McDade-Dickens shared text messages from her Facebook account. One, from a contact listed as "FOREVA Mr. Butts" and dated June 2018, read: "My whole life is destroyed with you. You are so cold and so different and now you say you want to move to Scottsdale. I dont understand why you wont give us another chance...why you would just leave here...broken..." The texter appeared to be Butts, though that identification has not been independently confirmed.
McDade-Dickens' case never reached a jury. It was thrown out in November after she failed to file an opposition to a motion for summary judgment. She had requested an extension, telling the court she was looking for "permanent housing" and did not have phone service. The extension was not granted.
An unnamed attorney representing the city called the case "frivolous from the start."
The dismissal did not address the substance of the allegations. It ended on paperwork. Whether the claims were true or false, the court never weighed them.
Wanda Brown served as Inglewood's elected treasurer for years. In 2020, she spoke out about what her attorney described as the city's "declining cash balance, its increasing deficit spending and growing negative fund balance, the need to curb spending, and about the wasteful and expensive use of outside consultants."
Brown alleged that Butts retaliated. He cut her microphone when she exceeded her speaking time at meetings and removed her reports from the agenda. The Inglewood City Council slashed her monthly salary from $8,355 to $1,404, a reduction of more than 83 percent.
Brown took her case to the California Supreme Court. She lost. The court ruled that because Brown was an elected official, not a state employee, she could not invoke the whistleblower protections available to government workers. The court sided with the City of Inglewood.
The ruling did not say Brown was wrong about the city's finances. It said she had no legal standing to claim retaliation under the statute she cited. The distinction matters, and it left Butts untouched once again.
Butts has built his public identity around results. He is credited with bringing the Los Angeles Rams to the Inglewood area and overseeing the development of SoFi Stadium. In a piece for USA TODAY Sports about the new stadium, Butts offered his own summary of his tenure:
"The only thing that's controversial about me is that I get [expletive] done."
That framing has carried him through three decades of accusations. A 1993 criminal referral involving his own daughter. A domestic violence allegation from his wife. A wrongful termination suit alleging stalking and sexual coercion by a subordinate. A whistleblower whose salary was gutted. A $100 million contract that benefited his brother. And now, an accusation that he grabbed a teenage girl at a public event in his own city hall.
His office has denied misconduct in the cheerleader case. The California Post reached out to Butts' campaign for comment; no response has been reported.
Several basic questions remain open. No formal charges have been reported in connection with the cheerleader incident. The identity of the teen has not been made public. It is unclear whether any law enforcement investigation is underway. The exact date of the incident has not been confirmed beyond a reference to "Tuesday."
The pattern, though, is not ambiguous. Accusation after accusation, spanning decades and involving different accusers, his wife, his daughter, his executive assistant, his city treasurer, and now a teenage cheerleader, have all ended the same way. Dismissed, declined, procedurally blocked, or simply absorbed without consequence.
When every allegation dies on a technicality and the man at the center keeps collecting a public salary, voters deserve to ask whether the system is working, or whether it is being worked.
