The Police Chief, the Lieutenant and a Story That Didn’t Add Up

Adapted from Dr. Steve Cohen’s book Mess Management: Lessons From a Corporate Hit Man. Names and identifying details have been changed or left out.

This case started with a mayor who didn’t believe what he was being told. A lieutenant in his small-town police department had been suspended. A dispatcher had alleged that during a late-night ride-along, he tried to assault her in his squad car. The chief had already offered the lieutenant a deal: quit and leave town, and no charges would be filed. Instead, the lieutenant went to the mayor, said he had been set up and swore he was innocent.

The mayor had history with this chief. About 18 months earlier, the chief had accused one of his officers, a member of the mayor’s family, of sexual harassment. The evidence was spotty, but the officer resigned and joined another department to keep his record clean. The mayor never believed the accusation. Now he smelled the same rat.

Why I almost said no

An allegation of attempted sexual assault is a criminal matter. My work is primarily civil, and I told the mayor he should call the state police. He refused. He didn’t trust cops investigating cops. He asked me to come interview the lieutenant, and said that if I still felt the assignment was inappropriate afterward, he would accept my withdrawal. That kind of persistence is hard to argue with.

Normally I interview the person making the allegation first. Because this was the second harassment matter involving the same chief, I started with the lieutenant. He was 40, with 16 years in law enforcement and 19 years of marriage, and he had never faced a complaint like this. He hadn’t slept since the allegation, and the stress was making him physically ill. He swore he was innocent. I took the case.

Listen first, then ask a million questions

The chief told me he didn’t need my help but would cooperate on the mayor’s orders. Then I met with the dispatcher, away from the station.

I start every interview the same way: promise as much confidentiality as I can, let the person tell the whole story without interruption while I take notes, then go back for details.

Her account was this. With the windows up, on a hot summer night, the lieutenant turned off the air conditioning and turned on the heat. After a while he asked if she was hot and told her to take off her blouse. Later he drove to a dark, empty lot at the edge of town, radioed that he was going on break, climbed across the console and attacked her. She got out of the car. He apologized, and she rode back to the station with him because she didn’t want to walk across town alone at night.

I asked how long the heater had been on before he spoke. More than six minutes, she said, because two songs played on the radio. She named the first song and the station. I made a note to call the station.

Testing the story

With the lieutenant on administrative suspension, I asked him to put on his uniform, vest and full duty belt, exactly as he wore them that night. His wife agreed to play the passenger. We got into his assigned squad car on an afternoon in the upper 90s, close to the temperature that night, and I sat in the back with a stopwatch.

Windows up, heater on low. At one minute it was uncomfortable. At three minutes I was soaked. At four minutes it was unbearable, and we bailed out of the car. There was no way the situation she described could have lasted six minutes.

Then we drove out to the lot. The car had bucket seats separated by a 12-inch console with three radios stacked in it. By the time he unbuckled, raised the steering wheel and started toward the passenger seat, anyone sitting there would have had plenty of warning. With his size and his duty belt, he couldn’t get over the console and around the steering column at all.

The loose ends closed the rest. The radio station’s engineer told me the song she named had not played that night. The weather service confirmed the temperature. Seven officers and two administrative staff described the lieutenant as all business: fair, knowledgeable and firm, not especially likable, and the person who provided the real police leadership in the department. When I asked about the chief and the captain, the answers got short. It looked like fear, not respect.

I told the mayor the allegation could not be substantiated. He told me my job wasn’t done: “Now your job is to get to the bottom of why this happened.” It was obvious the dispatcher had not come up with this story on her own.

What was really going on

When I walked the dispatcher through the results of the re-enactment, she told me the truth. The chief and the captain had both made advances toward her over the years, and she had turned them down. About a month earlier, the captain told her he had evidence that her teenage son was involved in a drug deal and could face serious jail time. Her son denied it, and she believed him. When she asked the chief to call the captain off, he agreed on one condition: she had to help him get rid of the lieutenant. He told her what to say.

I had her write out a statement and assured her that she and her son would be protected. Whistleblower protections applied, and while she had taken part in the scheme, there was enough justification to hold her harmless.

Resolving it without a public war

That evening the city council met in an emergency closed session, which state sunshine laws allow for confidential personnel matters. I recommended that the chief and the captain be terminated and that the lieutenant serve as interim chief while the city searched for a new one. The council voted to act and authorized me to handle it.

A legal fight would be public, slow and expensive. I believed the chief and the captain could be convinced that resigning was in their own interest. I called the lieutenant first, because without interim leadership the department would fall into chaos, and a city can’t go a single night without a functioning police department. He accepted and called every officer that evening so no one was left in the dark.

The mayor and I then met with the chief, and after him the captain. Both denied everything at first. I laid out where termination and a civil case would leave their careers, told them there might be an alternative, and sent them home with strict instructions: contact no one on the force, don’t access city systems, don’t use city property, and come back tomorrow. I kept the next day’s meetings to two hours or less. Both men resigned, signed hold harmless agreements, took small severance packages and agreed to leave town. Not long after, the lieutenant was named permanent chief.

What leaders should take from this

• Investigate every allegation, and test it. This case is not a reason to doubt people who report misconduct. It is a reason to investigate every report thoroughly and neutrally, checking details against physical facts. The facts protect everyone.
• When the leader is the problem, it can’t be fixed from the bottom up. The climate of an organization follows its leaders. Someone above them, here the mayor and council, has to act.
• Lead from the back of the line. The chief and captain ruled by power, “my way or the highway.” The lieutenant led by example, and his officers knew it.
• Use closed sessions correctly. Public bodies must do their business in the open, but sunshine laws carve out confidential personnel matters. Know the rules before you need them.

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