Hiding in Plain Sight: "I was joking. I didn't mean to harass her."
"Go back to where you came from."
----A male police officer to Cheryl Gomez-Preston and other female officers in the Detroit Police Department.
"We're here to stay."
---Gomez-Preston in response.
In 2000, Officer Malinda Spence filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against the Ft. Worth Police Department where she was employed. One of her main harassers was then Sgt. Duane Paul who would eventually be promoted to captain and then be videotaped by a private detective having a sexual encounter inside his city-owned vehicle at a local park. The video footage would later be used in a locally televised reality show about men caught cheating on their wives.
But long before that, Spence alleged that Paul would ask her repeatedly if she'd like to go out for drinks him. And even when she told him she wasn't interested, he began criticizing her work performance and disciplining her for minor infractions of policy. She then filed a sexual harassment complaint against Paul but even though she was transferred out of the department's Vice Unit, she still experienced retaliation from Paul and mistreatment from other officers.
(excerpt)
Another officer was also named in the lawsuit. Spence accused Officer R.R. Nichols of kissing her without her consent after an arrest. Spence had borrowed Nichols’ handcuffs. Once they had booked the suspect, Spence said, Nichols approached her from behind and kissed her, saying that he was “charging her for the handcuffs.”
Spence, whose husband also worked in the department, complained to supervisors about Nichols and Paul. The complaints were dismissed. Instead, she came under investigation by Internal Affairs for allegedly filing false complaints of sexual harassment on Paul and Nichols, and the Internal Affairs officials recommended that she be indefinitely suspended — fired, for all practical purposes. A deputy chief reviewed the report but decided to suspend Spence for five days without pay. “The preponderance of the evidence … indicates that Spence was wrong in at least part of her allegation,” Spence’s captain wrote in his recommendation to the deputy chief. “Being wrong is not always the same as being untruthful.”
Still, Spence said in her affidavit that it became obvious to her that her reputation in the department now preceded her: She said a male officer called her a bitch, and other officers failed to come to her assistance on potentially dangerous calls, including a gang fight, because they thought she was a troublemaker.
The department did its own investigation and not surprisingly, came up with the finding that the allegations were unfounded, a finding backed up by the city which by this time was being sued by Spence. Even though the city and department had exonerated the involved officers and themselves of any wrongdoing, the lawsuit filed by Spence was settled and never was heard in front of a jury. Spence soon left to work elsewhere and sexual harassment allegations continued to plague Paul all the way up to his appearance on the reality television show, Cheaters.
Amazingly enough, Internal Affairs always exonerated Paul at least up until his appearance on Cheaters then the department announced that it would do yet another investigation involving allegations of misconduct against Paul. I guess when you get caught on camera behaving inappropriately in a city-owned vehicle while presumably on duty, it can cause even the administrative investigators to revisit the issue. These female officers who had been harassed by Paul were never believed in the same way a piece of equipment welded by a private detective became factual evidence.
Amid all this, is the question about what Paul's defenses were for all the allegations made against him not just by Spence but by other female officers he worked with and supervised. But there's a few possibilities to choose from.
The book, Investigating Sexual Harassment in Law Enforcement, written by Penny Harrington and Kimberly A. Lonsway discusses the common defenses used by officers who are accused of sexual harassment.
(excerpt, Harringson, Lonsway)
1) "I was joking. I certainly didn't mean to harass her."
2) "I have a right to free speech. I can say what I want."
3) "But I didn't say anything sexual to her."
4) "I wasn't even talking to her. I was talking to my friends."
5) "But she was joking too."
6) "She obviously doesn't mind. Just look at the way she dresses, sleeps around, etc."
7) "But no one ever told me about sexual harassment."
As stated in the book, some of these excuses rely on either ignorance about a departmental policy on sexual harassment or whether or not these policies are even posted in prominent locations or officers in an agency are even instructed on this policy. Some law enforcement agencies have done surveys of their work force to evaluate the type of working environment that exists and whether or not it provides a hostile or welcome climate for women. But every law enforcement agency should have policies and procedures addressing sexual harassment and hostile working environments in place and provide training for all their officers including their supervisors and management level employees. How many instead post the policy on some wall some place and then forget about it?
Many police departments ignore complaints made by female officers or civilian employees against male employees until they turn into lawsuits. If they don't ignore them, they turn around and retaliate against the woman. "Old" administrative investigations into complaints are suddenly reopened or investigations alleging policy violations including insubordination are initiated. The police unions are often of little use because most of them are led almost exclusively by men and they will almost certainly be in the position of having to or choosing to defend the accused harassers. So women who do get fed up with the treatment often are left with two choices, either to never report it at all to anyone or to take it to an outside agency or an attorney.
In Lakewood, Katherine McCann, a police employee sued the city alleging that it should have known that the assistant chief, Timothy Lopez was harassing her and other women in the workplace.
(excerpt, News Tribune)
City officials have admitted that Lopez harassed McCann, but said the city could not be held responsible because McCann did not report the harassment until an investigation into Lopez was under way.
“The city cannot take action in response to activity about which it is unaware,” Lakewood human resources director Debra Young wrote to federal authorities in October 2006. “Here, there is no indication that the investigation of sexual harassment at the City of Lakewood Police Department could have been handled in any other more expeditious or compassionate manner.
“Ms. McCann’s complaint may be sincere, but it is unsupported by the facts in this case.”
What was supported by facts, was Lopez's harassment of several other women. An internal investigation led to sustained charges of sexual harassment, improper fraternization and untruthfulness on the job. He was put on paid administrative leave and probably every woman in the agency breathed a sigh of relief even if they would never say so. Because any female officer or other employee could simply be further down on the list of women to harass by this officer and the women who did step forward and speak out about it were not just representing themselves, they were also speaking for other women who often due to fear or not wanting to throw their hard work and careers away remain in the shadows.
Is sexual harassment unique to law enforcement agencies in the United States? Hardly.
Law enforcement agencies located thousands of miles away from the United States in Australia did their own surveys including one in New South Whales which surveyed its own officers for how they felt about working in there.
(excerpt, The Australian)
A national a study of all Australian police organisations conducted a decade ago found that 63.1% of female officers said they had been exposed to sexual harassment.
“In NSW Police the warning bells have been ringing since 1996, when former NSW Police Assistant Commissioner (now Victoria Police Chief Commissioner) Christine Nixon publicly stated that many female officers in NSWP had suffered sex discrimination and sexual harassment,” Superintendent Szalajko said.
A survey of 1,500 NSW female police officers in 1995 found:
• 80% indicated that they had experienced ‘uninvited teasing, jokes, remarks or questions of sexual nature’;
• 64% indicated they had ‘received or been shown offensive or pornographic literature’; 60% indicated that they had been the victim of ‘uninvited sexually suggestive looks or gestures’;
• 56% indicated that they had been the victim of ‘uninvited and deliberate touching, stroking or pinching’; and
• 48% indicated that they had been the victim of ‘uninvited pressure for dates’.
The vast majority of female officers subjected to such behaviour either ignored it or told the male officer to stop. Few reported it.
A survey of law enforcement officers in Norway yielded similar responses among its female officers.
When it comes to why few officers report sexual harassment and misconduct, the reasons why shouldn't be surprising if you read many of the accounts of female officers who have faced it in the workplace. The most obvious is fear of retaliation if they do, which can come in the form of ostracism, increased harassment and retaliation from the department's management often through its administrative investigation mechanisms. And the sad fact is, that if a law enforcement agency is experiencing sexual harassment on a large scale as shown in many cases, there's no real need to investigate it at least not on the inside by the inside because everyone including the management of the organization already knows that it's going on.
They just don't care or they don't care enough to do anything to address it or to create and maintain a working environment that's not hostile to women and any investigation done will serve simply to maintain and protect that status quo. So that's usually when it's time to get an outside agency involved in any investigation in many cases including the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission which has been done in quite a few sexual harassment cases involving law enforcement officers who exhausted their inhouse remedies. And that may include filing lawsuits through the federal courts under Title VII and other laws, another tool which is often used.
It's often hard to grasp why the management of a law enforcement agency would turn their eyes and ears away from sexual harassment in the workplace.
Perhaps, when these individuals arose through the ranks of policing themselves, they learned that sexism and sexual harassment is the norm, part of the fabric of the law enforcement agency so that by the time they get to the top of the hierarchy, they either ignore it or in some cases including those included in this posting like Paul, they actively participate in it themselves. They may have learned that expressing concern about it or reporting any that they witnessed might have brought trouble upon themselves as the "messenger". When asked to choose between a career they put years or even decades into and throwing that all away by reporting sexual harassment, it's not difficult to see which choice often wins out.
Perhaps there are even those who believe that women are simply getting what's coming to them for invading a male domain, and that they should realize that it's a male-dominated environment and just accept the harassment as part of the package. Put up with it or just leave and between the two, which do you think is the preferable option?
But at any rate, the problem still remains a serious one in part because it's not taken very seriously.
Some of these women who have been on the receiving end of sexual harassment in police departments have used their experiences to help other women.
Arlether Wilson, a Black female police officer, writes about her experiences including with racism, sexism and sexual harassment.
(excerpt)
Another issue that no one likes to talk about is sexual harassment. Being in a predominantly male dominated profession can be challenging for some women. It is not uncommon for women to complain about being subjected to inappropriate behavior by male officers. Of course there are some female violators but it is not very common. I’m not sure if this type of behavior is used as an act of intimidation or because the harasser lacks respect for women. Either way, it occurs more often than the public is aware of or wants to admit. Many instances are never reported.
One of the biggest advocates for those who are sexually harassed in the workplace is Detroit Police Department Officer Cheryl Gomez-Preston, who faced racial death threats and was sexually harassed from the time she graduated from the academy. She's worked hard since addressing the issues of sexual harassment in the workplace.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is generally fairly useless especially when there's a Republican president in office but this is were it tells you how to file a charge.
This is what sexual harassment in police departments looks like.
(excerpt, National Center for Women and Policing)
Hostile Environment A hostile environment consists of unwelcome sexual behavior, such as "jokes", cartoons, posters, banter, repeated requests for dates, requests for sexual favors, references to body parts, or physical touching that has the purpose or effect of unreasonably interfering with an individual's work performance or creating an intimidating, hostile, or offensive working environment. Isolated acts that are not severe will not rise to the level of a hostile environment.
Quid Pro Quo Sexual Harassment Another type of sexual harassment is called "quid pro quo" harassment. It means that you are asked to perform sexual acts in return for a job benefit. For example, you will pass probation, get a promotion, get a good performance evaluation, not be written up for doing something wrong, etc, if you will engage in some type of sexual behavior.
Gender Harassment The courts also recognize that behavior that is not based on sexual behavior, but is based on gender is also unlawful harassment. Typical examples would be comments such as "women are not brave enough to be police officers," "women should stay home and have babies and leave policing to real men", etc. These are all comments that demean women.
But still many women who experience sexual harassment in the workplace remain silent, opting for a career even one where they are treated in ways that devalue them, over throwing it all away.
"If you don't do what they want, they'll take a lie about you and make it true."
---female officer, police department, United States
The mayor of Los Angeles plans to tinker with the city's gang intervention and prevention programs and one of the casualties will be L.A. Bridges.
(excerpt, Los Angeles Times)
Villaraigosa aides say L.A. Bridges has become such a sacred cow that the only way to reform it is to rebuild it from the ground up -- a process that will take two years to complete and review.
"There has been a need to reform the way we provide these services for more than a decade, and up until now that reform has been thwarted by politics," said Villaraigosa spokesman Matt Szabo.
The review of the new programs will come partway into Villaraigosa's second term, if he is reelected. Even City Controller Laura Chick, who pushed for anti-gang initiatives to prove their worth, is leaving the evaluation to her successor.
"There will be no real performance audit, or real audit and evaluation by me," said Chick, who leaves office in June 2009.Until now, L.A. Bridges has been supervised by the city's Community Development Department, an agency whose top executive reports to Villaraigosa.
Also in Los Angeles, the proposed amending of Amendment 40 has sparked different opinions on the issue, one from an immigrant, the other from a police officer. Also weighing in is a religious leader and Judicial Watch.
Two competing issues on the use of eminent domain by local governments will be on the ballot in June.
The Los Angeles Times Editorial Board opposes filing lawsuits against county prosecutors even for major miscarriages of justice including the case of a man just released after 23 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit.
Diane Wetendorf, an expert on law enforcement related domestic violence comments on the Stacey Peterson case. Peterson if you recall disappeared last October while married to former Bolingbrook Police Department Sgt. Drew Peterson and hasn't been seen since. Peterson's third wife died about three years ago in what was officially ruled an accidental drowning but now after a second autopsy has been declared to be a homicide.
----A male police officer to Cheryl Gomez-Preston and other female officers in the Detroit Police Department.
"We're here to stay."
---Gomez-Preston in response.
In 2000, Officer Malinda Spence filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against the Ft. Worth Police Department where she was employed. One of her main harassers was then Sgt. Duane Paul who would eventually be promoted to captain and then be videotaped by a private detective having a sexual encounter inside his city-owned vehicle at a local park. The video footage would later be used in a locally televised reality show about men caught cheating on their wives.
But long before that, Spence alleged that Paul would ask her repeatedly if she'd like to go out for drinks him. And even when she told him she wasn't interested, he began criticizing her work performance and disciplining her for minor infractions of policy. She then filed a sexual harassment complaint against Paul but even though she was transferred out of the department's Vice Unit, she still experienced retaliation from Paul and mistreatment from other officers.
(excerpt)
Another officer was also named in the lawsuit. Spence accused Officer R.R. Nichols of kissing her without her consent after an arrest. Spence had borrowed Nichols’ handcuffs. Once they had booked the suspect, Spence said, Nichols approached her from behind and kissed her, saying that he was “charging her for the handcuffs.”
Spence, whose husband also worked in the department, complained to supervisors about Nichols and Paul. The complaints were dismissed. Instead, she came under investigation by Internal Affairs for allegedly filing false complaints of sexual harassment on Paul and Nichols, and the Internal Affairs officials recommended that she be indefinitely suspended — fired, for all practical purposes. A deputy chief reviewed the report but decided to suspend Spence for five days without pay. “The preponderance of the evidence … indicates that Spence was wrong in at least part of her allegation,” Spence’s captain wrote in his recommendation to the deputy chief. “Being wrong is not always the same as being untruthful.”
Still, Spence said in her affidavit that it became obvious to her that her reputation in the department now preceded her: She said a male officer called her a bitch, and other officers failed to come to her assistance on potentially dangerous calls, including a gang fight, because they thought she was a troublemaker.
The department did its own investigation and not surprisingly, came up with the finding that the allegations were unfounded, a finding backed up by the city which by this time was being sued by Spence. Even though the city and department had exonerated the involved officers and themselves of any wrongdoing, the lawsuit filed by Spence was settled and never was heard in front of a jury. Spence soon left to work elsewhere and sexual harassment allegations continued to plague Paul all the way up to his appearance on the reality television show, Cheaters.
Amazingly enough, Internal Affairs always exonerated Paul at least up until his appearance on Cheaters then the department announced that it would do yet another investigation involving allegations of misconduct against Paul. I guess when you get caught on camera behaving inappropriately in a city-owned vehicle while presumably on duty, it can cause even the administrative investigators to revisit the issue. These female officers who had been harassed by Paul were never believed in the same way a piece of equipment welded by a private detective became factual evidence.
Amid all this, is the question about what Paul's defenses were for all the allegations made against him not just by Spence but by other female officers he worked with and supervised. But there's a few possibilities to choose from.
The book, Investigating Sexual Harassment in Law Enforcement, written by Penny Harrington and Kimberly A. Lonsway discusses the common defenses used by officers who are accused of sexual harassment.
(excerpt, Harringson, Lonsway)
1) "I was joking. I certainly didn't mean to harass her."
2) "I have a right to free speech. I can say what I want."
3) "But I didn't say anything sexual to her."
4) "I wasn't even talking to her. I was talking to my friends."
5) "But she was joking too."
6) "She obviously doesn't mind. Just look at the way she dresses, sleeps around, etc."
7) "But no one ever told me about sexual harassment."
As stated in the book, some of these excuses rely on either ignorance about a departmental policy on sexual harassment or whether or not these policies are even posted in prominent locations or officers in an agency are even instructed on this policy. Some law enforcement agencies have done surveys of their work force to evaluate the type of working environment that exists and whether or not it provides a hostile or welcome climate for women. But every law enforcement agency should have policies and procedures addressing sexual harassment and hostile working environments in place and provide training for all their officers including their supervisors and management level employees. How many instead post the policy on some wall some place and then forget about it?
Many police departments ignore complaints made by female officers or civilian employees against male employees until they turn into lawsuits. If they don't ignore them, they turn around and retaliate against the woman. "Old" administrative investigations into complaints are suddenly reopened or investigations alleging policy violations including insubordination are initiated. The police unions are often of little use because most of them are led almost exclusively by men and they will almost certainly be in the position of having to or choosing to defend the accused harassers. So women who do get fed up with the treatment often are left with two choices, either to never report it at all to anyone or to take it to an outside agency or an attorney.
In Lakewood, Katherine McCann, a police employee sued the city alleging that it should have known that the assistant chief, Timothy Lopez was harassing her and other women in the workplace.
(excerpt, News Tribune)
City officials have admitted that Lopez harassed McCann, but said the city could not be held responsible because McCann did not report the harassment until an investigation into Lopez was under way.
“The city cannot take action in response to activity about which it is unaware,” Lakewood human resources director Debra Young wrote to federal authorities in October 2006. “Here, there is no indication that the investigation of sexual harassment at the City of Lakewood Police Department could have been handled in any other more expeditious or compassionate manner.
“Ms. McCann’s complaint may be sincere, but it is unsupported by the facts in this case.”
What was supported by facts, was Lopez's harassment of several other women. An internal investigation led to sustained charges of sexual harassment, improper fraternization and untruthfulness on the job. He was put on paid administrative leave and probably every woman in the agency breathed a sigh of relief even if they would never say so. Because any female officer or other employee could simply be further down on the list of women to harass by this officer and the women who did step forward and speak out about it were not just representing themselves, they were also speaking for other women who often due to fear or not wanting to throw their hard work and careers away remain in the shadows.
Is sexual harassment unique to law enforcement agencies in the United States? Hardly.
Law enforcement agencies located thousands of miles away from the United States in Australia did their own surveys including one in New South Whales which surveyed its own officers for how they felt about working in there.
(excerpt, The Australian)
A national a study of all Australian police organisations conducted a decade ago found that 63.1% of female officers said they had been exposed to sexual harassment.
“In NSW Police the warning bells have been ringing since 1996, when former NSW Police Assistant Commissioner (now Victoria Police Chief Commissioner) Christine Nixon publicly stated that many female officers in NSWP had suffered sex discrimination and sexual harassment,” Superintendent Szalajko said.
A survey of 1,500 NSW female police officers in 1995 found:
• 80% indicated that they had experienced ‘uninvited teasing, jokes, remarks or questions of sexual nature’;
• 64% indicated they had ‘received or been shown offensive or pornographic literature’; 60% indicated that they had been the victim of ‘uninvited sexually suggestive looks or gestures’;
• 56% indicated that they had been the victim of ‘uninvited and deliberate touching, stroking or pinching’; and
• 48% indicated that they had been the victim of ‘uninvited pressure for dates’.
The vast majority of female officers subjected to such behaviour either ignored it or told the male officer to stop. Few reported it.
A survey of law enforcement officers in Norway yielded similar responses among its female officers.
When it comes to why few officers report sexual harassment and misconduct, the reasons why shouldn't be surprising if you read many of the accounts of female officers who have faced it in the workplace. The most obvious is fear of retaliation if they do, which can come in the form of ostracism, increased harassment and retaliation from the department's management often through its administrative investigation mechanisms. And the sad fact is, that if a law enforcement agency is experiencing sexual harassment on a large scale as shown in many cases, there's no real need to investigate it at least not on the inside by the inside because everyone including the management of the organization already knows that it's going on.
They just don't care or they don't care enough to do anything to address it or to create and maintain a working environment that's not hostile to women and any investigation done will serve simply to maintain and protect that status quo. So that's usually when it's time to get an outside agency involved in any investigation in many cases including the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission which has been done in quite a few sexual harassment cases involving law enforcement officers who exhausted their inhouse remedies. And that may include filing lawsuits through the federal courts under Title VII and other laws, another tool which is often used.
It's often hard to grasp why the management of a law enforcement agency would turn their eyes and ears away from sexual harassment in the workplace.
Perhaps, when these individuals arose through the ranks of policing themselves, they learned that sexism and sexual harassment is the norm, part of the fabric of the law enforcement agency so that by the time they get to the top of the hierarchy, they either ignore it or in some cases including those included in this posting like Paul, they actively participate in it themselves. They may have learned that expressing concern about it or reporting any that they witnessed might have brought trouble upon themselves as the "messenger". When asked to choose between a career they put years or even decades into and throwing that all away by reporting sexual harassment, it's not difficult to see which choice often wins out.
Perhaps there are even those who believe that women are simply getting what's coming to them for invading a male domain, and that they should realize that it's a male-dominated environment and just accept the harassment as part of the package. Put up with it or just leave and between the two, which do you think is the preferable option?
But at any rate, the problem still remains a serious one in part because it's not taken very seriously.
Some of these women who have been on the receiving end of sexual harassment in police departments have used their experiences to help other women.
Arlether Wilson, a Black female police officer, writes about her experiences including with racism, sexism and sexual harassment.
(excerpt)
Another issue that no one likes to talk about is sexual harassment. Being in a predominantly male dominated profession can be challenging for some women. It is not uncommon for women to complain about being subjected to inappropriate behavior by male officers. Of course there are some female violators but it is not very common. I’m not sure if this type of behavior is used as an act of intimidation or because the harasser lacks respect for women. Either way, it occurs more often than the public is aware of or wants to admit. Many instances are never reported.
One of the biggest advocates for those who are sexually harassed in the workplace is Detroit Police Department Officer Cheryl Gomez-Preston, who faced racial death threats and was sexually harassed from the time she graduated from the academy. She's worked hard since addressing the issues of sexual harassment in the workplace.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is generally fairly useless especially when there's a Republican president in office but this is were it tells you how to file a charge.
This is what sexual harassment in police departments looks like.
(excerpt, National Center for Women and Policing)
Hostile Environment A hostile environment consists of unwelcome sexual behavior, such as "jokes", cartoons, posters, banter, repeated requests for dates, requests for sexual favors, references to body parts, or physical touching that has the purpose or effect of unreasonably interfering with an individual's work performance or creating an intimidating, hostile, or offensive working environment. Isolated acts that are not severe will not rise to the level of a hostile environment.
Quid Pro Quo Sexual Harassment Another type of sexual harassment is called "quid pro quo" harassment. It means that you are asked to perform sexual acts in return for a job benefit. For example, you will pass probation, get a promotion, get a good performance evaluation, not be written up for doing something wrong, etc, if you will engage in some type of sexual behavior.
Gender Harassment The courts also recognize that behavior that is not based on sexual behavior, but is based on gender is also unlawful harassment. Typical examples would be comments such as "women are not brave enough to be police officers," "women should stay home and have babies and leave policing to real men", etc. These are all comments that demean women.
But still many women who experience sexual harassment in the workplace remain silent, opting for a career even one where they are treated in ways that devalue them, over throwing it all away.
"If you don't do what they want, they'll take a lie about you and make it true."
---female officer, police department, United States
The mayor of Los Angeles plans to tinker with the city's gang intervention and prevention programs and one of the casualties will be L.A. Bridges.
(excerpt, Los Angeles Times)
Villaraigosa aides say L.A. Bridges has become such a sacred cow that the only way to reform it is to rebuild it from the ground up -- a process that will take two years to complete and review.
"There has been a need to reform the way we provide these services for more than a decade, and up until now that reform has been thwarted by politics," said Villaraigosa spokesman Matt Szabo.
The review of the new programs will come partway into Villaraigosa's second term, if he is reelected. Even City Controller Laura Chick, who pushed for anti-gang initiatives to prove their worth, is leaving the evaluation to her successor.
"There will be no real performance audit, or real audit and evaluation by me," said Chick, who leaves office in June 2009.Until now, L.A. Bridges has been supervised by the city's Community Development Department, an agency whose top executive reports to Villaraigosa.
Also in Los Angeles, the proposed amending of Amendment 40 has sparked different opinions on the issue, one from an immigrant, the other from a police officer. Also weighing in is a religious leader and Judicial Watch.
Two competing issues on the use of eminent domain by local governments will be on the ballot in June.
The Los Angeles Times Editorial Board opposes filing lawsuits against county prosecutors even for major miscarriages of justice including the case of a man just released after 23 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit.
Diane Wetendorf, an expert on law enforcement related domestic violence comments on the Stacey Peterson case. Peterson if you recall disappeared last October while married to former Bolingbrook Police Department Sgt. Drew Peterson and hasn't been seen since. Peterson's third wife died about three years ago in what was officially ruled an accidental drowning but now after a second autopsy has been declared to be a homicide.
Labels: business as usual, public forums in all places, sexism costs, what culture
posted by Five Before Midnight | 8:33 PM
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