LMPD Chief Suspended After Demanding Majors Squash Sexual Harassment Claims

It's deeply concerning to me that Louisville's way of addressing its many, well-known sexual harassment problems was to appoint a lady chief who is willing to have this kind of open meeting with her staff.

Mayor Craig Greenberg looked like a very startled Anthony Weiner when he talked about how the DoJ is on his case about sexual misconduct on his police force -- as they should be. 

Even with getting a complete Mulligan on everything Pablo Cano and Brian Taylor did, Mayor Greenberg is about to go broke from the Breonna Taylor raid and a few other gems from his police department's misconduct.  And me of little faith remembers what happened after the DoJ looked into Ferguson, Missouri about their obvious racism problem -- nothing.

The reporting here is not at all clear on exactly what happened with this phone call.  But as I understand it, there was a command staff meeting.  Chief Gwinn-Villaroel demanded that the Majors go around and, one by one, agree that they were willing to partner with all of their coworkers.  In other words, all beef fully squashed or you will be demoted.

One officer, Lauder, was home "sick" that day.  My differential diagnosis is blue flu, because she had been "sexually harassed and assaulted" by a coworker, Officer Kuriger.  She wasn't comfortable working with him.  She had been put on the spot to bring it up in this way.  It's not clear why she wasn't able to bring it up before.  That in and of itself is a problem with culture and leadership.

Now, anybody who doesn't think that's a major problem (pun intended) at LMPD needs to watch the above video from Vice.  The woman who came in to complain about being raped by Pablo Cano was treated as a suspect by Cano's coworkers at LMPD.  Pablo Cano joked about being a sex offender in staff meetings.

So after the threat of demotion, when it was Lauder's turn to say she'd work with Kuriger, she declined.  There was 20 seconds of silence.  Chief Gwinn-Villaroel said that needed to be addressed later.  Then she allegedly went on to afford Kuriger a promotion.  

Gwinn-Villaroel put that rake down on the ground in front of herself and then stepped on it, smacking herself directly in the face.  It seems like she could have avoided this by dealing with people privately, instead of having this "all hands on deck, all beef squashed" meeting that blew up in her hand like a human resources pipe bomb.  She had multiple harassment suits brewing amongst her command staff.

That portion of the audio regarding the promotion/non-promotion wasn't provided in the reporting.  And they said that no promotions have gone through.  So apparently the mayor doesn't need the agita.  The Chief is on paid leave for now and someone else is in charge.  None of that would be happening had Lauder not filed suit.  The city can't afford it.  I'm pretty sure they're already bankrupt or close to it.

So we'll see.