May 25, 2016 at 1:48 p.m.
A dishonest-to-goodness good-old-boy cover-up
A dishonest-to-goodness good-old-boy cover-up
Let's be clear: The sheriff's department lied in its legal briefs about its reasons for wanting to keep the allegations against Lech sealed. To be sure, the agency cited the usual litany of reasons for not releasing the records - it would hurt morale, it would discourage whistle-blowers, and so on - but at the heart of its pleading was something more sinister.
At the very core of its legal argument was a flat-out assertion that the allegations were "determined to be unfounded."
In using the term, the department engaged in linguistic shading, an attempt to use a word with foggy meaning so as to leave itself legal wiggle room. But, in plain usage, the meaning of 'unfounded' is quite clear.
It does not mean the same as 'unproven.' It is not the same as 'unverified.' It is not even the same as 'unsubstantiated."
Unfounded means without basis in reason or fact, groundless and unwarranted.
Which is to say the department found the alleged rape victim's allegation to have been uncalled for and without any merit: groundless. It means the department thinks, or at least argued, that the alleged victim made it all up.
Of course, the records they were trying to keep secret indicate nothing of the sort. If anything, they point to the opposite conclusion. They may not prove the allegations, but they sure do suggest a strong criminal case, had the alleged victim been willing to pursue it.
The alleged victim was not, but a victim's reluctance should never be translated into a verdict of innocence for the alleged perpetrator, and that is exactly what the sheriff's department did in its court filings. Its very language that the allegations were "determined to be unfounded" translates into an implicit exoneration of Lech.
That the actual records do not exonerate him is highlighted by sheriff Grady Hartman's own statement this week that he was unsure of the veracity of the alleged victim's claim, which itself contradicts the agency's own legal arguments in the case.
To make matters worse and to underscore that it twisted "unfounded" to mean not unproven but untrue, in its briefs the department said these "unfounded" allegations should be kept sealed to avoid ruining Lech's reputation and career. After all, no ethical department would so aggressively attempt to protect the reputation and career of a person facing allegations that it reasonably suspected could be true.
And yet the evidence suggests that's exactly what the sheriff's department did. Let's think about this. An extraordinarily serious allegation of rape is made against Lech, serious enough that the department banned him from the building and placed him on leave; Lech refused to answer questions and resigned; and this week the sheriff said he doesn't have enough information in his mind to reach a conclusion about the allegations.
Is that so? For then why does Hartman not only tell the Clark County background investigator about the allegation but proceed to advise the county not to hire Lech? Why would he warn a sheriff's department not to hire a man who just might be innocent, unless of course he has reason to believe the allegations are founded? Otherwise, the sensible course of action would be to reveal the allegation without a recommendation on hiring.
So, on the one hand the sheriff says he is warning another agency against hiring him - that's hardly protecting Lech's reputation and career - but in court and in public the department is doing the opposite, aggressively defending his career and reputation.
And what happens while the department is publicly defending this man's career and reputation? Well, while they are doing that, Lech, his reputation intact, is in fact busy pursuing his "career" in Clark County.
For while Hartman says he advised the Clark County background investigator against hiring him - though there was nothing in the personnel file about the allegation - that background investigator was none other than Clay Kreitlow, who worked in Woodruff while Lech was assigned to that part of the county and who knew him well, a fact the Oneida County sheriff's department had to know when they met with Kreitlow.
And what about the Clark County sheriff? Why would that sheriff assign Kreitlow to "check out" Lech when Lech had listed Kreitlow as a reference on his Clark County job application? Could he expect anything other than a glowing recommendation from Kreitlow?
How very convenient all of this is. None of it meets the smell test. It smells more like the good-old-boy "Brotherhood of Justice" protecting one of its own. It smacks of a cover-up.
As far as we can tell, Hartman has taken three different positions on the allegations. This week he says hasn't reached a conclusion about their veracity because he doesn't have enough information. But last October he told Clark County not to hire Lech, which suggests he had enough information to suspect the allegations were true. And, in court, his position was that the claims were unfounded and without merit, and Lech's reputation and career had to be protected.
So which door is sheriff Hartman standing behind today?
All of which brings us to accountability. Kreitlow should be fired, at least, but what about accountability in the Oneida County sheriff's department?
The department went to court and deliberately misrepresented what was in the records - a fact judge Neal "Chip" Nielsen noted with "grave concern" - to protect the reputation of an officer accused of rape that it had banned from its building.
Protect his reputation, and just bury the record and cover it up, and Lech is free to go and "police" elsewhere, quite like the church moved child molesters from parish to parish, an analogy Nielsen used in court.
Now statements and arguments made in legal briefs are not under oath, and lawyers can and do make false statements in them. Perhaps legal sanctions of such behavior are not possible, and Nielsen could do no more than point out the fact.
But the county can and must do more. It must launch its own probe into the conduct of the sheriff's department's dismissal of a serious and substantive claim by an employee as mere "unfounded" chatter.
What will the county do to make sure such an incident does not occur again? What will it do to ensure its own adequate oversight of the sheriff's department?
We have other concerns about the agency's recalcitrance that demands the county's attention as well. For example, why didn't the department turn over its internal investigation to an outside, independent agency?
It didn't have to legally, but it would certainly have removed the appearance of a conflict of interest, and it might well have removed the pressure placed on the alleged victim of having to talk to investigators with whom that person works.
How might having co-workers conduct the investigation have potentially affected the alleged victim's decision making? Could the alleged victim sense hostility from her questioning peers, or subtle pressure not to move forward?
That might not be the case, but an independent probe could forestall such a possibility.
And though Hartman says he could not conduct a criminal investigation because the alleged assault did not occur in his jurisdiction, why didn't he forward the findings to the appropriate law enforcement agency and have them contact the alleged victim - again, without the baggage of having to make decisions within the orbit of working relationships - to see if a criminal investigation could move forward?
The bottom line is, there are many, many outstanding questions about this whole matter - including the unnecessary expense to taxpayers - for Oneida County to simply let this matter drop.
And make no mistake about it, the sheriff's department did none of this to protect the alleged victim. The alleged victim's identity was already protected - identifiers redacted by the court, as is standard procedure - and in any case the department dismissed the merits of the accusations, in effect both putting the alleged victim's statement on trial and convicting that person of unfounded allegations.
No, this unnecessary litigation wasn't undertaken to protect the victim; it was undertaken to protect Lee Lech, a member of the good-old-boy Brotherhood of Justice.
The county needs to demand accountability and answers from the sheriff's department about this attempted cover-up and impose consequences, unless, of course, it finds all of this to be unfounded and intends to do nothing in the interests of protecting the sheriff's department's reputation and the careers of its leadership.
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