Sex cases plague Tennesee Highway Patrol
Dr. Frank Kardasz: Misconduct, ethics violations and crimes by public officials often lead us to ask; What was he (or she) thinking? If the violators had used some logical decision-making processes beforehand, perhaps the ethics violations would not have occurred. Here is a link to a hand list of decision making process: http://www.kardasz.org/Decision_Making_Tools.html
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Female truckers' complaints raise questions about reform
By Brad Schrade, Staff Writer The Tennesean.com. 07/01/07
One female trucker says state trooper Sgt. Leon King ordered her into a secluded room at an Interstate 40 weigh station in January 2006 and propositioned her.
Another says King caressed her hands, arm and buttocks at that Weststate weigh station.
King stayed on the job four months during the first investigation. Days after the second incident, the patrol let him retire with his full pension. No investigation was done.
The handling of the complaints about King, and two other cases involving troopers and women, raise questions about whether agency reforms in 2006 took root.
Officials responding to the complaints were the ones put in place after Gov. Phil Bredesen pledged to end the patrol's history of cronyism and tolerating troopers' misconduct.
"This raises the specter of the 'good ole boy' system at its worst," said David Raybin, a former prosecutor who now represents a Fraternal Order of Police union. "That a police department would tolerate mistreatment of anyone, a woman for sex or anything. Their job is to protect the public. The idea that a police officer is using his position to hit on women is abhorrent."
Highway Patrol officials say that the cases involve a few bad apples and that they have responded aggressively.
When we have indications of inappropriate behavior, that is dealt with," Highway Patrol spokesman Mike Browning said.
Intimidation claimed
The two female truck drivers from the 2006 incidents at the Brownsville weigh station say King scared and intimidated them, and they wished he had been prosecuted. He wasn't.
Complaint wasn't first
"It was an abuse of power," Serratto told the newspaper last week. "It was so blatant. You could tell it wasn't the first time because it was so natural for him. It was intimidation, his badge.
Serratto said Highway Patrol officials left her with the impression that King had been fired after her complaint.
Cooper, who said she still has nightmares from her episode with King, wants to know why the patrol leadership let him back on the job even as he was being investigated for the earlier complaint.
Woman's outrage lingers
" 'What do you mean he's retired and I should have no more incidents?' " Cooper recalled thinking when she saw the letter.
Rose Palermo, a Nashville attorney, said it is against the law for someone to touch another person in the manner described by Cooper.
The case should have at least been pursued and turned over to a district attorney to determine if there's a criminal case, Palermo said.
Such behavior could also fall under the category of official misconduct, according to Raybin.
After Cooper complained about the lack of action — and nearly a year after the incident — the patrol forwarded her case to the district attorney general in Haywood County.
The head of the patrol's parent agency at the time of both 2006 incidents was Gerald Nicely, whom Bredesen installed as interim state safety commissioner and put in charge of cleaning up the force.
In retrospect, Walker said, King probably should have been put on leave after Serratto complained in January 2006.
When he learned of accusations against King, the colonel said he pursued them vigorously, and he recommended on June 1, 2006, that King be suspended for 30 days, demoted and transferred to the Interstate 24 weigh station in Manchester.
King retired before the department could conduct an internal investigation on the second incident, he said.
The patrol this year created a new professional standards unit to investigate and root out troopers who are guilty of misconduct, the colonel noted.
The retired trooper has been a Brownsville alderman for some time, his attorney said, and had worked for the state since 1975.
A 10-day suspension was recommended for King in 1999 after he was accused of using his state position to track down contact information for a married woman he'd seen at a Huddle House restaurant. State records say King called the woman at home and asked her out on a date.
He said it may have been overturned, but the spokesman could not answer that definitively Friday.
Two other troopers have recently gotten in trouble over sex-related allegations. Trooper James Randy Moss received international attention in May when a porn actress said she performed oral sex on him during a traffic stop in exchange for his overlooking drugs in her car.
Just a week later, on June 6, Walker moved to fire Harold "Steve" Max, a West Tennessee trooper accused of showing up at a married woman's home while on duty on several occasions and propositioning her, allegedly grabbing her breast and her buttocks, records show.
Retrieved July 1, 2007 from http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070701/NEWS0201/707010400