Bangert: LPD chief stands by cop who made threat

On his Lafayette Police Department application in 2007, Officer Charles Williams was asked to provide a handwritten explanation about whether he believed police officers should be held to a higher standard of conduct.

"Police officers should in every way be held to a higher standard," Williams wrote in a clear, all-caps style print. "To do that without compromising the integrity of yourself, the department or the profession, you must be uncompromising in your morals."

Five years later, at 12:37 a.m. Jan. 22, 2012, Williams was drunk and on the phone from a table at a Buffalo Wild Wings in West Lafayette, leaving this threat on the phone of a man accused of hugging and exchanging text messages with the fiancee of a fellow officer, Michael Barthelemy:

"I just wanted to tell you that you're a huge f-----' douche bag, and I swear to God if I hear your name again I'm going to f------ kill you. And it's not gonna be awesome, I mean it's gonna be like, little body parts in a fireplace kind of death, and that's really gonna suck."

The question, then, goes to LPD Chief Pat Flannelly: What does it say for the Lafayette Police Department and high standards that Williams is still on the force?

"I see where the questions are coming from," Flannelly said Friday. That was a day after news started circulating about new court documents in a federal case that attempt to tie the threats to an ambush and beating Timothy Vander Plaats, a Lafayette man, endured 10 days later in a downtown alley.

"But do I trust putting this officer on the street?" Flannelly asked. "I do. … The one thing I think is important for our community to know is that LPD would never put an officer out on the street that we didn't feel met all of our high expectations and was not qualified to do this. Period."

An April 8 filing in U.S. District Court wasn't the first time the threats were mentioned by Vander Plaats' attorney. Shortly after the incident, Williams was suspended for five days — the most allowed before discipline goes to the citizen-led police merit board. Other officers at the bar that night also were disciplined.

"What's causing the stir is the repeating of things that have occurred three years ago — not something that happened last month, not something that happened a year ago," said Ed Chosnek, the Lafayette city attorney. "Everyone agrees that what they did was wrong. They were reprimanded for it. … Now we're covering old ground."

But the court documents — meant to counter the city's motion for summary judgment, based on lack of proof that Williams and Barthelemy assaulted Vander Plaats — dug into internal affairs transcripts.

The transcripts detail the threat made by Williams, who, for his part, later called the drunken call "just a stupid a-- decision." They also uncover comments from Officer Ron Dombkowski, who told internal affairs investigators that the officers were sending Vander Plaats a "message … that, you know, he can't f--- with a cop's family."

Then he dropped this line:

"You guys might be doing an (investigation) on me for something more serious than threats on a guy if he kept messing with my family. You know what I mean? I mean we're all like that."

We're all like that.

Chosnek chalked that up to a brand of man code, rather than a bond between police officers.

What did Flannelly think: Bravado or indictment of how things are?

"There's a metaphor, I'm not a fan of it, but there's this thin blue line, where police officers do become protective, because they do feel like they are on an island," Flannelly said. "Just look at the national coverage right now about law enforcement. It's not very pretty. Some of it, law enforcement has earned, so questions like this come up. But there is that sense of protectionism among police officers. Sometimes it feels like nobody supports us unless we take it upon ourselves. ...

"That said, we're not pleased with the way our guys responded. And they answered for themselves. They haven't run and hid."

Flannelly said there aren't many careers out there that come with such close public examination of mistakes made.

Fair enough. But in this case, can death threats coming from someone with a police officer's authority be written off as a simple error? Doesn't it go back to that essay question on the officer's application? The one about higher standards?

"That's why we're so disappointed that it happened in the first place," Flannelly said. "It damages the public trust. We know that. Now it's something we have to recover from. … We know trust is everything for us. And, in the end, we know they did violate that trust."

Flannelly, who wasn't chief when the officers were disciplined, said he understands the question: Did a five-day suspension cover a drunken, off-duty death threat from an officer who had been disciplined five times before in his young career. (Former Chief Don Roush's recommendation to dismiss Williams after one of those incidents was rejected in 2009.)

Flannelly said he wished he could say more about each officer involved — and will once the lawsuit is over. Until then, Flannelly said, he stands by his daily decision to put those men on the road to patrol.

"I trust them," Flannelly said. "I know that as a police department, we have trust to earn, too. We get that this is about a higher standard."

Bangert is a columnist with the Journal & Courier. Contact him at dbangert@jconline.com. Follow on Twitter: @davebangert.