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'Time
Out' On
Detroit
Police
Sex
Scandals
Editorial
by Karen
Hudson
Samuels/Tell
Us
Detroit
DETROIT
(Tell Us
Det) -
Why are
the
female
police
officers
who had
affairs
during
with two
different
Detroit
Police
Chiefs
still on
the job
or not
suspended?
There
was a
“No
comment”
to this
question
when
Tell Us
Detroit
asked
Interim
Chief
Chester
Logan at
the
Monday
morning
news
conference
that
announced
his
appointment
to fill
the seat
of
retiring
Police
Chief
Ralph
Godbee.
Police
officers
Angelica
Robinson
and
Monique
Patterson
were
promoted
while
having
trysts
with
their
respective
bosses.
Robinson
says she
tried to
bow out
of her
relationship
with
Ralph
Godbee
but he
pressured
her to
maintain
the
affair.
This may
very
well be
true but
Robinson,
who was
promoted
to
Internal
Affairs,
did not
file
complaints
of
sexual
harassment
with the
department,
to the
best of
our
knowledge.
Do
consensual
sexual
relationships
with
benefits
meet the
definition
of
sexual
harassment?
The
dictionary
definition
of this
behavior
is
“Unwelcome
sexual
advances,
requests
for
sexual
favors,
and
other
verbal
or
physical
conduct
of a
sexual
nature
that
tends to
create a
hostile
or
offensive
work
environment.”
Robinson
did seem
to be
enduring
an
“offensive
work
environment”,
but was
it
because
she
learned
Godbee
was
seeing
another
woman?
“Hell
hath no
fury
like a
woman
scorned.”
Fraternizing
with
co-workers
is a
policy
Mayor
Bing
says he
will
look
into.
However,
human
behavior
is not
easily
regulated
by
policy.
The
unwritten
rules of
organizational
culture
are
built up
over
time; to
influence
conduct
the
consequences
of
violating
policy
must
applied
uniformly
to all
offending
parties.
The
Detroit
Police
Department
needs to
examine
the root
cause of
inappropriate
behavior
among
officers
if it
wants to
see
change
and then
hold all
employees
equally
accountable
for
stepping
over the
line.
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