Disclaimer: This column includes descriptions of sexual abuse and misconduct and may trigger some readers.
It was a chilly winter night during the 2019/20 season. I was stationed at The Salvation Army’s staging area for Metro’s cold weather overflow shelter. As the director of Metro’s Homeless Impact Division, a position I held until 2021, I was used to people sharing their personal stories with me.
The room was hot, and people grabbed a coffee while waiting for the departure of the bus that would take them to the overflow shelter. A woman, whom I estimated to be in her mid-to-late 50s, sat next to me. She was double-checking with me to ensure she would get to the same shelter location she had previously been. After I confirmed that, she shared with me some of her physical ailments and what a rough winter she’s had. I was thinking how hard it must be for her, especially since she was using a walker and clearly struggled with her health. Then she added a sentence that has haunted me since. She told me that the worst of living outside for her was the constant sexual abuse she faced there.
Having worked in this field for a long time, I was aware of the vulnerability of women experiencing homelessness. I had read multiple studies about the victimization of women living outdoors, such as the following excerpt of an article by Lindsey Zirkle published in the Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law & Policy in 2022.
“Women experiencing homelessness are at an increased risk of becoming victims of sexual violence. Such women are particularly vulnerable to multiple forms of interpersonal victimization, including sexual violence at the hands of acquaintances, strangers, sex traffickers, and intimate partners while on the street, in dangerous housing situations, or in shelters,” Zirkle wrote.
But hearing it from the woman next to me, who was clearly physically struggling to move around and was trying to get out of the freezing night, just hit me like a bolt of lightning.
At the end of August, this experience came to mind as I attended the Metro Council’s Women’s Caucus meeting and was deeply disturbed by the presentation of the Nashville Community Review Board (CRB).
During the report, one of the CRB presenters mentioned a complaint about a “sexual relationship” between a police officer and a young woman living in an encampment. At home, I looked up the CRB’s Policy Advisory Report: Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) Zero-Tolerance Sexual Misconduct Policy, which on page 5 includes an incident summarized as follows.
The CRB received an anonymous complaint at the end of 2022 from a social worker about “an ‘ongoing sexual relationship’ between an unhoused young woman and an MNPD officer who was assigned to do homeless outreach.”
The social worker reported that the young woman shared images of her and the police officer, “stating they would ‘hook up’ in his MNPD vehicle.”
The young woman seemed to be under the impression that this was a consensual relationship. However, the social worker felt obligated to file the complaint “given the ‘high potential for abuse’ and the clear power imbalance between the two individuals.”
Now, what clearly bugged me is that for one, according to this report, the officer allegedly was assigned to do homeless outreach. It also mentions that he bought the young woman meals and gave her rides while on duty.
What happened after the social worker filed this complaint? According to the CRB report, “When notified of this complaint by the CRB, the director of the Office of Professional Accountability (OPA) stated that she would initiate an investigation of the case herself. Unfortunately, the unhoused woman was unwilling to provide the name of the MNPD officer or report his actions for ‘fear of losing her love,’ limiting the information provided in the complaint. Indeed, OPA shared in August of 2023 that they had not been able to identify the victim or evidence of any wrongdoing against the officer involved, and therefore had decided to close the investigation.”
This raised a bunch of questions for me. For one, there are a limited number of officers assigned to do homeless outreach. Second, I am familiar with police culture as I am married to a former MNPD officer. They talk amongst each other. It is amazing how much police officers know what’s going on within this city — and especially within their department. I have a tough time understanding how MNPD could not identify this particular officer.
Thus, this incident demonstrates what is termed as the “Blue Wall of Silence,” which refers to an informal code of silence among police officers about a colleague’s misconduct or even crimes. If an officer breaks the blue wall of silence and rats out a fellow officer, there will be some form of retribution. When I was hanging out with my husband’s buddies, I even heard about officers who had broken the Blue Wall of Silence. At best, they were mistrusted for years to come. All this means that officers do not come forward easily. They fear retaliation. It also perpetuates a culture that makes women on the force who are exposed to sexual harassment and misconduct by fellow officers vulnerable.
Back to the initial story I shared about the extreme vulnerability of women experiencing homelessness. That woman waiting to access the cold weather shelter also shared with me that life is easier when she is with a man. In other words, if she has a partner, he functions as a protector and other men leave her alone.
What if the young woman in the encampment considered the police officer as her protector? Yes, in her view, it may have seemed like a consensual sexual relationship. But life certainly would have become easier for her with a law enforcement officer in her life who also bought her meals and drove her places she needed to go.
The CRB’s proposed Zero-Tolerance Sexual Misconduct Policy for the MNPD draws on best practices and guidelines developed by two organizations: the International Chiefs of Police (IACP) and End Violence Against Women International (EVAWI).
EVAWI defines sexual misconduct in law enforcement as, “including sexual harassment, sexual assault, sexual battery, and any inappropriate or unwanted sexual behavior committed against a member of the community or fellow employee by agency personnel. It also includes any sexual act committed by agency personnel while on duty, or while acting under the color of law, or any sexual act committed while off-duty but involving agency or government equipment, or within agency/government property or vehicles, involving the use of a service weapon, or information obtained through law enforcement activity or databases, or secured through threat of taking or denying official action. Consent is not an affirmative defense when engaging in sexual misconduct. The term ‘agency personnel’ is an inclusive term including all law enforcement agency employees, sworn and non-sworn.”
By that definition, an officer on duty having sexual interactions with an unhoused person in his car would definitely be considered sexual misconduct.
In 2020, former Mayor John Cooper established a Policing Policy Commission, which included a recommendation to create a zero tolerance policy around sexual assault and sexual harassment. But so far, no such policy has been created yet. I also want to point out that the CRB calls for a sexual misconduct policy, which would be more expansive but still cover sexual assault and sexual harassment.
The Metro Council’s Women’s Caucus has clearly heard the CRB’s concerns, and the full Metro Council recently passed a resolution that requests the MNPD to “implement a zero-tolerance policy for sexual misconduct in line with the policy recommendations set forth by the Nashville Community Review Board in their August 26, 2024, policy advisory report.”
This resolution passed despite recommendations for deferral from the Council committees that vetted it. Thus, Nashville’s elected officials on the Metro Council sent a strong signal to MNPD leaders that they want to see change.
When I reached out to the MNPD’s communications team, I received the following response, “Any allegation of sexual harassment or discrimination is taken very seriously, investigated, and, if founded, the offending employee is sanctioned, up to and including dismissal, based on the facts determined by the investigation.
“This police department does have a zero-tolerance policy. Quoting from the Manual at the introduction to the chapter on harassment and discrimination, in part: It is the policy of the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department that all employees have the right to work in an environment free of all forms of harassment and discrimination. The Metropolitan Nashville Police Department will not tolerate, condone, or allow harassment or discrimination by employees or of employees. The Metropolitan Nashville Police Department considers the harassment and discrimination as a form of serious employee misconduct. Therefore, this department shall take direct and immediate action to prevent such behavior, and to remedy all reported instances of harassment and discrimination. A violation of this order can lead to discipline, up to and including termination. Repeated violations, even if “minor”, will result in greater levels of discipline as appropriate. MNPD employees are also bound by Executive Order 23 AND by Civil Service Policy 3.1-I(3).”
However, a recent article by Steven Hale published in the Nashville Banner on Sept. 27, 2024, strongly indicates that consequences for officers engaged in sexual misconduct may be minimal. Meanwhile, it seems that Mayor Freddie O’Connell has tasked Metro Human Resources to review the CRB policy. In the statement the MNPD sent me, they also mentioned that they are in ongoing discussions with the CRB regarding the policy recommendations.
So where did I land in all of this? While I am sympathetic to the complexity of police officers’ daily work, I also strongly feel there needs to be a zero tolerance statement that shows clearly where MNPD leadership stands. Whether it is to protect fellow officers from sexual harassment or vulnerable citizens, it should be unacceptable for officers to cover up misconduct among their ranks.
In short, I do not understand why MNPD leadership has not leaned in more proactively years ago to adopt an additional policy that will protect them, their officers, and the community.
It seems to me that the Blue Wall of Silence in Nashville continues to hold strong.