CITIZEN/Lt. Cheri Maples

Isthmus' one-sided coverage

After careful deliberation by District Attorney Diane Nicks and her staff, a motion was made last week to dismiss the obstructing-an-officer charge against "Patty," a Madison woman who claimed she was raped at knife-point and then confessed to a detective that she made the whole thing up.

Although nobody from the Madison Police Department felt free to publicly comment on a pending case, I can now step forward. I feel compelled to comment on Isthmus' coverage. I fear that Bill Lueders' one-sided reporting will hurt the important partnership between the community and the police--a relationship that is necessary to prevent future sexual assaults.

Police derive their authority from the community they serve. Our capacity to carry out our job, as well as our very safety, depends on that relationship. Lueders' one-sided reporting fosters a we/they attitude that not only makes our jobs more dangerous but prevents us from working effectively with the community.

I am painfully aware of the potential for abuse that exists for every person who is a sworn peace officer. I have no quarrel with the press exposing police corruption and inadequacies. The police are not infallible and holding us accountable is extremely important in a democratic society.

Unfortunately, Bill Lueders not only missed the real story but demonstrated that reporters, like police officers, have tremendous power that can be abused. Like police officers, reporters have the ability to bully people. In a series of articles, he did it by portraying the facts in a manner that prevented readers from understanding the complexities of the case and coming to their own conclusions.

Although D.A. Nicks was repeatedly attacked in Isthmus, my admiration for her grew throughout the case. From the beginning, she grasped the intricacies and recognized that the truth is more gray than black-and-white. While she recognized that Det. Tom Woodmansee's judgments were reasonable and that he did absolutely nothing wrong in investigating the case, she also concluded that it did not make sense to prosecute Patty.

I support her conclusion and, at the same time, firmly believe Tom Woodmansee did what he believed to be the right thing. It was impossible not to come to the conclusion that there were problems with this woman's story.

The physical evidence clearly exonerated the suspect that she named as her attacker. Whether an assault occurred cannot be determined beyond a reasonable doubt. The truth remains obfuscated; only Patty knows for sure what took place. It is clear, however, that some parts of Patty's story were not true, and any reasonably trained detective would have come to the exact same conclusions that Tom Woodmansee did.

The police function is extremely ambiguous and complex. The stress of dealing daily with the effects of poverty, racism and dysfunctional families is extremely challenging. For sensitive crimes detectives, who investigate sexual assaults as well as child abuse and neglect cases, the emotional trauma is particularly acute.

They get involved in the intimate details of the most horrible and intimate kinds of violence. Adding to the complexity is the fact that some victims of sexual assault, like victims of other crimes, do lie. This fact is difficult to acknowledge given the trauma that victims experience and because nobody wants to impede the progress that advocates have made in making the legal system more responsive to victims.

However, false reports are a reality, and every time a sexual assault is falsely reported there are victims. Not just a falsely accused suspect but the entire community. People are needlessly frightened by an assault that did not take place, and scarce investigative resources are diverted from more productive ends.

As a police supervisor, I understand the line that a supervisor with any integrity must walk--that is, the line between being able to support her subordinates without committing herself to defending everything they do. I know it is extremely important to hold officers accountable for illegal and unethical actions, and just as important to support those whose behavior is proper.

That is precisely why the administration of this department must stand behind Det. Woodmansee and other officers who are accused of impropriety when they have done nothing wrong.

Tom Woodmansee is an officer with a clean record. He has been a tremendous advocate for victims of both sexual assault and domestic violence. He has given freely of his time to train, educate and raise the consciousness of other officers so they will be more sensitive to victims.

In addition, he has consistently displayed the characteristics of a good police officer--personal integrity, honesty, compassion, flexibility, open-mindedness, patience and self-control. Woodmansee continues to be an incredible asset to this department and is exactly the kind of person we hope to recruit in the future.

He has been investigated for complaints tied directly or indirectly to Lueders' stories. After reviewing each complaint, the professional standards lieutenant was unable to determine what Woodmansee did wrong. In fact, he concluded that the detective was guilty only of a thorough and professional investigation.

These, I'm afraid, were unsubstantiated and unfounded complaints through which a reporter attempted to ruin the reputation of an excellent officer. The officer has stated that it would have been less traumatizing to be shot than to deal with the resulting damage to his reputation.

Isthmus has been a champion of open records and has continually challenged the department's unwillingness to disclose information about unfounded complaints. Isthmus seems to have missed the irony that it is exactly this kind of reporting that is the epitome of every officer's worst nightmare about the open records debate--the ability of the press to write about unsubstantiated complaints and destroy an officer's reputation.

All of us know how easily we could be caught in the same position as Woodmansee. Few people are pleased with being detained for any reason and even less thrilled with receiving a ticket or being arrested.

However, regardless of whether Lueders got the facts right or wrong, he missed the real story because of his failure to grasp the law with respect to the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. The story could have called attention to the erosion of Fourth and Fifth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and self-incrimination during the last decade.

Lueders' problem should have been with the current state of the law, not with the detective investigating the case. He denigrated the detective for not reading Patty her Miranda rights in a situation under which the law clearly does not require him to do so.

Lueders also objected to the use of a ruse in a situation when ruses are routinely used--not with victims in first interviews but after an investigation leads a detective to the conclusion that a victim or suspect is not telling the truth.

Ruses are a common and perfectly legal means of confronting individuals who investigators believe are not telling the truth. The use of ruses is taught in just about every police training school. In denying the motion to suppress Patty's confession, a judge ruled that the confession was voluntary and not the product of improper police pressure. Although Lueders persists in arguing that Woodmansee acted wrongly, the judge stated that the ruse was proper.

If Lueders has an issue with the current state of criminal procedure, his remedy is through the political process. While police officers do have tremendous discretion in enforcing the law, society should expect them to operate within the law. Although I personally disagree with the present state of constitutional law in many areas of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, I have taken an oath to enforce the law that exists--not the law as I believe it should exist.

Instead of pursuing the legal implications of Patty's case, Lueders attacked people for carrying out the law. He should have called attention to the problems he sees with criminal procedure and urged the Legislature and the judicial branch to remedy those problems. These are important issues, and a healthy debate would have served a useful function.

Admittedly, the Madison Police Department probably made a mistake by not effectively communicating with Isthmus, due to our mistrust of its past coverage. I can only hope that we can all learn from our mistakes and work together to end violence and injustice in the lives of all people. n

Citizen is a forum for Isthmus readers. Lt. Cheri Maples has been a Madison police officer for 14 years. Earlier, she was the director of the Wisconsin Coalition Against Domestic Violence.