Did Lincoln PD Retire a Hero or Hush Up a Sexual Assault?

Former Lincoln Police Department officer Erin Spilker has become the third woman employed by LPD to allege pervasive sexual harassment and misogyny in the Department. Her 34-page lawsuit details a range of episodes in which women were harassed, assaulted, or subjected to heightened scrutiny by supervisors. Spilker’s most troubling allegation concerns how the Department handled her complaint that another officer sexually assaulted her.

Spilker describes an accumulation of incidents over the years that by 2015, when she says a fellow officer sexually assaulted her at a Halloween party, led her to believe she should not report the crime because she would face retaliation. In her lawsuit, Spilker refers to the other officer as “Officer D.”

In January of 2020, after former LPD officer Sarah Williams had resigned and filed an Equal Employment Opportunity complaint alleging sex discrimination, Officer Angela Sands–who has also recently been fired from and has alleged discrimination by LPD–advised former Chief Jeffrey Bliemeister that the Department needed to get a hold on the situation and vigorously investigate sexual malfeasance by officers. According to Spilker’s lawsuit, Sands told Bliemeister that Spilker had been sexually assaulted by Officer D at a Halloween Party and that Officer D and another officer, “Officer J,” needed to be fully investigated. She told Bliemeister that she and Spilker should both be questioned about these incidents.

However, time ticked by and nobody included Spilker in any investigation of Officer D. Over the course of 2020, even after Sands informed the Department that Officer D had allegedly sexually assaulted Spilker, Spilker was repeatedly required to interact with him, according to her complaint. Only in November of 2020–ten months after Sands informed Bliemeister of the assault, and on the eve of a long-anticipated lawsuit from Sarah Williams–did Bliemeister direct Sands to file an Equal Employment Opportunity complaint with the city about Officer D, including the allegation that he sexually assaulted Spilker.

Read more: https://seeingrednebraska.com/the-patriarchy/did-lpd-retire-a-hero-or-hush-up-a-sexual-assault/