Before we begin, please note this series includes talk of suicide and sexual violence. Please take care while listening. Badge, bunny, holster, sniffer, road hog. As I've reported the story, a couple of new terms were forced into my lexicon. I had to google them, but I sensed the be derogatory, and I was right in the most crude fashion. They're used to describe women who have sex with cops on duty. These were terms that were used by various people trying to
explain Sandy's connections to local cops. People who were trying to assure me that these relationships must have been consensual, that Sandy just wanted it. She was a self professed cop freak, after all the bells. They saw this coming back. When I told them what I found out about the ten cops ups, their initial reaction was, here comes the mud. They knew that some would judge and blame Sandy. It's a pretty incredible attempt at totally deflecting responsibility. Jill Filipovic
is a feminist author and lawyer. I asked her what she made of these terms, like if the telling is okay, this girl was just a badge bunny, a pistol sniffer. That really does remove the bigger picture, which is that in this particular case, it was a group of adult men who are in charge of this teenage girl. I have no hard evidence that Sandy didn't consent to these relationships with PG County Police, but even if she did consent,
it doesn't mean these relationships were appropriate. Consent can be coerced. Consent can be a product of fear or a desire to please or just to avoid a messy scene. Consent is an important concept, but it has limitations when it's used as the soul factor for determining whether or not sex is ethical. I think if we're just thinking of it through this frame of did she consent or not, then we missed the reality that the police officers in this situation, they're the adults in the room. They have
responsibility to cultivate young entrance into their field. What instead she's learning from these men on the force is that she's a sexual object that she's expected or perhaps wanted to have sex with them. Of course, it's possible that a teenage girl is going to want to have sex with ten different men in the same department, but that
strikes me as unlikely. What strikes me is more likely is that this is a teenage girl who is just sort of figuring out who she is as an adult, who is just figuring out what it means to have a job, what it means to enter a male dominated workforce. All of her understanding of that is going to be shaped by the expectations that are set by the men who are already doing that job. Before Sandy died, she wrote something that gets to the heart of how these
relationships made her feel. Quote but as always, they have their fun and the hell with you? Why me? Why do I get sucked over so bad? From my Heart Radio, I'm Melissa Jolson and this is what happened to Sandy Beale and I Heart original podcast, Chapter four, The Stink. My belief that a number of PG County police officers who are having inappropriate relationships with Sandy is largely based on Detective Schelski's recollection that he was inundated with phone
calls after her death. Were cops all but admitted to it? What did you make of her spending all this time and having sexual relationships with police officers? I knew it was, I didn't imagine the best. Years later that a steak is going to come back fro. When Detective Selski initially told me about the phone calls, it was an offhand remark that he didn't seem to attribute much meaning to.
That's how I interpreted his tone, anyway. But I've spoken to him a number of times since, and he told me that he too believes that Sandy was horribly used mistreated by his fellow cops. They were all right, often considerably older, and she was just a kid, you know what I mean. And uh, I feel though that they
should have never done what they did. You know. It was just it's a relief to hear Detective Selski acknowledged this outright, as I've spent much of the last year exploring the extent of this ethical behavior, and I want to recap what I've uncovered so far. Sandy started going on ride alongs in her senior year of high school at just eighteen years old. At the time of her death, she was in a relationship with one cop, a married
state trooper named Doug. Her body was found a mile away from his place of work in a pollard that was known to be frequented by cops. There was sperm in her body, her family recalled that she would socialize with police officers at night. Her address books were filled with the names and numbers of local cops, including some that I've been able to confirm participated in the Explorer
program at that time. But honestly, there's a limit to the knowledge I can gather about Sandy's relationships with local cops, and at this point, I feel like I've hit it. Unless I get some new information. That doesn't mean I'm going to stop probing the question of what all this means. I think we owe it to Sandy to contemplate the scenario in which the team was victimized by a group of police officers, because I think it's very possible that
that's what happened. Being deliberately and different to the suffering of women is historic and society, and it certainly reflects it in law enforcements. So that's what you saw. Mark Wynn is an expert in police violence. He's a retired police officer who now works to train other police officers how to better handle crimes against women. I've interviewed him in the past, and I trust his instincts, and if anybody wants to debate me on this, I'm more than
happy to do it. I mean, I'm not somebody just read this somewhere. I spent my entire adult life working in law enforcement, so I know my family well. Mark started policing in nineteen seventy seven, the same year Sandy died. He looks like what you might envision when you think of a cop. He's tall and broad shouldered and has a thick mustache. He's also one of the most courteous and patient individuals I've ever met. If you ever have to call the cops, you'd want someone like Mark to
show up. Well, all you have to do is look at the history of policing in our country. You know the country. It's been a job for men, managed by men, run by men, and that's true for the most part in the entire criminal justice system. I think when you exclude women from any you know, function, social or government, uh, and put a bunch of men together in the room, Uh, you're gonna have problems. I told him what I had learned so far about Sandy, my life as a cop freak, Doug,
the phone calls, the ten cops, all of it. I mean, there there's a potential there for someone to take advantage of that relationship, no question about it. First of all, you're not talking about an emotionally mature person, Um, you're talking about somebody's you know, very easily. The influence with an offender is the perfect setting. You have authority, you're telling these folks what to do. So can you imagine what this what this young woman must have been thinking
right along this police car. You know, teenager with a with an adult with a gun and a badge, with full authority, So it must have been pretty intimidating. Mark was pretty blunt and forthcoming with his theory about Sandy's case, and he told me he'd seen things like it before. I suspect and from what I've seen in other situations, they were passing around from one alstar to the next. You know, she young, impressionable woman and they knew it.
That's what made her vulnerable. And nobody with any moral fiber obviously stepped in and said, what is going on here? It happened at my academy, Um. You know, instructors extorting young women for a scores on their tests, singling out
women who they wanted to secually abuse. Well, and this is the thing about predation, um, it works better for the predator if your victim is vulnerable, and what more vulnerable place than, you know, a desperate young person trying to start a Korean law enforcement For Mark, the sheer number of officers involved with Sandy made them suspicious. It's highly likely that they weren't as close knit as police departments are, weren't talking about all this and sharing information.
It almost sounded like she was being trafficked from one officer to the next. Tractors obviously make money off of it, but they weren't making money. If this is the case, they were passion around for sexual gratification. Mark's theory is that these police officers they use their power and authority for sexually motivated reasons. There's actually a term for that police sexual misconduct, and for victims who experience it, it can be an extremely isolating kind of abuse. Well, this
is the thing with any kind of misconduct. I mean the fact that you have a uniform and you represent authority, and you know this is somebody using that authority for another reason. This is somebody you when they tell you to to do something, you obey it, and most people do they follow them all there. You know, they don't want
to get in trouble with the police. I want to take you down a short tangent now, because I don't think you can understand Sandy's story without knowing more about the culture that allows this kind of abuse to flourish. And it does flourish because despite very few victims wanting to come forward. Sexual misconduct is the second most frequently reported form of police misconduct, according to research by the
Cato Institute. Police sexual misconduct is a dry term, but it encompasses a wide range of troubling behavior, everything from stopping a car without cause to flirt with the driver to a sexual shakedown, which is when an officer extorts sexual favors in exchange for not ticketing or arresting the person. And a lot of police sexual misconduct isn't actually criminal.
It is, however, totally unethical. Take, for instance, an officer who responds to a domestic violence call and uses it as an opportunity to have sex with a distraught victim. In a number of states, it's even legal to have sex with someone in your custody. To learn more, I tracked down one of the few experts that actually studies this stuff. My name is Timothy Maher and I am a professor in the Criminology and Criminal Justice Department at
the University of Missouri St. Louis. Timothy also used to be a cop. He spent thirteen years as a police officer in La dou Missouri. I was watching a news magazine television show back in the early two thousands, and they did a story on a case in New York State where a police officer was pulling women over under the pretense of a d w I stop. He told the young woman that he was going to cut her a break, but he still had to punish her in
some way. So he said, as your punishment, I'm going to make you walk home, and you also have to take all your clothes off. So she was afraid. It was dark and all alone, it was kind of a remote area, and so she reluctantly agreed, and he graciously let her keep her shoes on because she said it hurt to walk into her bare feet. Timothy quickly discovered that there was very little research on police sexual misconduct. We don't even have answers to basic questions like how
prevalent it is. We have no way of knowing how much of this behavior goes on. Many people are reluctant to report on the police when these incidents occur. They might report to someone else sexually assaulted them, but when a police officer sexually assaults them, they often think twice about it, and many of them frankly don't report it. And when victims do report, it's generally their word against a sworn police officer. The cover of darkness plays a role.
It's it seems funny, but a lot of this behavior goes on after hours when there's very few other people around to witness it, and everybody else goes to bed, but there's a few people out there still roaming around, and then there's the police, because the police work at night. You know, you can stop a car, if you want to stop a car, you can get out and walk around and confront people and ask them to come over and even voluntarily talk to me or involuntarily, but there's
no one there to stop you. Really, the truth is police typically in our society and our culture are are you know, have the authority and power and this opportunity to engage. I learned something interesting about the role of group dynamics. Bad behavior can be concentrated to a single shift or a particular group of officers. The day shift could be fine, for example, but certain night shifts may
tolerate deviant behavior. One study looking at the Chicago p D found that officers who worked with colleagues who used excessive force were more likely to engage in the same kind of conduct. The behavior was contagious, as the studies senior author wrote, quote, officers peers may serve as social conduits through which misconduct is learned and transmitted, but there is that culture of not reporting on fellow officers generally in law enforcement, not just for sexual misconduct, but for
lots of behaviors. Timothy has interviewed numerous police officers about their perceptions of police sexual misconduct. In one two thousand and three study, he found that while police officers believed that sexual misconduct was common quote, criminal justice officials have done little to help control the problem, suggesting that this problem may in part be fostered by the police subculture.
The officers I spoke with said they drew the line though at very serious criminal behavior, inappropriate comments the sex on duty, minor violations of rules and regulations, where you know what, they don't report on each other it's the blue wall of silence. It's that you just don't deal with that. Most of them would say, I'm not their supervisor. I don't have to deal with them. That's the boss's
job now. I interviewed sergeants and lieutenants to what I learned was that, you know, it wasn't unique just to the patrol officers. Are the non ranking officers that you know, ranking and supervising officers were engaging in this behavior as well. I want to take you back to fo P Lodge number eighty nine, the cop club in Prince George's County, the place where Sandy's family said she would get drinks with police after hours, except instead of ninety seven, it's
exactly forty years later. It's two am, and a group of cops are grabbing drinks. Some of them are still in uniform, including a young woman and who I'll call Marie. She's just a few years out of the academy and she's hanging out with her coworkers and her lieutenant, who all called David. The lounge closes and the group migrates outside to the parking lot. After a while, Marie really needs to pee, so she walks into the woods for some privacy. On her way back, in the darkness, she's
pulled to the ground. Her lieutenant David has grabbed her. He thrust his hands down her trousers, sexually assaulting her. Marie doesn't officially report the incident, fearing retribution. Even as a new cop, she understands the consequences of squealing on a fellow officer, But news of what happened gets around the department, and two years later she's called into internal affairs and asked about the incident. She speaks her truth.
After David is charged with sexual assault, Marie's working environment becomes one of intimidation and fear. She's shunned by her colleagues and blamed for the prosecution of her abuser, even receiving a threat via text. In a brazen show of solidarity with her lieutenant, high ranking police officers packed the courtroom to support him at trial. Ultimately, he's found guilty and sentenced to seven years in prison. Marie is reassigned
to the evidence department, in effect a desk job. She later leaves PG County Police due to what she describes as a hostile working environment. Marie might have thought she was one of the boys, but she wasn't part of the brotherhood. Marie, she didn't just lose her job. Trauma has a cost. It costs time, money, energy, and it costs Marie her peace of mind. After the assault, she
reported having nightmares, crying spells, heightened anxiety. This attack and the culture that tolerated it had ousted her from a community she worked so hard to join, and then she was blamed for her own downfall. All of this made me think of Sandy. If Sandy was a victim of some kind of police sexual abuse, I think it's fair to assume it would have weighed heavily on her mental health too. One more secret the teen had to carry. Police sexual misconduct has been a problem in our profession
for decades. That's Tom Tremblay. He's a former police chief with a thirty year career in law enforcement. These days, he works to advise police departments on how to respond to domestic violence and sexual misconduct, including within its own ranks. You can't talk about policing without a really courageous conversation about male dominated culture, about hyper masculinity, and this is
something that our profession hasn't done. And I when I taught when I address hyper masculinity and male privilege and trainings around the country, I'm oftentimes met, you know, in this male dominated culture with what do you mean male privilege? What do you mean hyper masculinity? In Tom helped to author a model policy for how police departments should handle
sexual misconduct within the ranks. It prohibits using a law enforcement position, badge or identification card to solicit initiate a coerced sexual contact with anyone, and it explicitly banns sexual
contact with anyone in a police explorer program. You might think that police departments would already have specific policies on this issue, but Tom told me that many don't, and so one of the major challenges that I see when I talk to police leaders around the country is the first thought process is, we don't need a policy to tell officers they can't sexually harass or sexually assault colleagues or citizens. We just don't need that. It's not necessary.
These police chiefs might not feel like it's necessary to explain to their officers that they shouldn't break the law. But a lot of police sexual misconduct isn't illegal, and without it being clearly defined, it lives in this murky space of being wrong but silently tolerated. One of the policy components that I recommend that law enforcement consider is that consent shall not be an affirmative defense for any behavior that's addressed by prohibited conduct of sexual harassment or
sexual misconduct. Meaning a cop can't just justify breaking the rules by saying that the victim consented simply because the police the badge and the gun, and the authority to you know, stop and detain someone, search someone, arrest someone, take their freedom away. All of those things are interconnected. Of course, a policy on police sexual misconduct is only as good as its enforcement, but in a culture where secrecy rains, mandating that such behavior must be reported can
help to break apart the blue wall of silence. If someone sees something or suspects something, they're obligated to come forward, not to turn away. The PG County Police Department does not have a police sexual misconduct policy, though when I asked a spokesperson about this, they sent me a few pages on discrimination and sexual harassment. That policy only protects employees from abuse by other employees and says nothing about
the general public. However, Maryland did pass a law in that prohibits cops from having sex with the people they interact with in the course of their duties, victims, witnesses, and suspects. When Sandy started training to be a cop, only two percent of law enforcement officers in the US were women. That number grew to around by the end of the nineties, and then it just stagnated. It has remained virtually the same for over two decades. Compare that
to New Zealand, where I was born. They're about of cops or women, and they have a goal of recruiting women in order to better reflect the diverse communities that they police. Like Mark Wind said, the consequences of leaving women out of the room are severe. Not only can it breed hyper masculinity, but it doesn't reflect the true makeup of society. And there's evidence that women police differently
than men do. They're generally less authoritarian and less likely to employ both excessive and deadly force, and they may be uniquely positioned to help female victims of crime. Studies show that domestic violence victims, for example, are more likely to report to female cops, who tend to show more patients and concern than their male counterparts. But if you're a female victim in the US, it's statistically likely that a male police officer will respond to your call for help.
He likely will have been trained by a man, his boss is probably a man, and he will have spent his entire career working in an environment where women's voices are rarely heard. I keep thinking about Murray, the female cop who was sexually assaulted at the FOP lodge. She's not out in the world working as a police officer right now. Like Sandy, she didn't get to fulfill her potential. How many other women have similar stories. Here's Kim and
Stephen talking about Sandy's dream. I think she would have been a trailblazer. She had a strong sense of justice. She was um, someone that knew the streets well and understood urban life, and she would have just been really great. She had a heart for people, heart for women, heart humankind in general. And so we lost somebody that probably could have been a really good police officer looking back now, and she probably would have made a good cop, you know,
I mean, she could have handled being a cop. You know what I'm saying that, You know, if that kind of gives you an insight, she had a bet at an advocate, she would have been a really strong personality. I would love to have been able to spend more time. I have to. I have to really think about that, because I feeling tears as I think about it. Because we do, we lose out our dreams and our desires got thwarted. They got it, got dashed, taken away from us.
The way Sandy was treated by PG County cops, who, according to Detective Shachelski, expressed no remorse after her death, it was like she was less than in their eyes, disposable. It made me wonder how their attitudes towards women might have carried over into their work, influencing the way they interacted with female victims. It's worth noting that domestic violence calls are the largest categories of calls the police officers
respond to. Here's Jill. I think that does call into question how they behave in other aspects of their work, right, how they investigate crimes against women, how they treat acts
of sexual violence. I just don't see a universe in which you can have those really misogynists, really toxic group norms, and still, for example, investigate a rape case in a completely full and fair way, or investigate a suicide of a young woman in a completely full and fair way, A woman who may have been landered as a quote badge bunny, one who may have been at the center
of a stink. I took you down this road, this tangent on police sexual misconduct to help explain why I think these relationships Sandy had with local police, and I hesitated to call them relationships, were unethical and wrong. PG County knew about these relationships while they investigated her death, and they didn't say anything to her family. There was
no acknowledgement of wrongdoing. But learning all of this, it doesn't exactly illuminate what happened in the Pollard that night and whether it was Sandy who used the gun that ended her life. So in our next episode, I want to return to the physical evidence, reviewing it with top experts in the field. And right when I was assembling this episode, I got an email from PG County. After months of asking, they finally sent me Sandy Bill's file.
To my surprise, it was pages long, and it revealed something new that upended my assumptions about how and when Sandy became so close to PG County police. Because As it turns out, she had reached out to them for help. Sandy had a stalker. That's on our next episode. How many times in your career if you remember, have you seen a teenage girl shoot herself? Canceled? Ever in the at No. If you're a victim of police sexual violence,
I'd love to speak with you. Please send me an email at what Happened to Sandy Beale at gmail dot com. What Happened to Sandy Beale is hosted by me Melissa Jolson. It written and produced by me and Katrina Norvell. The podcast is edited by Abusa far Sound, designed by Aaron Kauffman. Jason English is our executive producer. Research and production assistants by Marissa Brown. To find out more about my investigation,
follow me on Twitter at quasimato. That's qu a s I am a d O. Thanks so much for listening.