Hello, Betrayal listeners! Episode 6 dropped yesterday (plus Episode 7, early and ad-free, exclusively on iHeartTrueCrime+). If you haven’t already heard it, you can listen on Apple Podcasts, the iHeartApp, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Or listen right here, on Beyond Betrayal.
In Episode 6: CIRCLING THE DRAIN, we delve into the culture of the Colorado Springs Police Department — and explore how that culture might have enabled Joel Kern's behavior. In this week’s Behind Betrayal conversation, I sit down with producer Carrie Hartman to talk about how a culture of fear can mask ugly truths, the standards and integrity we should demand of law enforcement, and how the systems in place help police officers avoid accountability. We also talk about our groundbreaking discovery of a whistleblower network in Colorado — and the a difference it makes when people do speak up. You can find the transcript below.
If you have a story you’d like to share with us, reach out at betrayalpod@gmail.com. And if you’re a paid Substack subscriber, join us in the chat!
Andrea Gunning: Alright, so we're sitting here today to talk about Episode Six, which came out yesterday.
Carrie Hartman: Yeah.
Andrea Gunning: And the first few episodes, so the first few episodes we were living with the Kerns, Episode Three and Four, were really living in what's happening with Joel professionally.
Carrie Hartman: Yep.
Andrea Gunning: Five are all the decisions that the family's trying to make in light of everything.
Carrie Hartman: Mm-hmm.
Andrea Gunning: And then in Six, we really explore law enforcement, we kind of take a little bit of a turn.
Carrie Hartman: Yep.
Andrea Gunning: Just kind of tell me from your point of view why you felt it was important for us to do an episode to really unpack law enforcement, and what's going on in terms of resign-in-advance and retire-in-advance.
Carrie Hartman: It's important, one is, you know, we are calling out the behavior of a rogue police officer. But we don't wanna come out and say that this is all police officers, it's not. And that's not the point we're trying to make. The point we're trying to make is that this is a cohort, this is a group of people who have a lot of power. They carry a gun, they carry a badge, they can arrest you. There's, there's power there.
Andrea Gunning: Mm-hmm.
Carrie Hartman: And so we wanna understand why are there protections for them in terms of their employment. And there are reasons for that, that we explore. But are those reasons being abused? Are officers leaving in the middle of investigations so the public doesn't find out what's going on? Yes. That's what we learn in Episode Six, that that is happening. That does happen, and someone like Joel Kern can kind of slip out under the radar. And we thought that was an important point to bring to the audience.
Andrea Gunning: Yeah. When listening to a lot of the material leading up to episode six, I know I was left with thinking as we were producing this, and I imagine the audience is thinking, if this were any other person in, in a regular job.
Carrie Hartman: Mm-hmm.
Andrea Gunning: You do this on the job, you're fired, you're out. Like, there's no investigation. It's done. But there are job protections, and in our investigation and covering the story, we learned a lot about how Colorado tracks police officers in terms of misconduct, IA investigations, they make it public information. And, you know, there's been a lot of coverage about police officers resigning in advance or retiring in advance, of termination. And what does that mean, and what does that mean to the community? And we share some stories and examples of what that could mean.
If a officer decides, you know what, I'm going to resign, not have their misconduct on their record, and leave the opportunity to get rehired at a different department or a different city, and will that misconduct continue? And so that has direct impact. And we just talk about it, because I do think it's important for people to know, it was something that I wasn't really aware of.
Carrie Hartman: No, I don't think most people are.
Andrea Gunning: What surprised you the most when reporting this episode? Out of everything that we've covered?
Carrie Hartman: What surprised me the most is how many people knew Joel Kern was sleeping with employees who worked at CSPD, was having sex at in his office at work, how many people knew about it and why they never said anything. That's the other part of this episode that I think is really important. There is a cultural issue when it is going on literally right in front of their faces.
There's people who worked in the same substation as he did, and they knew. Why wouldn't you speak up? And there's really good reasons that people didn't speak up, and that's what we're gonna get into in this episode and the next one.
Andrea Gunning: Mm-hmm. I think one of the hardest parts working on this series was getting people within Colorado Springs Police Department to participate in the project. It, it's taken us a long, long time.
Carrie Hartman: But why, right? Why?
Andrea Gunning: Well, I mean, I would say that there are two, two groups, right?
Carrie Hartman: Right.
Andrea Gunning: And factions in the Colorado Springs Police Department: people who were really unhappy with how things were being managed.
Carrie Hartman: Mm-hmm.
Andrea Gunning: And felt like they were being passed up for opportunities and bad behavior was being overlooked. And then there's another group that are like, if you're playing by the rules, I use quotations, then, you know, and you're friends with certain people, things, um, like slide, you know? And so I think Karoline knew that and felt that and was really expressing that to us.
We were like, well, let's look and investigate this and talk to as many people as we can. And when we were out in Colorado Springs, we found postings from this whistleblower site. And I think we can both agree, seeing that online was one of the most shocking in this whole production, of just seeing on Facebook, online, people are talking about transgressions. Everybody knows each other's business. They're airing it out. And it's like, how is this happening within a police department? It's, would never happen anywhere else.
Carrie Hartman: Right. And how, and, you know, how come the city council or the mayor isn't stepping in and, and trying to get to the bottom of, of where all these complaints are coming from.
Andrea Gunning: Mm-hmm.
Carrie Hartman: You mentioned trying to talk to officers and former officers and staff there. The overarching reason people didn't wanna talk isn't because they didn't have something to say. It was fear.
Andrea Gunning: Mm.
Carrie Hartman: Fear of retaliation. Just really scared shitless that if they said something or the wrong thing, that there were people in the department that would harm or threaten them. I'm not saying that happened or would happen. This was what we heard from people who wanted to talk to us, but were just too scared.
Andrea Gunning: What was it like working with Karoline, particularly when it came to trying to get people on the inside to speak to their experience? I know for me it wasn't easy, like, 'cause she was let down a few times.
Carrie Hartman: I, I, devastated, because there were people really close to her and her kids. And she would say, reach out to this person, this person has a lot to share. Um, and we would do like, an initial interview. You know, like a casual phone conversation. And then when it came time to go on the record: crickets. They wanted nothing to do with it.
Andrea Gunning: Yeah, they got scared.
Carrie Hartman: And I think it was really upsetting for her because she thought she had a relationship.
Andrea Gunning: Would you say like, trying to get other police officers or people that were inside the department to participate the biggest obstacle, or was there another obstacle for you in this episode? In producing it.
Carrie Hartman: Yes. There, I'm gonna, I'm gonna say there was one person, uh, we did get a lot of former officers and, and I feel really good about that, who are contributing, and you'll hear it in these episodes. There was one former officer who was beloved by, you know, hundreds of people, but he did not play ball. He was a straight guy, straight meaning no nonsense, wasn't sucking up to anybody, a really good cop. And we had, I would say, four or five conversations with him and his family. And at the end of the day, concern about his family's safety really made the decision for him. He, he just couldn't cross that line.
Andrea Gunning: Yeah.
Carrie Hartman: And say his piece. And he had a lot to say. So that was, that was tough. That was tough.
Andrea Gunning: Was there someone that we finally got to speak with that you feel like cracked open the story?
Carrie Hartman: Yes, actually today!
Andrea Gunning: I do feel like, 'cause we are kind of already touched upon it, that's why I phrased it the way I did, because I do feel like talking to Claudia, who is the whistleblower that you hear from in Episode Six, really did, you know, all credit to Kaitlin.
Carrie Hartman: Oh yeah. Our AP is unbelievable.
Andrea Gunning: Who was dogged.
Carrie Hartman: Mm-hmm.
Andrea Gunning: Because it was months after months trying to track down this whistleblower network and, trying to talk to her and, you know, once we got her to participate. Or it wasn't even got her, like, she's willing, like she's, she was like, I'm down, you know.
Carrie Hartman: She is putting herself out there.
Andrea Gunning: She's putting herself out there.
Carrie Hartman: She wants to be an example and say, look. No, nothing changes if everybody shuts down. And in fact, we were able to make contact with two former officers, officers who had long careers in good standing, who contribute to this episode and they're credible people. So we really get an in, start to get some insight into the culture of this department. And why is that important? It's important because we start to understand how Joel Kern could be doing this for years without real consequences or discipline.
Andrea Gunning: And it begs the question: if it's one person, how many people are taking advantage of it in this way?
Carrie Hartman: Well, I, I did hear a story. I don't think this is in the, in the cut. Um, where they had to send out a memo to the staff saying, you are not allowed to look at porn on your computer during your shift. And the woman who told me that story was scratching her head. She's like, why would anybody ever think that was okay? Of like, you have to send a, you actually have to send a memo out saying 'don't do that at work?' But they did.
Andrea Gunning: Yeah. I think this episode really gives the audience a decent understanding of, culturally, what's going on in Colorado Springs Police Department.
Carrie Hartman: Yeah. It's, it's, it's, it's something else to, when you hear the audio and then when you hear the tapes, and then you hear the stories from officers.
Andrea Gunning: What do we have to look forward to in the next episode?
Carrie Hartman: Um, well, we are gonna hear from a former spouse of an officer who has probably been behaving badly and committing acts of misconduct for years, and we are going to hear from the woman he was married to. And what was going on at home required the police. So we start to see that you can have one face at work. Again, you're the go-to guy. You're the good time Charlie, everybody loves you. But at home, he was horribly abusive. And so we see, we see that, and I think Episode Seven's gonna be really eye-opening for people. It's not just one person.
Take good care,
Andrea
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