Hello, Betrayal listeners! Episode 7 dropped yesterday (along with Episode 8, early and ad-free, exclusively on iHeartTrueCrime+). If you haven’t already tuned in, you can listen on Apple Podcasts, the iHeartApp, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Or listen right here, on Beyond Betrayal.
In Episode 7: THE GOLDEN FEW, we dig even deeper into the culture at CSPD — and find that Joel is far from the only officer behaving badly. In this week’s Behind Betrayal conversation, I sit down with our associate producer Kaitlin Goldin to discuss why the truth is essential to law enforcement, the importance of whistleblowers, and how we approached reporting on the police without falling into black-and-white thinking. You can find the transcript below.
If you have a story you’d like to share with us, email us at betrayalpod@gmail.com. And if you’re a paid Substack subscriber, join us in the chat!
Andrea Gunning: I am joined today by our fabulous associate producer, Kaitlin Goldin. Thanks for being willing to chat with us about 407 today.
Kaitlin Goldin: Yeah, for sure. I'm excited.
Andrea Gunning: Tell me a little bit, from your point of view, what is the purpose of this episode? What's the theme of 407?
Kaitlin Goldin: Well, we had gotten a sense over the course of producing this season that the issues at CSPD were not isolated to the case of Joel Kern. We really were getting this feeling that this was a bigger issue with department culture. And so in 407, we investigated that, and along the way we found out about the case of Glenn Thomas, which we felt was very representative of a lot of the problems at CSPD, which include, um, the leadership protecting officers that are their friends.
Andrea Gunning: Right, so tell me a little bit more about what you perceive the culture to be at CSPD.
Kaitlin Goldin: Well, to me it is a culture in which, if you're friends with the right people, you are protected. Um, and it's a very insular culture in which all of these cops are, you know, working together day in, day out. And they're also going to each other's weddings, going to each other's barbecues. Um, and that makes it so that they really wanna protect each other no matter what.
Andrea Gunning: Yeah. So in this episode, we hear from a few different people. We hear from a woman named Barb that had her own unique experiences with Joel, actually trying to protect Joel, and then realize, oh wait, there's this other side of a culture at CSPD she wasn't really privy to. And the glass starts to shatter for her a little bit.
Kaitlin Goldin: Mm-hmm.
Andrea Gunning: And then we hear from an individual named John McFarland, who we actually were able to get ahold of through Claudia Aldrich. And, you know, for people who've listened to the last few episodes, know that Claudia runs the Whistleblower Network. And we had started to see postings of the Whistleblower page while we were out in Colorado Springs, and we were trying to get a sense of like, where is this coming from? Who's running it? And we tasked you with getting to the bottom of it. And I have to give you a ton of credit, Kaitlin, like you were a dog on a bone to get in touch with Claudia. So tell me from your point of view what that was like, getting in touch with Claudia?
Kaitlin Goldin: Yeah, and, and I, just to give people kind of, if they haven't checked out the site, a little bit more context on exactly what that looks like. They're these anonymous posts about misconduct going on at the CSPD, so about affairs amongst leadership, um, about people much like Joel, who are doing nefarious things on duty. And so I had started trying to figure out by any means necessary who this person was.
Andrea Gunning: Right.
Kaitlin Goldin: Now she's become a really integral, um, source on the show, which is super exciting.
Andrea Gunning: Yeah. You know, Carrie and I talked a lot about this in our last Substack post for 406, that there's kind of like two factions: people that were frustrated, that were feeling like the effects, that morale was really low, because they felt like if you weren't friends with certain people, if you didn't have information, or you didn't know how to play the game, there was only so far you could go. And so people were frustrated.
Or if there were things that needed to be changed, like John McFarland in Episode Seven talks about if you weren't in with leadership, you weren't taken seriously, your opinions weren't taken seriously, your ideas weren't taken seriously. And so that was just really frustrating, scary, upsetting, and morale was really low. And then there's this other faction of CSPD that it's like, if you're part, if you're part of the club, if you're in with the brass, if you're in with how things go politically, you can win favor, you can advance. Things are a little bit easier for you, you can be cut slack. So there's two things happening, and it was really hard for the people who were in that first faction to agree to sit down and talk. 'Cause there is this need to protect.
Kaitlin Goldin: Mm-hmm.
Andrea Gunning: The department, like even with people who voice their frustrations, there is this inherent need to protect people that they know are good cops that are currently working there, and that there's plenty of people there with good intentions. And then there are people that are just really afraid to speak up because of retaliation. And so without Claudia, like, it was really hard to give voice to the people that we knew existed within the department and the people that have left because of it.
Kaitlin Goldin: Yeah. You're talking about these two camps within CSPD about the ways that they're viewing the department. I think as an outsider to the police, I've always perceived there being these two camps in society at large: people who are pro-police and wanna back them no matter what, and people who are really anti-police. And I think that much of the media representations around policing today reflect that same dichotomy.
And so I think when we first approached Claudia and we approached a lot of other sources that she was able to connect us with for officers from CSPD, her biggest fear was that we were going to fall in one of those camps, and she said to us: I really love what you are doing to critique this department, but I need to make sure that you are going to tell the full story here, and the full story is that there are good cops in this department who are fighting for what's right. And I think all of us on the Betrayal team found that really powerful and I think, you know, for me personally, that expanded my view of what policing is today.
Andrea Gunning: Right, because the intentions of getting into this line of work, you wanna help the community, you wanna do right by your community, it's, it's born from that wanting to help. Why do you feel like the examples that the audience heard in 407, we heard from Barb, we hear from John McFarland, we hear from Sarah and the story of Glenn Thomas. Why do we feel like those three people are good examples of the culture at CSPD?
Kaitlin Goldin: I think the story of Glenn Thomas in particular is a case in which red flags have been being raised for years, both by John and by his ex-wife, Sarah. And it's a case of, if you're friends with the right people, you will be protected. So I think for those reasons, it felt like the perfect example for what we're talking about.
Andrea Gunning: Right. I don't think a lot of people, taxpayers, regular citizens, think about the kind of person you want returning your 9-1-1 call, coming to your scene, aiding you in a crisis. You don't think about the character of that person, you just assume the character of that person. And also, I don't think as citizens, we really understand the necessity of police officers telling the truth. Like it's not a discussion I really had before we worked on this season, it wasn't really a thought in my mind.
Why is this so important? Why is the truth so important? We obviously know why truth and trust are important in marriage, but it's a conversation that I haven't really had before or really seen before. You know, you hear about extreme misconduct, but on the basic level of telling the truth, it is fundamental to the way that our law enforcement works, the justice system works. It's like the basis of our civil liberties, really.
Kaitlin Goldin: Yeah, absolutely. I think one thing that I have learned through reporting this story is just how significant truthfulness is in police departments, or how important these departments purport truthfulness to be. I had no idea that untruthfulness could really automatically get you fired as a police officer, right up there with intense, egregious cases of brutality.
Andrea Gunning: Excessive force. Yeah.
Kaitlin Goldin: Um, excessive- yes, exactly.
Andrea Gunning: Yeah. The Glenn Thomas story is concerning because you have two Colorado Springs police officers. She was in the department for a long time, she understood how things worked, and she didn't even have faith that going to them would be helpful to her.
Kaitlin Goldin: Yeah.
Andrea Gunning: You know, even regular civilians who have to report cases of domestic violence struggle and weigh out that option of going to police is actually gonna make things more dangerous for me. And someone with the knowledge of like, knowing that I'm not so sure anything's gonna happen to protect me, it's not worth it, is a core concern. Things with Glenn Thomas are unfolding right now, by the way. Like he was supposed to go, his trial was supposed to be set for this week, it ended up getting delayed.
Kaitlin Goldin: Yeah.
Andrea Gunning: We were getting news about Glenn Thomas's case while we were working on this season. And I think you were, like the, you spearheaded this pursuit to talk to his ex-wife, Sarah. What made you wanna track her down?
Kaitlin Goldin: It felt really important to talk to someone who had both personal and professional stakes in the misconduct and favoritism that was going on at CSPD. The fact that Sarah was both an officer and a wife who was suffering because of the domestic violence of her husband, felt like a story that we really needed to tell.
Andrea Gunning: Mm-hmm. And how can someone be violent in their own home, but protect other people from violence during their day job.
Kaitlin Goldin: Yeah.
Andrea Gunning: How do those two things sit with you?
Kaitlin Goldin: Yeah, I mean, I think a, a big part of this season has been about the hypocrisy of the Colorado Springs Police Department. It is terrifying that these officers are asked to take an oath to protect and serve, and yet when it is found in a court of law that they are perpetuating domestic violence, that they are still allowed to continue doing the exact same job as they were doing before. As a citizen, that matters to me and that undermines my ability to trust the police.
Andrea Gunning: Yeah. Was there a moment in this episode that really struck you or that you had to sit with?
Kaitlin Goldin: It's more of an idea, like, I am really interested in the idea of the funny guy and the fact that people who have charisma and know how to tell jokes are able to get away with so much. And I think Glenn is a great example of that. You know, he's on the radio telling crude jokes, and we heard from other officers that though it made them uncomfortable, those weren't things that they were going to bring to Internal Affairs.
And I think those are often the kinds of people and often the kinds of men that we see going on to perpetuate other kinds of violence because they've learned that it's okay to start with these little things because, oh, it's just a joke, and then their behavior is okay to escalate later on.
Andrea Gunning: I think Barb described him and people, like and his cronies, as chuckleheads.
Kaitlin Goldin: Yeah.
Andrea Gunning: And it's like, when you like, kind of reduce, that person's like, ugh, he can't do anything, like he's not, he's just a chucklehead, he's a big goofball. And you don't really think past that. Like you're chalking everything up to, oh, it's not so serious when you're dealing with a line of work that's supposed to protect humanity. It's like, actually no, we need standards here.
Kaitlin Goldin: And it's, if you're not, if you're not laughing, it's, oh, you just didn't get the joke. Not that, oh, there's a reason that you should be uncomfortable.
Andrea Gunning: Yeah. If you're not, if you're not laughing, you're not in with us.
Kaitlin Goldin: Yeah, exactly.
Andrea Gunning: Yeah. You know, as simple of a story from Barb in the beginning of the episode, where she hears a rumor about Joel and is actually, really respects Joel, respects him as a police officer, respects him as a family man, has seen him interact with Karoline and the kids, and then saying, I'm hearing this rumor. I really don't like what it's doing for him. Like, we need to cut it off. And then instead, she's, like, kind of socially punished for it by Joel because she was trying to do the right thing. The call was more concerned about Joel getting his house in order than squashing a rumor. Because the reality is that it wasn't really a rumor, you know?
Kaitlin Goldin: Yeah, totally. And it all goes back for me to this thing that Claudia has said over and over and over again, that good cops in the department, who are just trying to do the right thing, like Barb trying to shut down potentially really harmful gossip, end up being the ones who are punished and that kind of culture drives out good officers.
Andrea Gunning: Right. This episode kind of wraps up our exploration into the culture at CSPD and the inner workings of CSPD. Looking forward to 408, what are you excited for the audience to hear in that episode?
Kaitlin Goldin: I think 408 will really bring people into the journey that Karoline has been on for the last few years of trying to heal, trying to rebuild her trust in her community, rebuild her trust in the people around her. Um, and yeah, I, I think it is a side of her that we haven't fully seen yet in the series.
Take good care,
Andrea
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