Hey guys.

Before we get into the episode, a quick note.

We're looking for news stories of betrayal for our weekly Betrayal series, which returns in August.

If you've experienced betrayal and feel ready to share your story, now is a great time to reach out.

Email us at Betrayal Pod at gmail dot com.

That's Betrayal Pod at gmail dot com.

He would come in before he worked out and said hi, but the only reason he was there was so that everyone could say, well, he was there working out, but he was there for the sole purpose to take a shower after his lunchtime activities.

I'm Andrea Gunning and this is Betrayal, Season four, episode six, Circling the Drain.

In the last episode of Betrayal, you heard Caroline describe her final meeting with Joel in twenty twenty two.

They met to discuss issues surrounding their impending divorce.

The location was a coffee shop they had frequented when they were a couple.

After more than two months at an inpatient rehab, Joel looked like a different person.

Gone was the clean cut cop she had lived with for more than twenty years.

Caroline barely recognized him.

His cell phone panged relentlessly during their meeting with messages from dating apps.

Joel's behavior hadn't changed, he just didn't need to hide it anymore.

As far as Caroline was concerned, the relationship was beyond repair.

And as you heard in previous episodes, their son had already made up his mind too.

But Caroline wanted Nicole, their daughter, to make her own decision about a relationship with her.

Father if she wanted to try to have a relationship with him, and he was open to that, I wanted that for her.

At the time, Nicole was the only one in their family still grappling with weather to have a relationship with Joel.

When that first happened, I just couldn't believe the depth of the lies that he told us or integrate all of his actions just as one person and as him.

Nicole was entering her senior year of high school and it was just her and Caroline at home.

In September, Labor Day weekend, our daughter and I decided that we were going to get away for the weekend, and we were going to go visit my best friend who lives in New Mexico.

And as we're on our drive, it's about a six hour drive.

This text comes through and it's from Joel and it's probably two to three screens long.

He'd sent it to both Caroline and Nicole in a group chat.

And it just says, I just want you guys to know I love you more than anything in the world.

I think about your mother and you guys every day.

I regret my stupid actions.

I hope that we can be a family.

And our daughter was just devastated by this text.

Joel was saying he wanted to be a family, but his actions showed otherwise.

And so I tried calling him and he did it respond.

And then she goes to call him again, and this time you could tell he put her to voicemail, and so I said, maybe he's at work.

Caroline just couldn't bear to see Nicole in so much pain.

She wants to connect with him and he doesn't answer.

Nicole was holding out hope.

He still holds this sort of grassp on me.

Nicole and Caroline arrived in New Mexico for a much needed visit with Caroline's best friend, Deborah.

We met her in an earlier episode, and Deborah could see Nicole was hurting.

I felt like she really struggled because she was a daddy's girl.

She was trying to weigh out do I want to still have a relationship with my dad.

The next day, my best friend, her husband, me, my daughter were facetiming with my son who is in college on the East Coast, and we start just reminiscing and going down memory lane, and my son says, oh, I remember this picture.

I got to pull this picture up.

He's real silent, and then all of a sudden, he says, Mama, could you take me off speakerphone and just talk to me?

And so I said, well, what's going on?

And so he gets very serious and he said, please just take me off speakerphone.

I just want to talk to you.

And so I excuse myself and I said, is everything okay?

And he said no.

Their son told Caroline that she needed to look at their shared family photovault.

Joel was still uploading pictures.

To the cloud.

When I pull it up, there is just picture after picture of women on a beach who you can clearly tell they have no idea how they're being photographed.

Immediately, Caroline went to Deborah and showed her what her son had seen.

It's just pictures of girls in their bikinis.

Some of them are oomed in on their butts or their crotch.

You know that the women don't know because they're either laying down and their face is on the opposite end, or you know, he's behind them when they're walking.

There was one girl I remember she was walking with her boyfriend.

She was hand in hand with a boy and he was taking pictures of her butt.

Joel had gone to the beach and secretly photographed women.

He oomed in on parts of their bodies, all while telling his family he was committed to change.

And I am mortified, mortified that my son is seeing this.

His frantic responds to me, is you got to delete this.

Get it off of here, Get it off of this.

And I go to call Joel and he doesn't answer, and then I'm trying to figure out how to get a hold of him, and I'm texting him what I'm seeing.

The photos were right there in the vault for the entire family to access.

Joel was indulging himself with no thought about the fact that his kids could see these pictures.

And there weren't just photos of women.

There was also a photo of Joel out at a bar in California.

By his side is a fellow CSPD officer, a buddy who must have come out to visit.

In the photo, they were out at a bar, smiling and holding up beers, having fun.

Meanwhile, his family was falling apart.

I mean, it just appears that he treated this npatient rehab facility as a glorified frat house, not as a therapeutic opportunity.

This was just kind of a retreat for him, a little vacation away from Colorado and the mess that he created.

Joel finally responded to Caroline's text, saying he didn't realize he was still sharing the digital photo vault.

We had extremely minimal contact, but after I found out about the pictures, I told him we can't even share a phone account together.

It was almost i uncle.

I thought to myself, you're not even safe to have a Netflix account with that next day, I went out and I put the kids and I on a separate phone plan.

She acted quickly.

All she wanted was to shield the kids from these images.

I was so frantic.

I am at my best friend's home.

I'm not even home, and my immediate concern was to make sure that we are completely separate from him.

So she asked Joel to delete the shared account, and he did, but in the rush, Caroline didn't save all the old family photos.

Which I mean sounds a little cheesy, but you know now, I don't have the kid's baby pictures or video of my dad's celebration of life.

All of that was on our shared account.

There is just no way I could chance the kids and I continuously seeing these types of pictures and images that he tod.

And just being able to view those photos felt like a liability.

Before she separated their phones and photos, Caroline noticed something else in Joel's cloud pictures.

There's one woman repeatedly then pictures very recently.

It looked like Joel was already in a new relationship.

Caroline texted him to ask who the woman was.

He says that he met someone while he was in rehab.

She lived in Puerto Rico and they had decided to meet.

Caroline thought back to the text she and Nicole received a few days earlier while they were driving to New Mexico, when he said he'd do anything to repair their relationship.

And so the truth is revealed that he sends this text begging the kids and I that he wants to be a family again and he's so sorry.

But the fact of the matter is he was sending it all he was already with a female he met online, and so it just kind of became this awareness in that moment for everyone, but specifically our daughter, that whenever he reached out really trying and wanting to be a part of our lives, it was always a way to mast and disguise the fact that he was doing just the opposite of what he was saying.

Nicole noticed the same pattern.

He reaches out, sends my brother and I a text message when he knows that we're going to find out something pretty soon.

Dawn is a friend of Caroline's and was also her divorce attorney.

She mentioned earlier in the series that she doesn't usually represent friends, but she made an exception for Caroline out of concern.

For the kids, who she knew well.

Don saw the impact of Joel's absence on Nicole.

To see Nicole really struggle to not see her dad or have that relationship anymore, it was just so jarring to her.

She still desired that relationship, but Joel really just pulled completely away.

Jen Forrester and her husband Tom are among Caroline's closest friends.

Jen also was disappointed that Joel didn't try harder.

The fact that he kind of just gave up was really surprising.

He hasn't tried to repair the relationship, and frankly, as a parent, why would you give up?

I would never give up on my kids.

I would say I'm still here for you, I still love you, I will always be here for you.

How can you know that your child is out there and not want to be around your child or like know what's happening with them.

Nicole thought Joel would at the very least try to connect for the big moments, the milestones.

And everything that Joel did.

One of the hardest days was her graduation.

You know, I left that morning because I wanted to get a lay necklace for her to wear.

I wanted to get her favorite coffee and have it waiting for her when she woke up.

And when I came home, she was already up and there was this envelope taped to our front door, and her little face, Oh god, it just kills me.

She just had this desperation in her face, like she just was hoping for it and she said, oh, my gosh, is that from my dad.

On the morning of Nichole's high school graduation, Caroline found her daughter staring at an envelope that had been left on their front door.

She just had this desperation in her face, like she just was hoping for it.

And she said, oh, my gosh, is that from my dad?

And I said, I don't know.

And when I handed it to her and she saw that it was signed by our neighbors, God, it was one of the worst things to ever see.

It was horrible.

You just saw her completely deflate this day that she had just worked so hard to celebrate.

She just didn't recover from that day.

You just saw her with this solemn expression and just flated.

Every time she opened the door just a little bit, another lie would come up, you know.

On her graduation.

That night, she wanted to go out to some parties with some of her friends, and before she left, she said, I'm going to text my dad and I said, okay, that's completely your decision.

I wanted her to continue that contact, and she sent just the most simplistic text and just said I graduated today, that's it.

And he took a while to respond and then eventually said, oh, I know, I'm so proud of you.

But minutes later I get this rage text from him blaming me for not reminding him.

And you just saw her pining after just this hope, like just be different.

It wasn't just Nicole who was in pain.

Caroline's friends watched her suffering too.

Joel wasn't around anymore, but every few weeks a new secret was revealed.

Here's Caroline's friend Jen.

There was an incident where Caroline had gotten a text message from someone.

This person had basically told her about a friend of Caroline's who had been intimately involved with Joel, and that was a rough day.

You'd see her start to heal, she relaxed, you'd see her start to move forward, and then something else would happen.

And this was one of those instances, like it's not just taking two steps forward and one step back.

Every time something came up, it just ripped the band aid off again.

As people in the community learned about Joel and caroline separation, they felt more inclined to contact Caroline with.

Detail of Joel's affairs.

It felt like every day she learned of new affairs that had been going on right under her nose.

Sometimes for years.

He had a long term affair with a hairstylist.

He sent inappropriate texts to a local college professor who Caroline worked with.

He'd had sex with, an insurance agent, a prison guard, a nurse.

Caroline was re traumatized every single time.

With each new revelation, her entire life was turned into community gossip around town, in the halls of the Colorado Springs Police Department, and even at work.

Caroline's not a.

Cop, but she does work in law enforcement.

Her job requires her to interact with police officers all the time.

They come into my place of employment and I have to pass them, I have to interact with them.

I see them on elevators, I see them in the hallway.

Meanwhile, I've heard the snickering.

There's been blatant comments said back and forth in front of me, where they know I'm an earshot.

I was humiliated.

To walk into work knowing that rumors were starting to fly and spread about what he had done.

Caroline had to face the consequences of Joel's actions every day, and so did the kids.

They continued to find out new information, and instead of letting themselves be surprised or hear it through a third party.

They wanted to control how and when they heard things.

Really, it was the only thing they had control over.

Here's their son.

I wanted to know everything, complete transparency.

If someone were to say that my mom shared too much, I think that'd just be continuing this deception.

I'd rather find out for my mom so we wouldn't be blindsided randomly in the community.

Nobody would want.

That was hurt, but it was powerful and it was needed.

That was the only way to move forward.

The rumors were inescapable.

Caroline's friend Jen recalls a day Caroline received particularly hurtful news about Joel.

She couldn't even talk to anyone about it.

It was too much.

I think emotionally, the anger, the hurt, the sadness all comes back.

I mean she spent four days in bed reliving all of it.

She basically said, don't come over.

I don't want to see anybody.

I cannot deal with anything right.

So Tom and I dropped off dinner on her doorstep.

You know, hey, we're here for you if you need us.

All her grief, heartbreak, shame, and humiliation was unfair.

Joel was able to leave and she left was so much destruction when all she did was love and trust her husband.

All of this got me thinking about consequences justice.

Really, you're going to hear different perspectives on what consequences mean throughout this episode.

But I wanted to start with Caroline.

What would justice feel like for her?

Turns out, it's pretty simple.

It would feel fantastic to be able to walk into professional meetings, to be able to walk into my own employment, to be able to be in the community and not have Copslee think can make blowjob comments next to me.

She doesn't want to feel like the butt of a joke, and she wants the.

Support of the people at Joel's job, people she has supported for two decades.

On a very very personal note, you know the people who surrounded him at his profession.

The deputy chief is my son's godfather.

I have not heard one word from him, and the mix of all of this, I have not heard one word from any of the people who my kids and I were ever there for them in their time of need.

Not one person has reached out to say are you and the kids okay?

Not one.

Joel was able to walk away from the mess without being terminated.

Why because instead of being fired, he retired.

In an earlier episode, you heard Joel meet with his boss, Commander Jeff Strawsner.

This was at the conclusion of Joel's internal affairs investigation for having sex in his police car while on duty.

Strawsner found conclusively that Joel had violated five Colorado Springs Police Department policies, including departing from the truth lying he let Joel know he was going to recommend him for termination.

The legislative intent is very clear that we cannot allow peace officers remain employed.

When they lied during an ia investigation.

Joel's career as a cop would be over.

The department set another meeting for two weeks later to make it all final, but that meeting never occurred because instead of facing termination, Joel chose a path that ensured he'd never hear the words you're fired.

He retired, and just like that, his work problems vanished.

A letter about his pending termination was replaced by an email congratulating him on his decades of service just days after his meeting with Commander Strassner.

How did this happen?

Well, our team has been investigating it and the first thing we discovered is that this happens all the time.

Dan, a former CSPD officer, said it's common for cops under investigation to retire.

Honestly, I was surprised he didn't retire like the day this came to light.

I figured if he knew that this was true and knew how it could end, I'm truly surprised that it just wasn't happened immediately.

It appears that Joel waited until after the meeting with Internal Affairs and Commander Strassner, when he knew for certain they were onto him and there was no talking his way out of it.

But before he officially left the CSPD, he took FMLA, or family medical leave, and went off to rehab, where his sexual escapades only continued.

In taking FMLA, Joel stretched his time.

I hate to say it, when some guys are circling the drain in their career and getting ready to get fired, they will drag it out as long as possible because they're collecting a paycheck and they might as well as long as they can.

And it irks you when you're sitting up there knowing that we're paying somebody that is more than likely going to get fired and did some pretty bad stuff.

We also found this troubling.

Joel had sex in his police car on the taxpayer's dime, and his consequences amounted into an early retirement, a handshake and a.

Pat on the back.

We contacted Jeff Strassner about it via email.

He's now the chief of another police department in Colorado.

He pointed out that retirement is managed by a separate agency.

Here's some of that email.

As I am sure you are aware, he retired prior to discipline, and retirement is a process managed by the Colorado Fire Police Pension Association.

The department has no control if someone decides to retire prior to the execution of discipline and does not have the authority to intervene in the retirement process.

It is common for retirement eligible officers who see the writing on the wall to decide to retire rather than go through the termination process.

The police department wasn't about to interfere with the penchin Association.

They don't have the power to.

It seems like once Joel chose to retire and took medical leave, he became untouchable.

It turns out we weren't the first to investigate this pattern at the CSPD.

I'm Carl Rose.

I'm a multimedia journalist at Rocky Mountain PBS.

Carle reports on the criminal justice system in Colorado.

I sat down with her when I was in Colorado Springs.

Her team uncovered some alarming patterns among Colorado cops, which we'll get to in a moment, but first I wanted to share one case that tipped her team off to a larger problem.

Alexander Canoyer was a police officer for the Colorado Springs Department and he resigned while under investigation.

In twelve Canoyer was caught having a sexual relationship with the subject of a criminal investigation.

He left wall under investigation, and that was perfectly legal, but he was never decertified, meaning he could still work as a cop in Colorado.

Then he was hired at the Cripple Creek Police Department and that's where he met Kelly Davis.

Davis came into the department to report a possible crime, but then Canoy started doing exactly what he did back in Colorado Springs.

He started messaging her daily and the messages became sexual.

Him, being the police officer, had the power in this situation.

Kelly Davis eventually reported Canoyer and he was charged with sexual misconduct.

But all of this may have.

Been prevented if he'd been terminated and desertified back in Colorado Springs.

He had already done it another department and was caught for in a sense, being investigated, but then he left and was able to go to a different department and victimize another woman.

Knoyer walked away from the CSPD and went on to another department.

The heat from his first IA investigation did nothing to deter him from future misconduct.

It didn't Detergil either.

After he admitted to sexual harassment in twenty nineteen, he got little more than a write up, and we all know what happened next.

Carly and her team wanted to understand how often officers were avoiding termination in cases like this, so they looked at something called the post database.

It's a public database of the certifications of these officers, as well as certain actions against them, like resignations or terminations, or if they were under investigation.

One thing that really stood out was this action that was titled resignation in lieu of termin nation and then also resignation while under investigation, we were like, oh, people can resign rather than face the consequences of an investigation.

Rocky Mountain PBS reported the story in April twenty twenty four.

At the time of their reporting, there were one hundred and fifty eight cases in the database in which officers had either resigned in lieu of termination or while under investigation, and.

Then about one hundred and twenty had been terminated.

Instead of being held accountable, more officers took the option to walk away, and Joel was one of them.

In reporting the season, we've thought a lot about early warning signs, moments when Joel's behavior could have been stopped along the way.

There were people who raised the alarm on Joel, like the reporter back in twenty nineteen.

Back then, Joel Kern was up for the job a public information officer at the CSPD.

The reporter came forward to warn the department that Joel was a problem.

While he had served in that role temporarily, he had asked her and other reporters to use what'sapp to communicate, and after some hedging during an internal affairs investigation, he eventually admitted to sexual harassment.

I would say that there was a degree of flirtation going on, and then the sexual innuendo is how it would classify it.

Were you trying to get more friendlier with those two, maybe hoping it might go somewhere.

I think if I was honest with myself or then I would say, yeah, that would be an a curious statement.

Joel was written up in took himself out of the running for the job.

He wasn't suspended or demoted.

To us, it felt like there wasn't much of a consequence, But not everyone agrees with that assessment.

I'm well Hilson.

I'm a lawyer who practices out of Portland, Oregon.

I have represented law enforcement labor organizations for about forty five years.

Will has worked on countless disciplinary proceedings, and when it comes to Joel's harassment case, he thinks the department did the best they could with the information they had at the time.

After all, Joel said all the right things.

It always helps an employee to come in and tell the boss, I know I've done something wrong and I apologize for it.

He did get a reprimand and he did lose what is considered in law enforcement to be a really good job.

So I think that punishment is on the range of reasonable.

We also wanted Will's thoughts on retiring in lieu of termination.

He confirmed what Dan and Strassner told.

Us that's actually quite common.

Police officers received job protections like the ability to retire in this way that people and other professions don't.

That can be a good thing.

These protections prevent new leaders, like a chief or mayor, from hiring and firing randomly for political or personal reasons.

We do not want a public employee punish for simply doing their job the way they should.

But these protections also mean that cops like Joel get a lot of leeway.

We asked Will to read the transcripts from Joel's second disciplinary hearing, the one for having sex in his police car.

And a police officer reading that transcript would be thoroughly embarrassed by what they were reading and would come up with the conclusion he should be fired.

I think ultimately, if he had not had this right to retire, the city of Colorado Springs would have terminated him.

Former CSPD officer Dan says that for the most part, CSPD employees do serve honorably, and the department has procedures in place to eliminate any bad actors.

You know, that's why you have internal affairs in those places that are there to try to weed those people out and get rid of them.

And I think most officers are going to be of the opinion that the officers that are given us the black eyed need to go.

I will still say to this day that the Color Springs Police Department is one of the most ethical departments you're going to find, and ninety nine percent of the officers out there are doing it right.

They're doing it for the right reason.

Joel ultimately lost his certification to be a but he was never criminally charged.

And there are people who see Joel's low key exit as telling that it speaks to a pattern of corruption and favoritism.

If you've made the right friends in leadership, you'll get a softer landing on the way out.

We heard rumblings about this long before we ever set foot in Colorado, because there was somebody posting stories about it online, a whistleblower acting under the name Romy Eastridge.

They had a page called the Police Officer's Whistleblower Network where they posted story after story of misconduct at the CSPD on the clock affairs, covered up crimes, and inconsistent discipline.

This whistleblower has remained anonymous until now.

After several conversations, she decided to break cover to participate in betrayal.

I think that in order for these officers to lose a fear of speaking out, I kinda need to lead by example.

That's Claudia Aldrich.

Claudia has a family member who used to work at the department.

Claudia's family member went through an internal affairs investigation and experienced what Claudia sees as unfair treatment.

Meanwhile, she kept hearing stories about other CSPD cops getting away with bad behavior, and she wanted to shine a light on the double standards within the department, so she started her whistleblower page.

She says CSPD cops are too afraid to call out misconduct because of.

The rules for reporting.

Apparently they had to go through the chain of command to open ania on internal affairs investigation.

If a cop wants to report misconduct, they typically go to their supervisor.

And even if a cop reports misconduct directly to internal affairs or to another superior, bird gets around quick Claudia's sources confirmed a long standing question we had about Joel's sexual activity.

Did other employees at CSPD know what Joel was doing at work?

The answer is yes, absolutely, But would people report it?

Who is going to want to do that because doing that puts their career on a big red spot.

So instead of reporting misconduct, some officers called Claudia.

In one post, Claudia cites three sources in saying, who is going to state?

The obvious?

From gold Hill would walk over to one of us and tell us we had to work the desk while Kerrn and her would be holed up in his office.

Everyone knew what he was doing with her during those days.

We all just sat and essentially kept watch in case his wife or kids showed up with his lunch.

That and you could tell that even the commanders knew it.

Here's a former civilian CSPD employee who worked at the same substation as Joel.

We'll call her Rennie.

He would come in before he worked out and said hi.

But the only reason he was there was so that everyone could say, well, he was there working out, but he was there for the sole purpose to take a shower after his lunchtime activities.

Here's Claudia again.

I actually had one officer call me and said he did the same thing doing the riots.

She's referring to protests in twenty twenty following the murder of George Floyd.

You're telling people to go and basically face rioters while he was in some motel with someone.

People knew about Joel long before Caroline ever did did they fear the consequences of reporting his misconduct?

I know that Kern also had a lot of power and a lot of connections.

A twenty four year veteran of the department who was also willing to sit with us for this project said the same.

Joel Kern was one of the golden few.

Kern was protected.

Post on the whistleblower page alleged that Kern was also protecting himself.

One says, Lieutenant Kern.

Had a black book of CSPD dirty deeds that guaranteed him protection.

At first, we couldn't believe this, but then we heard from employees that keeping records to protect yourself is a common practice.

When you heard of an instance where a call for service might have involved maybe the mayor, city council, other officers, someone in that sort of political or high level realm.

Right, the first thing you did was look up that call quickly print it out, because you were guaranteed within a couple hours that call screen was going to disappear and would not be accessible.

When someone calls nine to one one, it generates a call screen.

Sometimes these are referred to as a call for service.

Call screens contain details like the names of the people involved, the location, the nature of the emergency, and not ites about the calls progress.

This officer and others we spoke with alleged that the identification numbers of calls for service for high profile individuals would get hidden in the system.

And so lots of us and I did it myself, would print out these calls for service.

So in the case of some sort of retribution or retaliation, I had a file folder of all right, if that's the way we're going to play, then I have this.

We all protected ourselves.

So employees were keeping dirt on their superiors.

Why, because they didn't trust their leadership.

How can a police force function that way?

The story of the callscreens surprised law enforcement attorney will Achison.

You definitely have an accountability problem.

If that in fact occurred.

Yeah, I'm very surprised by that.

These officers were fighting without anybody knowing, and nobody knows that these four cops have to go out on the street and just watch the back.

But also what's the surroundings where they're in their department among their own peers.

Cops knew the deal.

They weren't all going to be treated fairly.

It was all about who you were or who you were friends with.

On the next episode of Betrayal.

There were times that he hit me.

There were times that he threw me across the room in front of the kids.

They get this chase against him, and unsurprisingly they decline to prosecute.

Thank you for listening to Betrayal season four.

If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal team, email us at Betrayalpod at gmail dot com.

That's Betrayal Pod at gmail dot com.

Also, please be sure to follow us on Instagram at Betrayal Pod and me Andrea Hgunning for all Betrayal content, news and updates.

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Please rate and review Betrayal five star reviews help us know you appreciate what we do.

Betrayal is a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group, in partnership with iHeart Podcasts.

The show is executive produced by Nancy Glass and Jennifer Fason.

Betrayal is hosted and produced by me Andrea Gunning, written and produced by Carrie Hert, also produced by Ben Fetterman.

Our associate producers are Caitlin Golden and Kristin Melcury.

Our iHeart team is Ali Perry and Jessica Krincheck.

Story editing by Monique Leboard, Audio editing and mixing by Matt Delvecchio, editing by Tanner Robbins.

Special thanks to voice actors Todd Gans and Andrew Kellaway, and special thanks to Caroline and her family.

Betrayal's theme is composed by Oliver Baines.

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