Richard L. Dotson, Louisville’s Chief of Police

When Shakespeare’s Mark Antony asked for his “Friends, Romans, and countrymen” to lend him their ears, he stated that he came to bury Caesar, not to praise him. He then observed that “The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interrèd with their bones.”

Antony’s famous funeral oration was the first thing that popped into my mind when I received a telephone call last week from Wendy Dotson, telling me that her husband, and my old friend, Richard Dotson had died. Chief Dotson was my friend, my boss, my client, and my mentor. In lieu of a eulogy, I want to offer the following encomium, in a humble effort to insure that the good he did during his eventful life does not go unremarked.

Some of us are old enough to remember The Bad Old Days, when Louisville’s police force was widely known for its corruption and incompetence. Several explosive media investigations, and at least one FBI investigation, led to a few removals and convictions of bad cops, but the rotten infrastructure of the LPD remained pretty much intact until 1982, when Mayor Harvey I. Sloane named Richard L. Dotson Louisville’s Chief of Police. Dotson promoted Charlie Moore, Sherman Anderson, and John Aubrey as his lead commanders, and the reform and restoration of the department began.

Mayor Sloane also selected me to be Police Legal Advisor, and I was privileged to witness, up close and personal, the dramatic improvement these “Men In The White Hats” brought to law enforcement in Louisville.

I could draw upon a treasure trove of anecdotes to illustrate my love and respect for Chief Dotson. Like the time I was sitting in his office when the call came in about the mass murders at Standard Gravure. We rushed to the scene of the carnage in his staff car, and the Boss instantly took charge of the rescue operation. I stood around with my hands in my pockets, embarrassingly aware of the uselessness of a lawyer at a crime scene. I remember being amazed at how cool and methodical he was, in the midst of terrible chaos.

Then there was the Friday afternoon when a loony from Memphis (actually, an Assistant District Attorney) tried to rob the Bank of Louisville branch where all of our FBI agents were cashing their paychecks. The Boss and I arrived on the scene just after Sgt. Colin Harris had fatally shot the robber, and I, trying to be helpful, retrieved the bag full of stolen cash. Just as I unzipped the bag, the dye pack exploded, spraying me with red dye and teargas. That may have been the only time I ever saw Dotson laugh.

But, stories like these are probably best left for another time. What is important now, as we send Chief Dotson to his rest, is the real reason we should all honor his memory.

In last Wednesday’s Courier-Journal, reporter Matthew Glowicki provided readers with the briefest summary of Chief Dotson’s career:

Dotson began his law enforcement career in 1961 and served as chief from 1982 to 1990.

He was credited at the time with restoring the image of the city's police department, which had been tarnished by scandals of Dotson's predecessor.

Dotson was removed as chief in 1990 by then-Mayor Jerry Abramson amid allegations he abused his ex-wives and sexually harassed co-workers, though Dotson denied those claims and stayed on with the department in various roles until he retired in 2003.

He then served as president of the police union in the years following the merger of county and city police departments.

In fairness to reporter Glowicki—who is too young to remember the facts as they actually occurred—the spouse abuse/sexual harassment was the official reason put forth by the Abramson administration at the time, and has been continuously regurgitated by the C-J ever since. The front-line observers to this travesty will remember it differently.

Without doubt, the ugliest period of Jerry Abramson’s 21-year tenure as Louisville’s mayor was when he hatched a successful scheme to fire Police Chief Richard Dotson, during the Summer of 1990.

When Jerry was first elected mayor, in late 1985, he was still a bachelor, and was good friends with a cop (whom we’ll call “Officer X,” for reasons which will appear obvious later), with whom he went jogging on a regular basis. Shortly after taking office in 1986, Jerry spoke with Chief Dotson (a holdover from the administration of Jerry’s predecessor, Dr. Harvey I. Sloane), and requested that Officer X be assigned as the mayor’s bodyguard and chauffeur. It had long been the custom and policy for Louisville’s mayors to select a policeman to protect and drive them around town.

Dotson agreed to honor Jerry’s request, but then the new mayor added another item to the request: He wanted the Chief to promote Officer X to sergeant. “I’ll make him a sergeant when he passes the sergeant’s exam, and when a slot opens up,” Dotson firmly replied. Clearly, this didn’t set well with Abramson.

Jerry, of course, knew that the Chief was only following the law. Civil Service regulations allowed for political appointments to higher police ranks, such as captain and major, but required sergeants to pass a strict and difficult examination. Jerry was not happy that Dotson refused to bend the rules to confer a benefit upon the mayor’s buddy.

A few weeks later, Jerry was interviewed by a reporter, who asked him how he liked his new job. The mayor allowed as how the job was interesting and challenging, but lamented that he was the first mayor in Louisville’s history to be “saddled” with a police chief who was not of his choosing.

As I previously indicated, those of us who have been hanging around City Hall for the last half-century or so can remember the time when Louisville’s police department was notoriously corrupt. Most cops were on the take from gamblers and houses of prostitution, and no cop ever made it into the higher ranks of the department without participating—or at least acquiescing—in the network of bribes and payoffs. Vice dens were open and notorious.

Over time, various individual chiefs (such as Jack Nevin and Edgar Paul) and safety directors (such as Joe Glass and George Burton) attempted to break up the corrupt system; with limited degrees of success. Problem was, the chief was politically beholden to the mayor, and the mayor to the Democrat ward bosses, and on down the line. Without some sort of civil service protection, the chief would always be tempted to serve his political masters, instead of serving the law.

At the beginning of Mayor Harvey Sloane’s second term, he decided to tackle this problem head-on. He selected four of the most honest cops he could find—Richard Dotson, Charles Moore, Sherman Anderson, and John Aubrey—to run the LPD. He then had his Law Director, Burt Detusch, draft an ordinance granting the police chief tenure. Essentially, the new law—subsequently approved by the Board of Aldermen—established a Police Chief Civilian Review Board, with exclusive power to remove the chief, but only for cause (such as misconduct, dishonesty, or non-feasance).

Clearly, Jerry couldn’t just fire Dotson for ephemeral reasons (such as not promoting his buddy to sergeant); so it would take some time to get around the tenure law. Jerry began systematically packing the Review Board with his political cronies (it took him five years), and when he finally had the votes to dump the chief, he did so. Shortly after getting Dotson fired, Jerry got the Board of Aldermen to repeal the tenure law.

One day—several months before the mayor fired him—Chief Dotson called me into his office and handed me a brown evidence envelope, containing about a dozen color snapshots. “How would you categorize these photographs; from a legal standpoint,” he asked. After briefly glancing at the photos, my reply was unequivocal: “They’re child porn0graphy. Illegal under state and federal laws.”

The pictures showed a 12 or 13-year-old boy, totally naked, posing in front of a fireplace, in various sexually suggestive positions. They were not the candid “bare baby behind in the bathtub” snapshots most parents have of their kids. These were clearly taken with the intent of arousing a prurient interest in child sexual abuse. Dotson explained that the photos had been sent to the Crimes Against Children Unit of the LPD from a cooperating photo developing service.

“Have your boys arrested the photographer yet?” I asked. “There’s a small problem with that,” said the Chief. Seems the guy who dropped the roll of film off for developing was none other than Officer X; the mayor’s chauffeur. The boy in the photos was Officer X’s son.

We agreed that I would personally deliver the photographs to Ernest Jasmin, the Commonwealth’s Attorney, with a request for a direct Grand Jury indictment of Officer X. During the administration of Mayor Frank Burke, I had been Deputy Director of Building and Housing Inspection, and had hired Ernie as Chief Housing Inspector, while he was finishing up at U of L Law School. I was certain that Ernie could be trusted with the prosecution of a case involving such explosive political ramifications.

I was wrong about Ernie. A couple of weeks later, Chief Dotson received a telephone call from Jerry’s Safety Director, indicating that the Commonwealth Attorney’s Office had decided there was insufficient evidence to proceed to the Grand Jury. The photos had been sent to the Safety Director, who returned them to Officer X. In the telephone call, the Safety Director ordered Dotson to round up all duplicates and negatives, and deliver them to his office immediately.

I thought the Safety Director was bluffing, and advised the Chief to demand that the order be put into writing. He wasn’t bluffing. When the written order was sent over, the Chief—to preclude a charge of insubordination—complied.

Interestingly, some time later, at the very moment Chief Dotson appeared in the mayor’s office to be fired, Jerry had a locksmith from Klein Brothers enter into the Chief’s office at LPD Headquarters, to drill open the office safe. Apparently, the mayor and his Safety Director believed that Dotson was dumb enough to keep backup copies of the illicit photos in is office safe. He wasn’t.

Desperate to get rid of the Police Chief, Jerry hired two ex-FBI agents to do an in-depth investigation into Dotson’s background. Dotson’s first wife claimed he once tripped her as she was going down the basement stairs. His second wife claimed he grabbed her once and shook her. Neither had ever made any formal complaint in the past, or had made any such allegations in divorce proceedings. But hell hath no fury, like a woman scorned.

The Chief’s secretary told the investigators that Dotson would sometimes introduce her to office visitors, with the remark, “My wife thinks I’m having an affair with my secretary, but I’m not.” This, the Review Board concluded, amounted to sexual harassment.

The package of slander, rumor, and innuendo prepared by the ex-FBI agents was leaked to the Courier-Journal, a week before the scheduled presentation to the Review Board. Jerry had the notion that he could use the newspaper to gin up some public outrage, to put a little more pressure on the Review Board.

A friend of mine on the C-J’s editorial board tipped me off about the leak, and I asked him to set up a meeting with me and the board. I met with Editor David Hawpe and several members of the board. Hawpe was cordial, and even granted me special dispensation to smoke my pipe in the editorial board room (history will record that I was the last person to smoke on C-J property).

I reminded Hawpe of the sordid history of corruption in the LPD, and of the fact that the Dotson/Moore/Anderson/Aubrey team had done a pretty commendable job of cleaning it up. I also suggested that printing the complaints of Dotson’s ex-wives would be awfully unfair, since he would not have an opportunity to tell his side of the story until the Review Board hearing. To my surprise, Hawpe agreed to hold the story until the allegations were formally presented at the hearing. Back in those days, the C-J was known for its editorial integrity.

At the Police Chief Civilian Review Board hearing, Dotson was represented by attorney and former Louisville Safety Director Joe Glass. Joe did his best, but the hearing was a farce. Dotson’s dismissal was preordained.

So “Men In The White Hats” --the quartet of honest cops running the LPD-- was broken up. Dotson was fired, and Moore, Anderson and Aubrey retired shortly thereafter. Charlie Moore ran for Alderman and lost. John Aubrey was elected Jefferson County Sheriff, and keeps getting re-elected to that job which he performs so well. Officer X quietly took an early retirement, and moved to Florida. Ernie Jasmin got himself elected Circuit Judge, and died a few years later. The Review Board was disbanded, and the Safety Director was let go. Mayor Jerry Abramson was all that remained.

Oh, and Jerry decided that my services as Legal Advisor to the Louisville Police were no longer necessary. I switched over to representing the Board of Aldermen, often doing battle with Mayor Abramson. Lawyers can learn to ---- out of the tent, or to ---- into the tent, depending upon who pays the freight.

I guess the point of all this is, that reporter Matthew Glowicki’s brief observation that “He was credited at the time with restoring the image of the city's police department, which had been tarnished by scandals of Dotson's predecessor” does not even begin to describe, much less do historical justice to, the important and lasting contribution Chief Dotson made to honest law enforcement in our community.

Richard L. Dotson was an honest cop, and a man of unimpeachable integrity. More than that, he was a real-life hero. He cleaned up a crooked police force, and made if into a law enforcement agency Louisville can be rightly proud of. We have all benefited from his work. His sort do not appear very often, and he will be missed.