The City of Shelton lost another case before the Connecticut State Board of Mediation and Arbitration over forcing police officers to use outside portable toilets instead of police station locker rooms during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Shelton police officers – particularly female officers, according to the decision – were punished when photos surfaced showing them having to change clothes in the parking lot, but those punishments have largely been overturned when brought to the arbitration board by the local police union.
Officer Tori Chapman was issued a written warning by the Shelton Police Department after photos surfaced online – taken by her husband, another police officer – that showed officers had to change clothes in the parking lot because they had been denied use of locker rooms during the pandemic.
Chapman was one of the individuals in the photos, which were then posted to a website called “Support the Shelton Police Dept.” by Michael Lewis, a retired police officer and union business agent, according to the arbitration decision, resulting in “many comments which were generally unfavorable to the Mayor and the Chief.”
The police chief ordered an investigation by Internal Affairs and eventually issued a written warning to Chapman for violation of the ethics code, claiming she committed “indecent exposure” because she was photographed in her bra.
Male officers were also photographed in their “undershorts,” but “Apparently the SPD found a woman in her bra was ‘worse’ than a man in his undershorts,” according to the decision.
However, the arbitration panel found Chapman had no knowledge that the photos would be posted online and that Police Chief Shawn Sequeira was overly involved in the Internal Affairs investigation, potentially tainting the results. Furthermore, the panel found officers had little choice but to change in the parking lot, something the City of Shelton disputed, claiming they were not forced to change in the parking lot by order – an argument the panel found “ludicrous.”
Since the men were not similarly punished, or had their discipline reduced or removed, the panel found the written warning to be an unfair application of discipline and that it violated the just cause standard for discipline.
The decision is just the latest in a long and continuing dispute between the City of Shelton and the police officers who were not allowed to use their locker rooms during the pandemic and the photos posted online.
Officer Caroline Moretti was terminated in August of 2020 because of similar photographs but was reinstated with backpay in September of 2023 after an arbitration panel made similar findings to Chapman’s case: that the Chief of Police had inappropriately inserted himself into the Internal Affairs investigation.
“Inexplicably, the Chief determined that a picture of the side of a woman in a sports bra is offensive and represents a ‘voyeuristic scheme,” the panel wrote in its Moretti decision, adding that Mayor Mark Lauretti approved of her termination.
Moretti was one of three officers fired for the photos of them changing outside. Those officers, along with three other officers terminated based on their handling of a domestic violence incident by a Bridgeport officer, have filed a federal lawsuit against the department saying their First Amendment rights were violated. That case is still pending.
The panel ruled that Shelton is to remove Chapman’s written warning from her file “and any other file in which it may be placed,” and “a copy of the award shall be affixed to all copies of the written warning.”
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