Police chief demoted at WSU

The chief of Washington State University’s police department has been demoted, following a university investigation that concluded he used his work computer to view and forward inappropriate e-mails.

WSU announced the demotion of Steve Hansen, along with the resignation of Assistant Chief Scott West, on Friday afternoon. According to a report prepared by the university auditor and depositions in a court case, Hansen looked at sexually explicit e-mails that were sent to him, forwarded them to West, and invited other members of the department to view them.

The report said there was no indication either officer sought out such material online.

University policy forbids such use of school time and computers. Hansen, who has been chief since 2000, will become a lieutenant after this academic year ends.

“That was a mistake on my part, and I want to apologize for the embarrassment it has caused the department and the university. Because of this situation, I accept the administration’s decision to demote me to lieutenant,” Hansen said in the news release.

Richard Heath, senior associate vice president for business affairs who oversees the WSU Police Department, said that the e-mails clearly violated university policy.

“University computers are not supposed to be used for that purpose on work time,” he said. “It’s not something we should be doing at the university.”

The allegations about the e-mails emerged in depositions for a lawsuit filed by a member of the department who claimed Hansen and WSU had retaliated against him when they fired him for inappropriately using a university credit card. Bryan Jacobsen recently won his suit in federal court, with a Spokane jury ordering the university to pay $96,000 in back pay.

Depositions taken in that case included statements from Hansen and West acknowledging they’d sent and viewed e-mails with sexually explicit content and photos of “nude or partially nude” women. The allegations were first reported in WSU’s campus newspaper, the Daily Evergreen.

In his deposition, Hansen said he had been forwarded some e-mails, passed them along to West and called in some employees to look at them. The attorney questioning him characterized them as “pornographic,” and Hansen said, “It’s probably not the best thing to do.”

In West’s deposition, the former assistant chief acknowledged that jokes that included photos of nude or partially nude women were sometimes sent back and forth among people in the department.

The WSU auditor wrote that she had scanned all program files on the officers’ computers and found no indication officers had accessed inappropriate Web sites, with the exception of four video clips that would have been accessed via e-mail messages.

Two of the video clips were short comic sketches with no nudity or sexual content, the auditor’s report said. One showed a monkey urinating into his own mouth; another showed a topless young woman performing a gymnastic vault.

Though the auditor noted that both Hansen and West admitted to forwarding e-mails with sexually explicit content and described the content of the messages as “questionable,” the report concluded by saying, “we are unclear whether the contents are in fact obscene or ‘sexually explicit’ as indicated in the allegation.”

As chief, Hansen earns $83,681 per year. As a lieutenant, he will receive $69,500.

West has been with the WSU police for 33 years; he decided to retire effective May 1, WSU said.