Nashville Prosecutor Won’t Press Charges Against Police Captain Accused Of Groping. Here’s Why. | WPLN News

A former Nashville police captain charged with sexual misconduct will not face criminal charges, a prosecutor says.Stephen JerkinsWPLN news

A former Metro Nashville Police Department captain will not be charged in 2016 for an alleged assault on a subordinate.

A district attorney with the Davidson County District Attorney told WPLN News that she believed a crime had occurred but could not bring charges because the officer waited too long to file a complaint with law enforcement.

“In this particular case, although I believe we could have proven abusive touch or assault because of the statute of limitations, we are not allowed to bring this charge,” said Assistant District Attorney Tammy Meade.

Nashville Police Chief Jason Reinbold retired last November.Courtesy of the Metro Nashville Police Department

State agents began investigating then-Captain Jason Reinbold after a local organization that supports sexual assault survivors made several allegations of sexual misconduct against him by current and former MNPD employees.

The group, Silent No Longer, reported the allegations to the mayor’s office, police and state officials. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation then attempted to confirm the claims.

Only one of Reinbold’s accusers agreed to speak to investigators. WPLN News does not name the woman as she may be a victim of a sex crime.

Since she was the only one who came forward, the TBI was unable to fully investigate the other allegations. Reinbold has denied the allegations against him in the past. He could not be reached for comment before the publication.

Report fear

The allegation at the center of this investigation dates back to 2016, just before the police moved from their old headquarters in the city center. It was first investigated in 2019 after the woman reported the incident to the city’s human resources department.

The former officer told Metro HR that Reinbold called her into his office and after a few minutes of talking, got up and locked the door. Then, she said, he asked to touch her chest.

The woman said she was scared and nervous because he was her captain. She didn’t know how to react. So she blurted out a yes. Then, she said, he felt her chest.

“She then left his office feeling embarrassed and humiliated,” recruiters wrote in a 2019 report.

“She said she was too intimidated to report it at the time and that she was not strong enough to report it then, but she is a different person now,” they wrote. “After that incident, she felt like she was ‘going downhill’ at work.”

By then, the officer had waited about three years to file a complaint after leaving the department for an invalidity pension. Metro HR found, according to a 2019 factual report, that it “was unable to substantiate the claim” in the absence of witnesses or videotaping, and Reinbold denied that it happened.

The report was forwarded to an associate head of MNPD, but Reinbold’s personnel or disciplinary files do not contain any records of an internal investigation. A spokeswoman for MNPD noted Metro HR’s determination and said the department was “not aware of any other internal complaints against Reinbold for sexual misconduct.”

The allegations surfaced again in August 2020 after Silent No Longer told reporters at a press conference that several women had accused Reinbold of wrongdoing. But by then, says Meade, it’s already too late.

The prosecutor says she considered two charges: sexual abuse and assault.

Sexual battery, Meade says, requires the state to prove beyond doubt that an intimate part has been touched without permission for sexual satisfaction. She says sexual intent is difficult to prove in court. And in this case, she believed that touch was about more than sexual satisfaction.

“That was an overseer-overseer situation. And the real point of interaction would have been power and control, not sex, ”says Meade.

Even if the prosecutor said she could have proven the case in court, the limitation period has already expired.

Meade says she is confident she has charged Reinbold with assault, including touching what “a reasonable person” would consider “extremely offensive or provocative”. But for this charge, which is an administrative offense, the statute of limitations is only one year.

“I hate telling the victims that. I hate not being able to help them, ”says Meade. “It always disappoints me when I have to say to someone, ‘I believe you. I would love to be able to do this for you. But the statute of limitations says I can’t. ‘”

The prosecutor says she has no reason not to believe the former officer. And Meade could understand why the woman, like so many sex crime victims, didn’t tell her story right away, even as a law-enforcement officer.

“She didn’t sound like an officer. She sounded like a woman who had been a victim, ”she says. “And the reason why she didn’t get in touch was understandable to me. Everything she said made sense. “

Although Meade understands why survivors are afraid to report to law enforcement immediately, she suggests filing a complaint as soon as possible so prosecutors have time to prosecute.

‘What do you do then?’

But some victim rights activists say that is unrealistic for many victims of sexual offenses. They say statute of limitations can make it difficult for sexual assault survivors to get justice through the judicial system. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, only about a third of rape and sexual assault cases are reported to law enforcement. And for those who do appear, the chances of being charged are slim.

That’s partly due to restrictive statutes of limitations, says Kelly Peters, Attorney General at SAFE Clinic in Nashville.

“Personally, I believe that there should be no statute of limitations when it comes to a sex crime, or a crime against a child, or a crime against a vulnerable adult,” she says. “Because we know so much about PTSD, because we know so much not only about the physical response, but also about the emotional response. And that’s why we know that not everyone will be in touch immediately. “

Peters says it could be years before a suppressed memory emerges or someone finds the courage to disclose an attack. In the meantime, they could lose their chance of being charged.

“There are some people I’ve worked with who haven’t come back and it was time to reach the end of their statute of limitations and they didn’t know what to do,” says Peters. “They were emotionally and mentally unwilling to do the report, but then they had to deal with it: ‘I know if I don’t do the report by that date, I will never be able to do the report because the statute of limitations is about to expire . ‘ And what are you doing then?”

The statutes of limitations for sexual offenses vary widely from state to state and from crime to crime. In Tennessee, victims have 15 years to report severe rape – sometimes longer if the victim was a child. But for palpation, defined as sexual battery, the limit is in most cases only two years; it can be extended in certain cases, for example when a weapon is used to coerce someone.

State lawmakers admitted in a 2018 study that Tennessee’s criminal statute of limitations “is a matter of legislative choice” and that “there is no science in calculating the exact duration.” Rather, they are designed to protect people charged with crimes from false convictions when memories have faded or evidence has disappeared.

However, national advocates of sex crime victims argue that these arbitrary time limits should be abolished altogether for such cases.

“The United States is a patchwork of statutes of limitations,” said Camille Cooper, vice president of public policy for the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN).

Some states, Cooper says, have removed all statute of limitations on capital crimes, while others give victims only one year to report to law enforcement. She says that many victims are already reluctant to speak up and that a ticking clock only makes it more difficult.

RAINN is advocating that states lift their sexual assault reporting deadlines and require law enforcement officers to train on trauma so survivors are not afraid of being convicted or retraumatized if they come forward.

“You have to be able to give every survivor access to the justice system,” says Cooper. “At the moment, survivors are banned in most states. You have a time limit to gain access to justice. “

This story was produced by APM Reports as part of the Public Media Accountability Initiative, which supports investigative reporting in local media across the country. Support also came from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.