LINCOLN – Nine individuals have stepped forward to confront the toxic culture that persists inside the Lincoln Police and Fire Departments. After speaking out against the systemic abuse and receiving retaliation from their departments, seven police officers and two firefighters have come together to bring light to the pervasive problems in Lincoln.

In partnership with the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund, they are in talks to bring legal action against their departments in the hopes of instilling lasting change and making sure that the Police and Fire departments are made accountable for their actions. There were many reports of aggression, harassment, sexual assault, racism, and threats of violence. This story was first brought to light at the beginning of December by the Lincoln Journal-Star.

We spoke with three of the police officers who have spoken out against the sexual harassment and assault, as well as discrimination and racism they experienced and saw. All three individuals are long standing members of the police department, who, upon reporting the abuse, were targeted and subsequently fired.

Angela Sands had been with the Lincoln Police Department for ten years, two of which she served as a Sergeant. She had experienced harassment from as early as her Academy days, where she was the only female in her class. “Right from the beginning there is kind of an indoctrination of ‘if you want to stay here, you better shut your mouth and just show them you’re tough enough.’”  

“I had gone to some senior female officers [in the Academy] to ask ‘hey, I’m being assaulted, I’m being bullied, I’m getting harassed, certainly this isn’t allowed?’” Sands explained, “and they told me to keep my mouth shut and that that was just the guys testing me to see if I was tough enough to be a cop.”

Women and people of color were harassed and treated differently, Sands reported, saying it seemed like a “different set of standards, and those in charge are so used to it they don’t even know they’re doing it.”

Sands felt part of the reason she put off formally reporting anything for a time was that she wanted to be a part of fixing the issues in the criminal justice system. “It took me way too long to speak up. I knew that to climb the ranks you had to keep your mouth shut.” Sands knew that for her to be able to effect change, she would have to be a supervisor of some degree, so “I kept my mouth shut long enough to become a Sergeant, hoping to become a Captain…as soon as I became a Sergeant, though, I had another curtain open, so I could see a little more behind the scenes.” 

“I had been sexually assaulted, other females had been sexually assaulted, I had witnessed very blatant racism towards women of color.” Sands spoke about one officer, a Kurdish woman, and how other officers targeted her and had her written up for things that others were not punished for. “Seeing that targeting from a higher vantage point started to weigh on me.”

“The straw that broke the camel’s back was when I got promoted.” Sands explained that she had been made to be the direct supervisor of the man who had assaulted her. She reported the issue to her chief, but nothing was done. She was forced to work with the man for eight months. “The other male officers didn’t like him either, they knew he was racist and he sexually assaulted women, and they would always, without my asking, make sure I was never alone with him.”

 “I actually went to my Captain, and just said ‘hey, I don’t want to supervise this man anymore. Here’s why.’” She explained the details to her Captain, who gave her the go-ahead to take the matter directly to the city.  “The police department is allowed to investigate itself for EEO (Equal Employment Opportunity, harassment complaints of any type are considered EEO investigations) complaints, so we were going to go above and have City EEO investigate.”

“Shortly thereafter, they eliminated the City EEO. Which was really interesting, because the people doing the investigation seemed to be very supportive, and seemed to be making some headway on their investigation. I think it was the mayor’s office [that] came in and said ‘we’re just going to eliminate City EEO, you can go directly to your department.’ Which means I have to go to the people who harass, assault, our only way to report is to go through their friends or supervisors.”

After reporting her abuser, the man was put on paid leave during the investigation. Sands said the time after that was “very isolating”. “I had seen somebody else come forward about excessive force before, and I remember how they just isolated that officer, they wouldn’t respond to back that officer up anymore on calls. It was very dangerous to come forward; you no longer had help. They were like ‘too bad, you don’t come forward and tattle about officers. Don’t be a narc, don’t be a rat.’” Multiple people have stated they were afraid to go out into the field, knowing there was a good chance that no backup would come if they were in danger.

Sands said she felt less safe after reporting, which was made worse when her abuser was allowed to return to the department with the only requirement being that he take counseling. “They called it boundary issues.”

“They told me and [another victim] that he wouldn’t be allowed in the same building as us. I argued back with them, in an email because I wanted it in writing, and I said ‘hey, you’re admitting that it’s not safe for us to be around him, and he had to go get counseling, but you’re allowing him to be a police officer. I have serious concerns for our community.’” 

The anxiety she felt from being around her attacker affected her ability to work. She had been prepping to join Internal Affairs, but when she went to have an interview with them, she suffered a panic attack from seeing him walk into the building.

“They set the standard that they needed probable cause to fire him. It’s not a criminal case, you don’t need probable cause...There was so much evidence that any other employer would have removed him: physical evidence, multiple witnesses, but they said ‘we don’t have probable cause’. That is such a high standard to fire anyone.”

Sands explained how she felt guilt originally due to the stigma behind lawsuits, and that she had spent a large part of her career trying to come up with solutions to the problems she saw in the department, “I didn’t just complain about the problems, I came up with solutions...Luke [Bonkiewicz] and I took a ten to twenty page document to the chief saying, ‘here’s the problem, here’s actionable steps to take; some today, some long term.’  Real solutions, because the point of it was to make the department better for the officers as well as the public, because both are suffering with the problems they have.”

Sands commented that staying silent is part of the problem, but “it’s hard when you see so many losing their jobs, so I understand it.”

Erin Spilker had been a police officer with Lincoln for 20 years, working as a public information officer, in community service, field training, and as an investigator of sex crimes. Like Sands, she saw the discrimination as early as when she was in the Academy.

“It’s such a cultural part of the Lincoln police department, and it starts so early on that it’s even part of your training.” Spilker said. Spilker described Academy training as being similar to military training, where they are trying to “teach you a mindset and see if you have what it takes”.

“The problem is,” she said, “I think they intertwine that with ‘oh, you’re a woman, you’re not what we would normally see in this male-dominated career, so do you have what it takes? And if she can’t, let’s force her out.’”

“We spoke out a lot to supervisors, and to peers, with no response,” Spilker said when talking of how she and others attempted to report the abuse they were subjected to. They reported it to supervisors, captains, chiefs, and city officials, with little response. She and many others decided to make formal reports of the behavior they were being subjected to, and received retaliation because of it.

“I didn’t care what that reaction would be, to some degree, I had to do what was right.” Said Spilker when talking about the backlash from reporting. “But I recognized very quickly that I was no longer welcome.” She no longer felt free to socialize with others on the job, and the negative attitude led her to doing most of her work from her cruiser instead of in the report room. 

“I understand that there are pieces of law enforcement that need to be secret, information that needs to be protected, but the people who hurt me were veiled as heroes and were continually making mistakes and getting in trouble, but they were never stopped from being officers. It’s a scary thought that those people would be out in the community in positions of power if they are willing to [harm] a coworker.”

Spilker believes “a big part of speaking up had to do with being a mother. It had a lot to do with having seniority and veteran status in the police department, seeing it happen to new people coming in and I didn’t want to see it happen anymore.”

“There were things that happened to me that were unbearable and really intolerable, but the heart of the person I am is to help others. I wanted to prevent others from having to go through what I did, and I wanted to do everything I could to make law enforcement, especially in Lincoln, the best law enforcement agency that existed, and I thought that we could do that. That’s why I chose to speak out, in hopes of change.”

“As a police officer, one of the biggest things I pride myself in was the work I did for victims. And if I saw wrong-doing, it’s my job to protect those individuals. But part of that means that inside of who I am is when you see someone, you want to help them. Sometimes being the person that speaks up means you have to put yourself out there, you have to put yourself in harm’s way.”

More than anything, what Spilker wants is change in how the department handles itself. “Law enforcement is there because of the public. We are there to serve the public. If we don’t police the police in how they serve that public and the powers that they are given, there has to be a trust that is instilled there, and that means how we are vetting police officers who come in, and that there is accountability for all those actions. Law enforcement has been unique in the fact that they live on ‘we’re going to do what we do and we don’t owe an explanation because we’re the law’. It needs to be a more cooperative effort for the community and the police, and that continues to not be the goal of the police department.”

But it isn’t just women who have to deal with the toxicity; men are also targeted if they speak out against behavior that they didn’t agree with.

Luke Bonkiewicz worked for the Lincoln police department for 11 years, where he worked as a patrol officer as well as in education and personnel, and management services. Bonkiewicz oversaw the data analysis unit, helped with recruitment and interviews, and performed background checks.

Bonkiewicz comments that, for him personally, he was very private at work for many years and was not one for long interactions with others, so it took him a while before he noticed the behavior in his department. “I came in, I did my job, I didn’t interact with a lot of other people, and then I went home. A lot of other cops are enmeshed in the police culture, and so they would hang out a lot, on- and off-duty, with other officers, and I was always someone who kept to himself.”

It was while working with Sands that he learned about the prevalence of abuse and violence that other officers, particularly female, were experiencing. “She began telling me about how the law enforcement experience could be very different for a woman compared to a male. And that sort of opened my eyes, and then I began having different conversations with other female police officers and they would tell me about their experiences at LPD.”

“I helped write and turn in EEO complaints, and I turned in my own misconduct complaints. These were not tied back to me, because I was mainly helping other people.”

He noticed the change in the atmosphere around him when the department was looking for a new police chief, at which time he sent an email to the mayor’s office in which he detailed what was going on at the LPD: “The goal of the email was to raise awareness about this issue. In my email I said that the Lincoln Police Department has many good officers, we do several things very well. But one of the things we need to fix, one of the things we need to bring attention to, is the fact that there is an issue of sexual misconducts, and that has to do with sexual harassment and in some cases sexual assault.” He said that after sending that email is when he started to feel retaliation.

He had his first ever negative performance review following his attempt to bring light to the issues he was seeing, where he was told his “declining attitude” was an issue. He appealed it all the way to the acting-chief, who had it removed from his file. But this was just the beginning, as he was soon taken out of the public relations department without an adequate explanation. “I was removed from the public eye.”

Bonkiewicz attempted to pitch an idea to the current chief-of-police about bringing an outside expert to study the policing experience for women at the department, including looking into sexual misconduct. “The chief became very angry; she called it a ‘fishing expedition’ and she said it was ‘an insult to every male officer in the police department’. She said that these were things that happened in the 70’s and 80’s, these were things that happened decades ago. I was just so surprised and discouraged by that conversation, and then a week later she transferred me out of her unit.”

“A couple months after that, I got pulled into a meeting that said ‘hey, we understand you might have information about instances of sexual misconduct’. And I said ‘I’ve already given you all of my information’, and at that time I told them ‘hey, I am coordinating an outside research project. I’m helping other people do it, I’m not gathering the data, I’m not analyzing the data or anything like that.’ And when they heard about that, the chief eliminated my position, she sent me back to patrol and she revoked my work-from-home privileges.” At the time this was 2021, during points where many who could were working from home to be safer during the Pandemic. This project was published by SAGE Publishing in January 2022, and Bonkiewicz was suspended not long after.

Bonkiewicz also spoke about a survey that was being done in the department at the time. It was supposed to be a private survey that all members of the department were free to do, however, instead of being able to work on it at a private computer, Bonkiewicz was made to do his “in the conference room of a police captain, while my answers were broadcast up on a big screen TV, and the captain sat at his desk several feet away.”

“The captain apologized to me and explained that he was simply following orders from the administration. He had been ordered to conduct the survey in this manner…I don’t know if he was monitoring me, I simply took my survey.” It was not long after this that he was terminated.

“Up until I started speaking out about this issue, I suffered no negative impacts, my career was a very normal career. It was only after I started speaking up and trying to raise awareness about sexual misconduct at LPD that my job performance began to be negatively impacted.”

All involved are hoping for widespread change to the department. Spilker spoke on how she wants “my community to be safe. I want law enforcement to be trusted; to be effective; to be elite and prestigious. I think the biggest thing I want to see is that women have a place in law enforcement, that a cultural change needs to happen in law enforcement in general.” She hopes “that every woman that follows my footsteps in going into a 20-year law enforcement career can walk out, not with a bunch of stories about the terrible things that happened, but stories about the difference they made.”

For Sands, she said “if anything, what I would want to see come out of this is some of those changes we had suggested and are still suggesting. They just dug in so much with ‘there’s no problem, there’s no problem, you guys are the problem’, and I think any of us are still willing to come to the table. I think Lincoln is the coolest community. I grew up here, it’s just a unique little funky town, and I really believed that we could have a different police department than what you see throughout the country: just something a little more progressive, highly educated officers who understand race relations, who understand the sensitivities and history of policing. I just felt that we could be better, that we could be the example for other police departments…That’s what I hoped when I was there and I still have hope.”

Sands commented on an occasion where the LPD had a discussion on rape kits and testing, and how she pointed out at the time that there were no women or sexual assault experts, and it was unlikely they had any sexual assault victims that had been invited to the meeting to discuss the issue. She outlines this as one of many points where a lack of diversity was a major problem in the department, and how “they wanted their friends who look like them and thought like them, and when you have a government entity that functions like that, that’s scary.”

“The majority of the police officers in the LPD are good, honorable people,” Sands said. “Those in charge are failing them on such a miserable level that they are pushing more good officers out, which is then in turn hurting the community. It’s not too late for them to step up and do what’s right.”

Bonkiewicz, who as of this article does not currently have any litigation against the city or department, does still hope for changes to how the LPD runs itself. “I am hoping for wide-spread institutional change within the police department, that is my goal. The reason that is my goal is because how a police department treats its employees directly impacts the quality of the police service in the community.”

“If a police department will not acknowledge the problem of sexual misconduct in their own agency, how are they going to treat victims of sex crimes who report to them? I have heard our department’s legal advisor refer to these ‘alleged acts’ of sexual misconduct as ‘urban legends’. That’s the term that’s been used, I’ve heard it used multiple times, in front of our current police chief. I’ve heard it used in front of assistant chiefs. No one has ever corrected anyone using the term ‘urban legends’, which makes me think, regardless of whether you can investigate or punish or arrest a perpetrator for an alleged act of sexual misconduct, the fact that you’re using the term ‘urban legend’ discourages people from reporting these incidents, and I think it makes people think that you’re not taking these incidents seriously. Imagine if I was a police officer and I used the term ‘urban legend’ to describe rape, or sexual assault. I think that would be egregious. I would never use the term ‘urban legend’, because in my opinion that signals that we won’t believe you.”

Bonkiewicz stated that he would like to “be part of the larger change that improves equity and diversity for the law enforcement profession, because I think that will, in turn, improve the quality of police service … not only in the Lincoln community, but all communities. And that’s really what the focus is. We are seeking local institutional change, but we are also looking for some type of ripple effect, so we can improve the law enforcement profession in general.

“I think the Lincoln police department and the city of Lincoln need to publicly acknowledge that there is a sexual misconduct problem at LPD. Until that is done, all the change that they are talking about and that they’re claiming to make will not be successful. I think that acknowledging that sexual misconduct is a problem that needs to be addressed and solved would validate a lot of people who have suffered because of this, and I think it would open the communication channels, and I really think that’s where the conversation could start to be had. But until they acknowledge that there’s an issue, it’s never going to be addressed.” 

It is important to recognize that, while we spoke to many police officers, it is not only the Lincoln Police Department that has come under scrutiny. The Lincoln Fire and Rescue has also shown retaliatory behavior and an abusive environment.

We were unable to speak with Amanda Benson, an EMT with the Lincoln Fire and Rescue who has recently been reinstated, but Sands was able to offer her opinion: “Amanda was the first to publicly denounce the systemic harassment, discrimination and retaliation going unchecked by leadership across the Lincoln Fire & Rescue Department. Her bravery – which came at great personal and professional cost – paved the way for countless other local first responders to speak out about their experiences on the job.

It is not lost upon us that Amanda burdened much of the public scrutiny around these issues alone, before our collective of 9 plaintiffs came together to hold city leaders accountable,” said Sands. “I am so proud to see Amanda reinstated at her Fire and Rescue job. She has dedicated her life and career to protecting our communities. Lincoln residents should feel safer with Amanda by their side.”

Benson has worked with the LFR for 10 years, and reported sexism, harassment, and deliberate attacks against her career. Benson and Jessie Lundvall have both filed charges against the LFR with the Time’s up Legal Defense Fund.

Jennifer Mondino, the Director of the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund, spoke about the situation: “We are proud to support the Lincoln police officers and firefighters who bravely sounded the alarm about the sexual abuse and retaliation they routinely experienced on the job. As first responders, they put their lives on the line every day to protect their communities —and yet their employers have failed to protect them by sweeping their abuse under the rug, and then retaliating against them when they spoke out about it. Senior staff at the police and fire departments have a duty to address sexual abuse — not only as a matter of public safety, but also to safeguard the men and women within their own ranks.” 

Kelly Brandon, the attorney that is working the case, said, “Erin Spilker’s case is presently pending in Lancaster County District Court.  Angela Sands’ litigation will be filed in January of 2023.  Luke Bonkiewicz is weighing whether he will file litigation in the near future, depending upon City leaders’ response to these former decorated officers’ repeated requests for a call to action to acknowledge the pervasiveness of this problem at LPD.  We believe there is overwhelming evidence to support their claims.”

Following the lawsuit, Spilker currently plans to give back to her community and help with community building, focusing on women’s rights, and helping sexual assault and child victims. She does not see herself returning to law enforcement at this point, and commented that it is hard to balance being a police officer and being a parent.

Sands describes herself as being at a crossroads. She’s considered whether or not she’d go back to police work, but stated that she “doesn’t want to be a part of a problem.” She’s stated that if they were able to enact some of the changes and promoted more diversity, she would consider returning, and at the very least wants to be at the table to be a part of the solution. She is currently looking into different volunteer programs to help with assault victims in Lincoln, and helping with LGBTQIA+ programs as well.

For Bonkiewicz, he talks about how he was “born and raised in Lincoln, went to elementary school, junior high, high school, college here in Lincoln, NE. It is my home, it is my hometown, and I would like nothing more than to return to serving my community as a police officer. But, if that is not possible, I would still like the opportunity to serve as a police officer in another community, maybe as a reserve officer, because law enforcement is in my blood, it’s in my heart, it really is a part of who I am. It’s that spirit of public service and sacrifice that has always been so attractive to me.”