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By MARY JO MELONE
© St. Petersburg Times, published August 31, 1999
Robert Eschenfelder is an assistant city attorney for the city of St. Petersburg. If you live in the city, he works for you. Not the mayor, not some department manager.
So maybe you should tell Eschenfelder. Tell him to talk in the Karen Lea case.
Lea, a former city police sergeant, sued early this year. In what has become a familiar song around the department, she charged that she'd been the target of the wrath of police Chief Go Davis, that she'd been sexually harassed and retaliated against.
When an alcoholic officer under her command repeatedly made sexual remarks to her while drunk, Lea said, Davis sat on his hands and did nothing. But he was quick to suspend and demote her when she lost her temper and shouted insults at a civilian colleague who is gay.
This may sound like inside baseball to you, another round in a political fight. All you probably care about is whether the police are prompt when you call 911, and whether the crack dealers stay off your block.
But Go Davis may be the city's next administrator, now that Darrel Stephens is leaving. Court papers filed by Lea's attorney in federal court last week ought to make the mayor, who could promote Davis, and his other fans think again, and harder this time.
This is where Eschenfelder fits in.
His name appears throughout the court briefs. Both Lea and another female sergeant, Linda Perez, said under oath that Eschenfelder warned them about Davis' vindictiveness -- and that it was aimed at both of them.
Perez also got sexually harassing calls from the officer with the drinking problem. But Eschenfelder said the chief didn't believe either woman. According to Perez, Eschenfelder had heard the chief say, "Karen is a whore, and Linda is not much different."
The officer with the drinking problem got no help for several months, until March 1998, when he was caught drunk off duty, brought into the department and became verbally abusive to his superiors, even in front of Davis.
Every lawsuit is a series of word fights, contained in briefs filed back and forth, until trial time. This one is no different. Lea's lawyer, James Sheehan, filed the documents last week after the city asked a judge to bar Sheehan from asking Eschenfelder questions. The city claimed attorney-client privilege.
Lea said in the court papers that Eschenfelder told her Davis tampered with the outcome of an appeal of her discipline, a charge other city officials involved deny.
Perez said that Eschenfelder told her that everyone who testified for Lea in still another proceeding, to keep her pension, would also suffer retaliation from Davis. Eschenfelder himself failed to testify truthfully, Perez said.
Right after that hearing, Perez said she was told she was being moved back to street patrol. She hadn't been on the street in years. She was head of the department's employee counseling program.
Two additional women who testified for Karen Lea have already filed complaints that their careers were hurt after they appeared at the hearing. The same thing may have happened to Perez. Returning to the street was one thing she couldn't do. She'd once been beaten so badly in the line of duty she required repeated facial surgery, and her doctor said she cannot risk further injury by going back on patrol. Perez is on medical leave.
Go Davis wouldn't talk about this latest sorry tale about his department. The mayor never called back. Neither did Eschenfelder, the man in the middle.
The city may let him hang out to dry. The city's lawyer, Tom Gonzalez, said late Monday he just didn't want Eschenfelder testifying about his conversations with Davis or the mayor, people at that level -- but that what he said to Karen Lea or Linda Perez may be fair game for questioning.