A Dallas police lieutenant is accused of harassing two female colleagues and making inappropriate comments, such as calling one of them "Peaches" and inviting the other on a Las Vegas getaway.
Police started investigating narcotics Lt. Aaron Bell after an office assistant complained about him in November.
The next month, a senior corporal came forward with her own allegations and said she tolerated his inappropriate behavior for a long time without complaining because people told her he was "protected by" David Brown, the police chief at the time.
Chief U. Renee Hall, the city's first woman to lead the department, took over last fall.
Bell has been on administrative leave since November while police investigate the workplace harassment claims against him. Police haven't said when they plan to complete the internal affairs investigation.
Reached by phone Thursday, Bell said he wasn't available to talk to The News and hung up.
Officers under investigation aren't typically allowed to talk publicly about the allegations against them until the case is closed. It's unclear whether Bell has an attorney who can speak on his behalf.
In a four-page statement to investigators, Bell denied the allegations and said he finds them "extremely offensive."
"I pride myself on making rounds in our division removing offensive material from the lockers and walls of our unit each day and that is why I find these allegations extremely offensive," he wrote in his statement.
Bell's accusers have not been publicly identified, but investigative documents The News obtained through an open-records request note several instances when he allegedly made his co-workers feel uncomfortable.
The senior corporal wrote in a 10-page statement to investigators that the lieutenant once offered to take her and her friends to Las Vegas and pay for everything — an offer she said she turned down.
"This really bothered me because I had never given him the impression that I had liked him or I was that type of female," she wrote in a December statement to internal affairs investigators.
She wrote that her superior's offer "made me feel like I was a prostitute because I feel like he just wanted to have a sexual relationship in Vegas."
Congratulations to the newly promoted Major Midge Boyle & Lt's Aaron Bell, William Griffith & Angela Shaw. Eat your Wheaties!
— Chief David O. Brown (@ChiefDavidBrown) December 23, 2013
The woman said she tolerated his behavior for years and didn't report it for a while because she heard he was close to Brown and other high-ranking police officials who she worried might protect him. She filed a formal complaint only after Hall took over the department.
"Now we have a female chief and I just can't see her standing for this type of behavior especially from high ranking supervisors," the woman wrote in her statement in December. She added that she decided to come forward because "I cannot sit back and allow him to treat another female how he treated me for so long."
Brown did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday.
The unidentified office assistant said she couldn't pinpoint the first time Bell made her feel uncomfortable during the roughly two years she worked with him.
"But I do remember how it made me feel," she wrote. "I felt cheap. I felt belittled, I felt very small."
She alleged in her internal affairs statement that Bell would refer to her as "Peaches" and once said "Mmm, mmm" loudly as she walked past his office, "as if I was a piece of meat or a sex object."
"Although Lieutenant Bell has never touched me I feel in my heart had I not said anything then his would have continued and possibly gotten worse," she wrote in her statement.
An officer who is friends with the office assistant told police that after Valentine's Day one year, Bell told them he enjoyed the holiday with "himself, his five fingers and Netflix." The officer said she advised her friend to start documenting her encounters with him.
In November, a police lieutenant who heard that the office assistant was confiding in her co-workers pulled her aside to hear her out.
Visibility distraught, the office manager told the lieutenant she wasn't looking to cause problems in the workplace, according to the lieutenant who accompanied the woman to the internal affairs division so she could file a sexual harassment complaint.
But in his statement to investigators, Bell wrote that he's never had any desire to be involved with the office assistant "in anything other than as a co-coworker."
He also denied that he made any comments that were intended to be sexual, offensive or inappropriate, or that he talked to his co-workers about Valentine's Day, saying he does not have a Netflix account.
Dallas defines harassment as any unwelcome conduct, based on race, age, gender, religion or other characteristics, that interferes with an employee's working conditions.
The Dallas Police Department's general orders "strictly" prohibit sexual harassment and any retaliation for reporting sexual harassment. The general orders say touching someone in an offensive way, alluding to someone's way of dressing in a sexually oriented way or telling sexual jokes can all contribute to sexual harassment.
