By MELINDA J. OVERSTREET
for Glasgow News 1
It’s official. The latest in a trio of lawsuits unsuccessfully pursued against the City of Glasgow by the same former police chief has reached its end.
Glasgow News 1 reported after the filing deadline recently passed for Guy Joseph Turcotte to continue with any further steps in the appellate process that it appeared he would be letting go of it.
Turcotte was chief of the Glasgow Police Department for almost four years before he stepped down from that position at the end of 2014, as the mayor who had appointed him was leaving her term in office, but he stayed with the department.
When he left the top departmental position – with the common speculation being that it was meant to prevent his being fired, because the discipline process is more complex for peace officers who aren’t appointed to such leadership positions – he wasn’t happy with his assigned roles, which prompted his first lawsuit against the city. Most recently, he was a detective with the department.
He pursued every appeal option he had for that case and another civil action he filed, all the way to the Kentucky Supreme Court, after losing the case at the local level. This time, he chose not to take it past an initial ruling from a Kentucky Court of Appeals three-judge panel.
Turcotte was accused in early 2023 of inappropriately touching an employee of a local business, along with other potentially sexually charged inappropriate behaviors. He was placed on administrative leave – paid for the first few months and later unpaid – and a one-year interpersonal protective order was issued to keep him a certain distance away from the primary complainant. Turcotte had appealed the IPO to the commonwealth’s highest court to no avail.
On April 20, 2023, a misdemeanor criminal charge of harassment with physical contact but no injury was filed against him. It was after this point that Turcotte’s administrative leave became unpaid. A special prosecutor and a special judge – both based in Monroe County – were assigned due to potential conflicts of interest with the county attorney and district judge based in Barren County because of the nature of Turcotte’s work. After multiple delays due to a variety of reasons, the case went to trial in September 2024 in Monroe County, where a jury found Turcotte not guilty of the criminal charge.
In the meantime, though, Mayor Henry Royse had scheduled a July 2023 hearing with regard to any potential disciplinary measures that should be taken from the employment perspective. Turcotte chose not to attend that hearing, which his attorney had tried to get postponed, pending the criminal trial. Royse found that the hearing could proceed because some of the issues under consideration were different than with the criminal matter and because a different standard of proof is required to find a person violated a policy – or policies – than it is to find that a person broke a law. Royse announced in August 2023 his decision to terminate Turcotte’s employment.
Turcotte proceeded to appeal that decision in Barren Circuit Court, but Circuit Judge John T. Alexander ruled in favor of the city and police department, both of which were named in the civil lawsuit, in March 2024. Turcotte then appealed Alexander’s decision with the Kentucky Court of Appeals, the panel from which affirmed that circuit court ruling on May 30. Turcotte had until June 20 to petition for a rehearing with that same trio of judges or with the full 14-member Court of Appeals. He had no further options beyond that. No such filing had been received by that court as of June 24, as GN1 reported that day.
While electronic filing is available and widely used by attorneys across the state, the court delays considering a case as finished until roughly 10 days have passed after the deadline to petition; this is meant to provide for the possibility that the filing was sent via regular mail, in which case it would have to be postmarked by the filing deadline to be considered.
Earlier this week, the Kentucky Court of Appeals officially designated the case as reaching finality, noting that once the case records were received back to its central office by the presiding judge, those records would be returned to the circuit court clerk.
Prior lawsuits
After Turcotte resigned his position as chief but opted to stay with the department just as then-Mayor Rhonda Riherd Trautman was ending her term, he was unhappy with his position and/or duties – or lack thereof – under the subsequent GPD leadership. In 2015, he sued the city and James Duff, who became interim police chief, in both his personal and professional capacities. When that lawsuit was dismissed by Alexander from Barren Circuit Court in 2017, Turcotte took his case to the Kentucky Court of Appeals; upon losing there in 2018, he asked the Kentucky Supreme Court for a discretionary review of the case. It was denied later that same year.
The Court of Appeals opinion affirming the circuit court ruling summarizes the allegations made as such: “On May 27, 2015, [Turcotte] filed this action alleging a violation of KRS [Kentucky Revised Statute] §95.450 and defamation. [Turcotte] argues that KRS §95.450 was violated because, as the second-highest ranking officer within the Glasgow Police Department, he has been assigned no supervisory duties. According to [Turcotte], this has been the case since Doty was sworn in as Mayor and appointed Defendant Duff as Interim Chief of Police. Additionally, [Turcotte] alleges that Defendant Duff made defamatory statements about him.”
In 2018, Turcotte sued the city again, this time including as other defendants the police department; the mayor, still Doty at the time; and Guy Howie, who had been named Glasgow police chief for the first time after Duff’s time as interim chief. This new – yet related to the previous dispute – civil matter was dismissed at the circuit level (late 2019) and then taken to the Court of Appeals, which again upheld Alexander’s ruling (2020).
The KCOA opinion states: “Appellant (Turcotte) argues that the circuit court failed to view the facts in a light most favorable to Appellant, that he was legally appointed to the position of Lieutenant Colonel in the Glasgow Police Department, and that summary judgment was improperly rendered on various statutory and free speech claims. …
“In 2014, Glasgow Mayor Rhonda Trautman was defeated in a mayoral election by Dick Doty. Because Doty ran on a platform of fiscal responsibility and integrity within the police department, Appellant assumed that Doty would terminate him as Chief of Police when Doty took office. In anticipation of being fired, Appellant resigned before Doty took office. Just before leaving office, Mayor Trautman appointed Appellant to the position of Lieutenant Colonel of Support within the Glasgow Police Department. Appellant was never assigned any duties or responsibilities. …
“After taking office, Mayor Doty assigned James Duff as interim Chief of Police. On May 27, 2017, Appellant sued the City of Glasgow and Duff alleging violation of Kentucky Revised Statute (“KRS”) 95.450 (disciplinary procedures for police departments) and defamation. Appellant alleged that a violation of KRS 95.450 resulted when he was assigned to a position within the Glasgow Police Department but not assigned any job duties.”
The appellate court opinion goes on to say that while the first lawsuit was still pending its outcome, the city council enacted a municipal order that repealed the GPD’s Standard Operating Procedure manual in effect at the time, in 2016, and adopted a new organizational structure for the GPD that eliminated the positions of lieutenant colonel altogether.
“Because the first lawsuit was still pending when the new procedures were adopted, the City of Glasgow and the Glasgow Police Department continued Appellant’s title and salary until the first lawsuit was resolved …,” the KCOA document states. “After the first lawsuit ended, Chief Howie, who was then Chief of Police, provided Appellant with a memorandum on October 8, 2018, explaining the new organizational structure and a change of Appellant’s job title to patrol officer. Appellant refused to sign a personnel status form reflecting his status change.”
Turcotte then filed the second lawsuit.
“In this second action, Appellant alleged that he was improperly demoted in violation of KRS 95.450, KRS 15.520, and KRS 61.102. The corpus of the second complaint was that Appellant was improperly denied notice and a formal hearing when Appellees took disciplinary action against him. He also alleged violation of his right to engage in free speech on a matter of public concern as secured by the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution …,” the opinion affirming Alexander’s ruling states. “The circuit court determined that Appellant could not prevail on his statutory claims because the change in Appellant’s employment status was not the result of a disciplinary action, but rather resulted from the City of Glasgow’s restructuring of the police department. … Finally, the circuit court concluded that though Appellant had been given time to engage in discovery on his allegation of an improper deprivation of his right to free speech, he produced no evidence in support of said claim.”
Again, the Kentucky Supreme Court declined to provide a discretionary review of the case.
The appellate court also noted in that opinion that Howie had retired by the time the opinion was written, and his successor and then-Chief Jennifer Arbogast (appointed by then-Mayor Harold Armstrong) was not a party to the lawsuit.
Shortly after Royse became mayor in 2023 and essentially forced Arbogast to retire, Royse rehired Howie for his second round as GPD chief.
