State investigation reveals more allegations against fired officer

Juvenile pranks, vulgar language and sexual innuendoes were not uncommon between two parties involved in a 911 dispatcher’s sexual assault complaint reported last July, according to a report by the Montana Division of Criminal Investigation
That’s the takeaway from reading four investigative reports DCI Agent Len Knutson completed in August and September.
The investigation was conducted at the request of Columbus Police Chief Bill Pronovost when the Stillwater County Sheriff’s Office dispatcher’s sexual assault complaint was reported on July 6.
In a complaint filed with the Montana Human Rights Bureau last fall, the dispatcher alleged that former Columbus Police Sgt. Paul Caraway exposed himself to her on two separate occasions in the dispatch facility while they were both working and forced her to touch him.
Following the state criminal investigation, Caraway, 56, was terminated by Mayor Gary Woltermann in November 2015 on charges of misconduct and dereliction of duty. Also cited as a reason for his termination was Caraway admission to Pronovost that he had met with a woman at Itch-Kep-Pe Park on several occasions for an hour or more while on duty.
Knutson’s report was released to the SCN Tuesday afternoon, per a reguest that was made several weeks ago. The following information was contained in that report.

Numerous interviews
Seven former and current dispatchers were interviewed during the DCI investigation. While a supervisor had nothing ill to say about the dispatcher who filed the complaint and supported her as a friend, others described her as foul-mouthed, difficult to work with, unprofessional, sexually inappropriate, a “pathological liar”and disrespectful, according to Knutson’s report. One described her as “the worst dispatcher she had seen throughout her career.”
While the dispatchers said they had never seen Caraway act inappropriately, Sheriff’s Office personnel, other county workers and Columbus police officers expressed a different opinion.
Chief Pronovost told Knutson that he knew Caraway had a reputation as a “womanizer” when he hired Caraway in March 2008. Pronovost told Knutson that Caraway “has gone downhill at work” over the past six months, and Caraway’s wife had placed a tracking program on his cell phone because she “accused him of having an affair.”
Several county workers said they were warned from the beginning that Caraway was a “womanizer.” Columbus Police Officer Gary Timm described Caraway putting ketchup packets down the dispatcher’s pants and “hitting on her” after she was divorced. A county employee told Knutson that Caraway once told her “I needed to be taken over somebody’s knee and given a spanking.”
Several city and county employees also spoke of alleged sexual relationships Caraway had with two other dispatchers, a county worker at the courthouse and the woman he met at Itch-Kep-Pe Park on half a dozen occasions. Knutson followed up on those allegations, speaking with witnesses and the alleged partners.

Sexual allegations
In her Montana Human Rights Bureau complaint, the dispatcher alleges that Caraway showed up at her home in May last year when she was at home on sick leave. She alleges Caraway followed her up to her bedroom, sat on her bed and then made statements of a sexual nature.
A similar story was reported to Knutson by a woman who was a Columbus police officer in the early 1990s. She said she “could not count the number of times Caraway made inappropriate comments to her,” but “one day after she was in bed and asleep, she was awakened when Caraway got into bed with her.”
“She was startled, jumped out of bed, screamed and cursed at him, and demanded that he get out of her bedroom,” Knutson reported her saying.
The woman said she didn’t report the incident to law enforcement and didn’t tell her husband until later in their marriage.
“She was concerned about how she would be received, being a female officer,” Knutson reported.
The woman referred to Caraway as a “womanizer,” saying she suspected him of having inappropriate relations with a young dispatcher and the wife of a state trooper.
Caraway denied the incident to Knutson, but he recalled going to the former Columbus police officer’s house about the same time in question and leaving after entering the house and finding her asleep.

Several people Knutson interviewed said they were aware of allegations that Caraway had grabbed a city worker by the breast. When Knutson interviewed the woman, she “became very emotional, with tears coming down her cheeks when she replied with something to the effect, they did nothing then and I am not going to help them out now.”
“She believed everyone knew what happened to her when it happened and they did nothing, though she excluded Pronovost and Claunch as possibly knowing what occurred,” Knutson reported.
Knutson also investigated allegations that Caraway had sexually assaulted a woman who worked at a restaurant in Columbus. Deputy Randy Smith reported that the woman had told him “she was getting creeped out because Caraway was spending a lot of time at her restaurant while she was working.”
Former Deputy Jesse Slaughter said the woman told him that Caraway had cornered her in the back of the restaurant and began touching her. Slaughter advised her to file a complaint with Sheriff Cliff Brophy.
When Knutson talked to the woman, she described Caraway’s behavior as “inappropriate but not to the point of being sexual harassment.” She also said she thought the matter had been handled by the Sheriff’s Office.
Knutson also interviewed a woman who returned home one day, opened her garage door and found Caraway standing inside.
“She was startled and uncomfortable with it but she had no recall of why he was there or what their conversation was about,” Knutson reported.
Credibility questioned
Knutson ran into several credibility issues in the course of his investigation, including discovering that the dispatcher had altered her phone records before submitting them to DCI.
During Knutson’s interview with the dispatcher last July, she described numerous inappropriate conversations of a sexual nature between Caraway and herself. She claimed Caraway told her he had sex with a dispatcher while she was working on four different occasions and “continually asked” what the complaining dispatcher’s underwear looked like.
“Caraway did that so much that it became the norm for them,” Knutson reported the dispatcher said. “She said it came to the point that it did not make her uncomfortable.”
But the dispatcher said she turned down Caraway’s advances because she “found him to be old, fat and unattractive but did not want to offend him by telling him so.”
Knutson also followed up on a story told by a former dispatcher who described a “deja vu” moment when she first learned about the sexual assault allegation filed against Caraway. She said it closely resembled a story the complaining dispatcher had told her in 2009, only instead of Caraway exposing himself in the dispatch office break room, it was a different deputy.
The former dispatcher asked the complaining dispatcher “why those kinds of things happened to her,” and the complaining dispatcher “looked at her oddly, adding that “she did not mind” when the deputy did it “but when Caraway did she found it to be gross.”
The deputy denied the story, noting that he and the dispatcher had never flirted, drank or partied together. The two “did not really even talk to each other much at work,” he told Knutson.
When confronted with the former dispatcher’s story during a reinterview on July 27, the complaining dispatcher found herself in a conflict – she had the highest respect for the former dispatcher, who she believed “would not lie,” but she also denied the break room incident had occurred. Knutson pressed on.
“To be honest, I probably did say something like that,” she told Knutson, adding that she would not have fantasized about an incident like that involving the deputy in question, “but she might have fantasized about doing something like that” with a different deputy, whom she named.
Caraway interviewed
Knutson read the Miranda warning to Caraway when he interviewed the former police officer on Aug. 25 and 31. Caraway, who denied many of the allegations made against him, said he had known the complaining dispatcher since she was a teenager and described horseplay and sexual innuendoes exchanged between them.
When asked why the dispatcher would allege that Caraway had sexually assaulted her, Caraway said “she’s not right in the head.”
“I’m not trying, not sitting here trying to bad mouth her, but she’s made these allegations [about] other people before,” Caraway told Knutson. “I know she’s made a rape allegation. She’s constantly making up stories at the office to draw attention to herself.”
In addition to responding to specific allegations made by the dispatcher against him, Caraway also responded to the allegation that he had met with a woman in Itch-Kep-Pe Park five or six times while on duty in 2015. He said he had sold the woman a home and visited her on occasion.
In September 2015, Montana Assistant Attorney General Brant Light notified the city and county that Caraway would not be charged in the dispatcher’s sexual assault case, writing that “it is clear from this and previous investigations that Sgt. Caraway has acted inappropriately in office settings.”
He added, “While Sgt. Caraway may want to characterize his actions as playful and that others willfully participated, his actions were not appropriate in any government office setting.”
Light, however, said the investigation also made it clear that both Caraway and the victim “have credibility issues.”