Today marks the first day for a Green Bay police officer to make his case to keep his job.
The proceedings began with opening statements from the police department and also from Sporel’s lawyer.
Lt. Dave Wesley was the only officer to take the stand, he was the one who initially interviewed Sporel to see what role he played in the claims of harassment.
Most of these claims centered around a female officer and an African American police officer who were employed with the department in 2016 who worked the night shift.
That first interview was in December 2016 and the Fire and Police Commission viewed the two hour interview in its entirety today.
Lt. Wesley claims that while he conducted his interview with officer Sproel he had to keep redirecting questions and asking them in different ways because Sporel remained evasive throughout the entire process, never really wanting to commit to an answer he gave because he didn’t want to get his friends in trouble.
Through the investigation they found that not only were other officers using derogatory language about fellow officers, Sporel also initiated some of those conversations.
“We determined that there was a series of MBT messages where Sporel was either the recipient or he initiated sending out derogatory messages about other officers, so this was about his conduct in relation to his involvement in at sending MBT messages,” says Wesley.
According to Lt. Wesley some of the derogatory language officers used when talking about their female and African American counterparts included the B-word and the N-word.
Sporel’s hearing is expected to continue Thursday at 9 a.m.
