By MELINDA J. OVERSTREET
for Glasgow News 1
It appears that a former police chief could be conceding to the loss of his latest lawsuit against the City of Glasgow, but it will be several more days before it is known for certain that he won’t be pursuing any further appellate options.
Guy Joseph 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 hired him was leaving her term in office, but he stayed with the department and had other roles and/or ranks since then, most recently as a detective.
He unsuccessfully sued the city and officials associated with it twice before, taking every possible step through the Kentucky Court of Appeals and Kentucky Supreme Court to attempt to no avail to get the decisions overturned. The lawsuit he
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 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 Aug. 18, 2023, 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, a three-judge panel from which affirmed that circuit court ruling last month. 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. No such filing had been received by that court as of Wednesday morning, according to the online case summary page.
If no petition for rehearing is filed with the Kentucky Court of Appeals within the required timeframe, Turcotte would have no further steps he could pursue to attempt to get the circuit court decision overturned; therefore, the case would have reached its end. Finality for this case has not been designated yet, though.
While electronic filing is available and widely used by attorneys across the state, and the online summary page is usually updated within one business day after any filing, the court delays considering a case as having reached finality until after roughly 10 business days after the deadline to petition. This provides 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.
Glasgow News 1 will continue to check and report on the case status.
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