Kenneth Betts: Model officer tarnished by sex-abuse scandal

He calls himself in his Twitter bio a “lover of Jesus.”

And in eight years on the Louisville Metro Police force, Kenneth Ryan Betts appeared to be a model officer.

He didn’t receive a single sanction. He was commended 66 times, including twice for helping save people’s lives. He pulled one woman from a car and gave her CPR, and "with no regard for his life or safety," he rushed into a busy intersection while attending a convention in Washington, D.C., to aid a pedestrian who’d been struck by a car and thrown over its roof.

And he was always ready to volunteer, especially with children.

Susan Webb, a former social studies teacher at Pleasure Ridge Park High School, wrote to Police Chief Robert White in 2011 that Betts had gone “above and beyond” in coming to the school three times in a single day to talk to classes about policing and the law.

“In today’s times, there are not many people who would give up their day off to spend it with 150 teenagers,” Webb, now an assistant principal at Johnson Traditional Middle School, said in her letter.

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Former Officer Ellasha Berry, who was in the department’s Explorer Scout program with Betts as a teen and later was his beat partner in the 6th Division, said he was bright and personable. “My grandmother loved him!” she said.

And he was ambitious. “I think he wanted to be chief,” she said.

Now, allegations of sexual abuse against the 32-year-old former officer have brought shame and embarrassment on the department he so proudly represented, and they have led to the suspension of the Explorer Scout program he loved.

In a lawsuit filed in early March, Betts and Officer Brandon Wood stand accused of raping a former Explorer in their homes and police cruisers — starting when he was 17 years old and continuing until he was 19 — and recording it to make pornography.

Police records show that Betts also was accused in 2013 of having "improper contact" with a girl in the program; Berry, who remains with the department as a crime analyst, said it was for sending the girl an improper text. The department's investigation into the allegation was closed the next year by Chief Steve Conrad when Betts resigned.

Betts’ lawyers, Brian Butler and Kent Wicker, declined to comment on the allegations against their client but Butler, with his client's consent, released some biographical information about him, including that he graduated from PRP High School and became a police officer "to serve the community." Webb, the former Pleasure Ridge Park teacher, said through Jefferson County Public Schools spokeswoman Jennifer Brislin that she never saw Betts do anything inappropriate with her students and if she had, she would have reported it.

Former officers and other ex-colleagues say Betts survived — and thrived — in the department for so many years by doing good work, winning commanders' public acclaim, and by ingratiating himself with superiors, starting at age 14 when he joined the Explorer program.

Jason Smiley, 27, who was an Explorer from 2004 to 2008 and is now a security guard, said Betts built an especially close relationship with Lt. Curtis Flaherty, who ran the program and, now a major, is also named as a defendant in the suit, which alleges the department concealed the allegations. Smiley knew Betts as an Explorer and police officer, but was never a police officer himself.

Smiley said Betts, Flaherty and Wood, also a former Explorer, watched out for each other.

“There was a buddy-buddy system between those individuals,” said Smiley, who said he was kicked out of the Explorers for taking police ride-alongs without the program's permission.

Berry said as an officer, Betts “could get away with things nobody else could get away with.”

She said Betts once was caught sleeping with another officer’s wife and escaped discipline for it.

She also said he missed a lot of patrols because he was either doing off-duty work for small-city departments or away on trips with Explorers.

Her remarks mirror those on an anonymous police bulletin board where one commenter said, “The kid is never riding the beat.”

Berry said that when Betts was on the job, he did outstanding work. “He would back you up. He was aggressive and would do a lot of traffic stops.”

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According to a letter in his personnel file, Assistant County Attorney Allyson Cox wrote to Chief Robert White in 2011 that while some officers on domestic violence calls simply tell battered women to go downtown and take out a protection order, Betts apprehended alleged abusers — including one who was lurking outside a safe house where his partner had gone for protection.

Betts also won kudos for his work with the Explorers, including helping found a statewide program for young people ages 14 to 20 years old who are interested in law enforcement.

Chief White wrote in 2009 that “your actions are responsible for the positive image you have given yourself and the department.” White, who is chief in Denver, said it would be inappropriate to comment now on Betts because of the Louisville department's pending investigation, said Sonny Jackson, a spokesman for Denver police.

Betts grew up in Pleasure Ridge Park on Arvis Drive. His father worked as a firefighter and his mother at a Feeders Supply store, according to Berry and another friend, Da-Wyone Haynes, who later became Betts' partner in a concealed-carry firearms training business, Betts Haynes & Stickle.

Betts said in a biography on the site of the now-defunct business that as an Explorer, he volunteered several thousand hours to the community assisting the department and helping at public functions.

“Through your services, 92 less fortunate children were provided a Christmas,” Chief White wrote in one of several commendations Betts received as an Explorer.

After six years, Betts earned the position as youth commander of the program and was honored as Explorer of the Year.

At age 18, following in his father’s footsteps, Betts became a volunteer firefighter for the Pleasure Ridge Park department. He achieved the rank of sergeant, which allowed him to drive fire trucks, and he earned an award for distinguished service in the line of duty.

“He was a pretty good kid,” Fire Chief Vincent Smith said. “We didn’t have any problems with him.”

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In 2006, with a letter of recommendation from Flaherty, Betts joined the Louisville police department, where he worked as a patrol officer, training officer, detective, and health and safety officer who assisted colleagues contaminated by blood or other fluids.

He constantly tried to improve himself, earning a master’s from the University of Louisville’s Department of Justice Administration — where he was named “Outstanding Graduate Student of the Year" — and completing coursework for a doctorate at Spalding University.

“He took every class that came around," said one of his supervisors, former Lt. Doug Sweeney, who is now Audubon Park's police chief. "He was just a knowledge seeker.”

Betts earned his BS degree in justice administration from U of L in 2008, and in 2015 he married a woman in the same class, Varina Sausman, who is a middle school teacher in Jefferson County Public Schools. They moved to Shelbyville two years ago and have one child, a daughter, who is 10 months old.

Betts wrote in his company bio that he is very active in his church — Ormsby Heights Baptist, on Lower Hunters Trace — and an active runner who had completed several marathons. He was a doctoral candidate in organizational leadership at Spalding but hasn’t been enrolled since the spring of 2014.

The Rev. Rick Bowden, Ormsby Heights' pastor, said in an email that Betts has been "an exemplary member in every way."

"Kenny is well respected and these recent allegations do not reflect the Kenny Betts we have known and loved over the years," Bowden said. He also said Betts has not served in the church's ministries for children or youth.

On March 24, 2014, Betts wrote in a memo to Conrad that he was regrettably resigning after “careful thought and prayer,” in part because he’d been offered another job.

He also said that after fighting cancer for eight months, "it has for sure opened my eyes to appreciate life and opportunities even more.” Butler said in an email that Betts is a two-time cancer survivor who spent most of 2013 recovering from surgery and undergoing chemotherapy. He is now cancer free.

Betts didn’t mention in the memo that eight months earlier, Conrad had opened a Professional Standards Unit investigation into whether he had violated rules through “improper contact with a female Explorer.”

The Professional Standards Unit investigates allegations of violations of department rules, while the Public Integrity Unit looks into potential criminal actions by officers and public officials.

Conrad closed the investigation 10 days after Betts wrote his memo, citing his resignation and saying, “No further action is required.”

Berry said Betts had recovered from prostate cancer and was so zealous about a police officer that he never would have resigned if not for the disciplinary complaint.

Berry, who had to resign as an officer because she contracted lupus, said the allegation about Betts was “all over the department” and that she and “a lot of officers” thought it was unfair that Betts was allowed to“resign and "make it go away.”

Conrad has declined to comment, although the department loses the power to take disciplinary action over officers once they leave the department.

Sweeney, who supervised Betts when he was the department’s safety officer and again for a few weeks when he briefly worked as a reserve officer for Audubon Park, said he was shocked by the lawsuit's allegations, which are also being investigated by the Public Integrity Unit.

So did Jefferson Circuit Court Judge James Shake, who knew Betts both as an officer and as a fellow member of U of L’s Criminal Justice Alumni Board.

“He came across to me as straightforward and honest in his cases,” said Shake, who retired this month. “I never saw him overreaching with any citizens. He was just an ordinary guy.”

Another alumni board member, retired arson investigator Henry Ott, said he also was surprised because Betts was “being groomed to go someplace.”

But even before the allegations against Betts and Wood became public through news reports last October, Ott said he had heard about “an issue in the Explorer program.”

“I heard about Kenny’s problems a long time ago,” Ott said.

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Haynes, Betts’ friend and ex-business partner, also said he heard “rumblings” about Betts' alleged involvement.

“I asked Kenny about it and he said there’s really nothing to it — it didn’t actually happen,” said Haynes, a technology expert at Transamerica in Louisville, where he said he first met Betts when he interned there.

Haynes said he discounts the allegations in part because there are some officers who dislike Betts because he was so “bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.”

He also said many officers still seem to support him when they go out in public. “Surely if he did something so heinous, other officers would distance themselves from him, and I haven’t seen that," Haynes said.

Besides, he said, “I still believe in this country you are innocent until proven guilty.”

He said he doesn’t know what Betts is doing for a living now, and Butler would say only that he moved from policing into a new line of work to support his family.

In his online business profile, Betts said he was local manager of safety and security for eBay in Louisville, leading a team of 24 people. “He told me he was making $80,000 a year before he got a promotion,” Sweeney said.

Spokesmen for the San Jose, California-based company did not respond to questions about Betts’ employment.

His name has been removed from the U of L criminal justice alumni board website. Ott said Betts stopped coming to meetings after he resigned from the department.

“He just went away,” Ott said. “He disappeared.”

Reporter Andrew Wolfson can be reached at 502-582-7189 or [email protected]. Reporter Phillip Bailey contributed to this story.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Kenneth Betts: Model officer tarnished by sex-abuse scandal