Naked City

As of press time there was still no word from Austin Police Chief Stan Knee on whether he intends to follow the Office of the Police Monitor citizen review panel's request that he review APD's internal probe into charges that veteran Detective Howard Staha forced Lucy Neyens to perform oral sex on him a decade ago (see last week's "Naked City"). But on June 25 a "new" version of the 10-year-old story appeared on the Austin Police News Web site -- in which Staha contradicts his previous comments about Neyens' charges, again calling into question (as did Neyens when she went to the police monitor) the department's investigation.

When contacted by the Chronicle in May, Staha said that Neyens' charges were completely untrue. "I intend to see what kind of legal action I can take," he said, "because these are all false statements." He said he was "totally stunned" by Neyens' allegation and that he thought Neyens lodged her complaint out of intradepartmental "hard feelings" over APD officers "being transferred in certain positions." But in the June 25 article by Austin Police News' Shelly Wilkison (former writer and editor of the Austin Police Association's monthly newsletter The Police Line), Staha says that incident did happen and was consensual. "I knew [Neyens] prior to [the incident]. We had a relationship," he told Wilkison. "This was two consenting adults who had a drink together, and it escalated into something that was inappropriate."

Staha's latest admission has Neyens fuming. "He's a liar," she said, adding that she can prove it if the 21-year APD veteran intends to stick to this story. Neyens says she was accompanied to her meeting with Staha on the night in question -- where she expected to discuss her son -- by her friend Janie Bremer, who waited inside the Warehouse Saloon on Ben White Boulevard when Staha asked Neyens to join him in his patrol car to "talk." Bremer, who could readily verify whether Neyens and Staha had a drink together as Staha now claims, was never interviewed by IAD, even though Neyens offered her name as a potential witness -- one of many qualms Neyens, and other observers, and the Police Monitor panel, have about IAD's handling of the case.