After the resignation of former Sheboygan City Attorney Charles Adams on March 19th, the police report regarding his investigation has been released.
Adams stepped down after the contents of this report were the topic of discussion at a Sheboygan Committee of the Whole meeting last month.
The Fond du Lac Police Department conducted the investigation to avoid a conflict of interest as the matter involved City of Sheboygan employees.
SeehaferNews.com has obtained the full 127-page report that focuses heavily on Adams’ conduct, including using a third-party program called Data Cove to unlawfully view both incoming and outgoing emails of any city employee, including the City Administrator, Police Officers, and others.
Adams and other city employees justly used Data Cove to search the email server while conducting things such as public records requests.
However, City Administrator Casey Bradley, IT Department workers, Lieutenant Matthew Bobo, and Detective Nicholas Hahn with the Fond du Lac Police Department quickly realized that Adams and others were using the program abhorrently and possibly for personal gain.
Numerous searches made by Adams included the keywords “Adams” “Charles” or “Chuck” to see who was talking about him, his son Micah Adams, a former IT employee with the City, or his cousin William Adams of the Sheboygan Police Department.
The report then explains that recently retired Sheboygan Police Chief Chris Domagalski told Bobo and Hahn that there were suspicions that Adams was using Data Cove to view the Chief’s and other employees’ emails to provide information that would benefit his cousin William, who was on leave and under internal investigation with the police department.
In the police report, Hahn stated, “It was very hard not to believe that he wasn’t searching Bill (William) looking for information on why he’s off.”
The report further states, “There’s no doubt in Det. Hahn’s mind that Adams was looking for information on Bill, but he doesn’t know the why behind it, whether it was to feed Bill information or just look for information on what’s going on with Bill.”
Adams’ searches did not end there as he was also confirmed to have searched for “Russ Otten” former Chair of the Sheboygan County GOP, and “Take Back” or “Take Back Sheboygan” a right-leaning media group in the county.
These are just a few in a long list of searches that led Adams to view a vast number of emails that had no affiliation with the former City Attorney.
Many of those searches also led to Adams viewing emails between other attorneys and their clients, in violation of attorney-client privilege, although Adams would dispute that throughout the report.
Bobo and Hahn pointed out to Adams during numerous interviews that searches of any nature not directly related to his work were not what the Data Cove program was intended for.
Those interviews eventually turned back to Adams’ searches involving his cousin William, who was under internal investigation by the police department.
Those discussions reached an impasse as Bobo and Hahn disagreed with Adams’ belief that, as one of the individuals with complete access to city emails through Data Cove, he had the authority to make any search involving any topic or person for any reason.
It goes on to say, “Det. Hahn then says you still need something, using cop terms like reasonable suspicion, to go in and do anything with it. Adams disagrees with that, and Det. Hahn points out that you can’t just randomly go in and start reading people’s emails. Adams responds by saying, “legally yes” he thinks you can. Adams then points out that it would be a waste of time to be just going and looking and doing that. Adams then says when you use the City’s email system, your emails are the property of the City of Sheboygan.”
In response, Adams said, “As one of the people who has access to the whole system, I have legal access to the whole system.”
The basis of Adams’ argument circulated around the idea that solely because he was given access to the entire email server, he had the right to view any and all emails, regardless of what the reasoning was behind it, whether it be for work purposes, political gain, personal gain, or simply curiosity.
The investigation would continue with interviews with all department heads in the City of Sheboygan, Chief Domagalski, citizens, and more.
This is in addition to reviewing over 5,000 emails viewed by Adams using Data Cove.
Hanh and Bobo’s investigative process culminated with a meeting with Sheboygan County District Attorney Joel Urmanski, who was kept up to date with the progress made during the seven-month investigation.
Based on evidence from Data Cove and a long list of interviews, Hahn and Bobo recommended a charge of Misconduct in Office for Adams, a felony offense.
However, Adams chose to resign just days after this police report was presented to the Committee of the Whole in March.
Following his resignation, any future talks regarding the former City Attorney’s conduct in office were canceled entirely, and no charges were ever officially filed by the DA.
