The investigation, in my own words.

My name is Momcilo Babic. I came to this country from Serbia at seventeen. I have spent thirteen years in law enforcement, six of them as a detective working sexual assault, homicide, and major crimes, six years in the Army National Guard with a combat deployment, and I have, until a few weeks ago, held the rank of Patrol Sergeant with the Williston Police Department. I also happen to be a candidate for Sheriff of Williams County.

On March 27, 2026, the City of Williston imposed on me a combination of discipline (demotion, five-day unpaid suspension, removal from supervisory duties, shift reassignment, mandatory training, and one-year probation) that is the most severe thing the Handbook allows short of firing me. It was imposed over a single alleged sentence said in a private, two-person conversation. The recruit officer never filed a complaint. There were no witnesses. There was no recording. The account reached HR second- or third-hand, after passing through coworkers who were not present.

I have fought this through every internal channel available. I filed a detailed grievance on March 31, 2026, citing eight policy violations. The Chief denied my appeal by saying, in essence, that he "stands by" his decision, without engaging any of the eight policy questions I raised. I filed two formal complaints of my own against other officers. I have waited for the process.

On April 16, 2026, I learned the City had released its investigative file to a local journalist. I had formally requested that same file on March 30, 2026. I have been given no substantive response to my own request, to this day. That is seventeen days. A journalist asked for my personnel file and got it before I did.

So I am going to do what I should not have to do. I am going to walk the public through what that file actually says, compared to what the City told me it said. I am not a lawyer and this is not a legal brief. This is my opinion and my reading of documents the City itself created. I have tried to frame the hard observations as questions, because questions are what I want the reader to leave with. The answers, those belong to you.

On March 30, 2026, three days after the discipline was imposed, I formally requested the investigative materials the City had used against me. I requested them so I could meaningfully respond and appeal. That is my right under North Dakota law and under the City's own Employee Handbook.

I waited. I filed my grievance without the file. I filed formal complaints without the file. My appeal was denied without the file. Then, on April 15, 2026, HR Coordinator Catherine Larson sent me the email reproduced below. She informed me that a journalist had filed an open records request for the same file. The next day, April 16, 2026, the City released the investigative file to the journalist.

"I wanted to make you aware that the City has received a records request related to the investigation previously conducted. Consistent with applicable open records laws, records will be reviewed and released as required.

Although we cannot engage in work-related discussions while you are on approved FMLA leave, we understand the sensitive nature of the information in the requested records and wanted to ensure you also have the opportunity to obtain them. Would you like the documents being released?" Email from HR Coordinator Catherine Larson to Momcilo Babic, April 15, 2026

Read that again. Not "here are the materials you requested on March 30." Instead: a journalist asked, so we thought we'd check whether the subject of the investigation would also like a copy.

I do not know the answer. I know what it looks like to me. I know how it would look to any reasonable person. I will let the reader draw their own conclusion.

In his initial reporting on this matter, Tom Simon of Williston Trending Topics framed the outcome of the City's internal process, in substance, as a finding that I had been "found guilty" of sexual harassment.

I want to be very clear, and the record is very clear: this was not a criminal proceeding. There was no trial. There was no judge. There was no jury. There was no cross-examination. There was no sworn testimony. There was no opportunity to confront an accuser. No court of competent jurisdiction has found me guilty of anything. I have never been charged with a crime in connection with these events.

What happened is that a City Human Resources Coordinator conducted a workplace investigation and wrote a report concluding that, in her administrative judgment, an allegation was "sustained." That is an internal HR finding. It is not a verdict. It is not a conviction. It is appealable. I have appealed it. A finding of guilt and an HR finding are fundamentally different things, and conflating them does a real disservice to anyone who cares about the difference between an internal personnel decision and the criminal justice system.

Before we go any further, I want the reader to understand something fundamental about the evidence the City used. By the investigation report's own account, the words attributed to me in the conversation with the recruit officer, a private, two-person exchange, passed through at least five people across two weeks before reaching HR Coordinator Larson. There were no witnesses to the conversation itself. There is no recording. There is no text message. There is no contemporaneous note. There is a chain of retellings, and a set of words the chain produced at the end.

Here is that chain, reconstructed entirely from the City's own interview notes and the Narrative section of the Investigation Report:

1. March 3, 2026 · The conversation itself A brief, private exchange between me and the recruit officer. No witnesses. No recording. She does not report it that day. She does not report it that week.
2. Days later · Recruit officer → Officer Jada Osborn The recruit officer mentions the comment to Officer Osborn, "as a friend ranting, " in Osborn's words. Per Osborn's interview: "the recruit officer told her she didn't want to report it." Per the investigator's own Narrative: the recruit officer "did not want the comment to be reported." Per Sgt. Flesness's interview notes: she "didn't report the recent incident because she didn't want to be moved."
3. Sometime later · Officer Osborn → Officer Williams & Officer Collins Osborn, in her own words: "Jada told Caden and Alex." The recruit officer's expressed wish that it not be reported is, at this step, already overridden by a third party.
4. Sometime later · Officer Williams → Officer Norsten The Narrative: "Off. Williams shared the comment with Off. Norsten…" We are now four people removed from the conversation.
5. Tuesday, March 17, 2026 · Officer Norsten → Sgt. Flesness Two weeks after the conversation, Officer Norsten telephones Sgt. Flesness and reports the alleged comment. Per Flesness's own interview notes: "Garrett N. called Brett and reported the comment. Garrett was told by Alex Williams." This is the step that converts a whispered fifth-hand account into a formal report.
6. March 17–20, 2026 · Flesness → Lt. Koehn → Cpt. Dickerson → HRC Larson Flesness notifies Lt. Koehn. Koehn re-interviews Mahlum and the recruit officer. Koehn notifies Cpt. Dickerson on March 20. Dickerson notifies HRC Larson at a banquet on March 21. The investigation proper begins on March 23.

I want the reader to sit with two facts on that chain.

First, the recruit officer did not want this reported. Not according to me. According to her, as recorded in the interviews of Officer Osborn (the first person she told) and Sgt. Flesness (who later spoke with her directly). In Osborn's words, "the recruit officer told her she didn't want to report it." In the Investigation Report's own Narrative, the recruit officer "did not want the comment to be reported." The decision to escalate was made over her objection, by officers who were not present for the conversation. That is not a detail; that is the moment the proceeding stopped being about what she wanted and started being about what other people wanted to do with what she had said.

Second, the person who carried this up the formal chain, the person who, on Tuesday, March 17, picked up the phone and called Sgt. Flesness to convert a personal conversation into an institutional complaint, was Officer Garrett Norsten. The same Officer Norsten whom I later reported to HR Coordinator Larson on March 26 for standing in the parking lot of the Law Enforcement Center, visibly and audibly discussing this confidential internal investigation with Williams County Sheriff's Office deputies, personnel of an entirely separate agency, run by the man I am running against for Sheriff, in direct violation of the City of Williston Employee Handbook's confidentiality requirements for anyone involved in a harassment investigation.

I am not asking the reader to disbelieve anyone in that chain. I am asking a simpler question: is the telephone-game version of a conversation, at the end of a five-person chain, reliable enough to end a career? Reliable enough to demote a thirteen-year officer and combat veteran? Reliable enough to define that officer in the press as "found guilty"? I believe the answer, for most reasonable people, is no.

One of the central pieces of the City's report is this. During my interview, I told the investigator, truthfully, based on what I had been told and observed up to that point, that the recruit in question was a rookie who, in my professional assessment, had been "borderline failing" the Field Training Program. The City's final report then treats that statement as evidence of my lack of credibility, stating:

Now turn to the Daily Observation Reports the City released in the same file. The DORs are the actual documents the Field Training Officer completes every single shift. They are not opinions recalled weeks later in an HR interview. They are contemporaneous, dated, and numerical.

On the 1–7 FTO scale, a 4 is a deficiency. Here is the recruit's actual DOR history leading up to my suspension, drawn directly from the file the City just released, focusing on the categories the investigator herself cited as important (Acceptance of Feedback, Self-Initiated Field Activity, Investigative Skills, Criminal Statutes in the Field). I encourage every reader to open the file and verify:

Source: "Patrol Division Field Training Program" reports released by the City of Williston on 4.16.2026.

Look at the "Acceptance of Feedback" column in the weeks before I was removed from the picture: 4, 4, 4, 3, 4. Look at that column immediately after I am no longer in the building: 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6. Six out of seven, every shift, for six shifts running.

Look at the DOR from 03/25/2026, the shift immediately after my suspension: "recruit officer had gotten caught up on the review of her DOR's over her days off, it was apparent that the recruit officer had taken the DOR seriously and responded positively to them."

The investigator concluded my description of the recruit's performance was so inaccurate that it undermined my credibility. The DORs are the objective document. The DORs show a recruit who was receiving 3s and 4s on "Acceptance of Feedback" and "Self-Initiated Field Activity" for weeks, whose scores then jumped dramatically and immediately the moment I was removed from her chain of command, and who, even after the jump, was still receiving a score of 2 on April 4 for not making a single traffic stop during her shift.

The DOR from March 3, 2026, the same date as the alleged comment.

I want the reader to pause on one specific date, because I believe it matters as much as any other single fact in this file. The City's investigation places the alleged sentence at the center of this entire matter on March 3, 2026. The recruit's own Daily Observation Report for that same shift, written that same night by her Field Training Officer, Joshua Mahlum, is in the released file. Here is what it actually says:

"In the field tonight the RO seemed to handle the stress conditions well however during the room clearing scenarios tonight the RO did not handle the simulated stressful conditions well and would 'freeze up' and not react to a threat." Daily Observation Report #39, 03/03/2026, FTO Joshua Mahlum, Score: 3/7

That is the shift on which the contested conversation is alleged to have occurred. On that same shift, the FTO documented that the recruit would "freeze up" and "not react to a threat" in training scenarios. His score for that observation was a 3 on the 1-to-7 FTO scale, below the minimum acceptable level of performance. The same DOR, in the "Acceptance of Feedback" column shown in the table above, also flagged that she was "getting frustrated during feedback," scored a 4. Two scored deficiencies, same recruit, same FTO, same shift, same date as the alleged comment.

This was not an isolated observation. The two shifts immediately preceding March 3, both written by the same FTO, documented the same pattern:

DOR #37, 02/26/2026, FTO Mahlum, Score: 3/7

"RO had an opportunity tonight to be more assertive with an intoxicated individual but did not take it. The FTO had to take over." Daily Observation Report #37, 02/26/2026, FTO Joshua Mahlum

DOR #38, 03/02/2026, FTO Mahlum, Score: 3/7

"This score reflects the lack of taking control of a scene when suspects are displaying concerning behavior and being or displaying non-compliant behavior." Daily Observation Report #38, 03/02/2026, FTO Joshua Mahlum

Three consecutive DORs by the same FTO, on February 26, March 2, and March 3, 2026, all graded 3 out of 7 in the relevant scored category, all documenting the same concern. The recruit was not taking control of scenes when the situation required it. The FTO was having to step in. Under simulated threat she was freezing. That is the FTO who the investigator's summary later quoted as saying the recruit was "excelling just as any other recruit officer."

And four days after the alleged comment, a foundational knowledge gap surfaced:

DOR #41, 03/07/2026, FTO Mahlum, Score: 3/7

"It has been discovered by the FTO that the RO doesn't know 10-code… The RO was unsure how to request the checks through dispatch via the radio. Prior to making the request she had to ask the FTO and rehearse it with the FTO prior to making the radio request. The FTO later provided the RO with a list of ten codes and highlighted the commonly used 10-codes for the RO to study." Daily Observation Report #41, 03/07/2026, FTO Joshua Mahlum

Four days after the alleged comment, the same FTO discovered in his own DOR that the recruit did not know basic 10-code, a foundational element of police radio communication, and had to rehearse a routine dispatch request before she could make it over the radio. That is the state of the recruit's performance, in writing, from her own trainer, in the same week the investigator would later describe her as "excelling."

I am not asking readers to take my word. I am asking readers to open the file and count.

The investigator wrote this sentence in the Administrative Summary:

That sentence is offered as part of the proof that the recruit was, in fact, knowledgeable, and by extension, that my assessment of her was wrong, and by further extension, that my overall credibility was compromised. I want to be very fair to the record on this one, because the record deserves it.

The released file does contain the DOR that almost certainly gave rise to the investigator's sentence. On 02/25/2026, FTO Mahlum wrote in DOR #36 that the recruit "was able to list all 5 misdemeanor exceptions without any assistance from the FTO." So on that specific question, on that specific day, she did list them. That much, the record supports, and I want to say so plainly.

What the record also shows is how she got there, and what else was happening on the same shift.

The DORs in the released file contain two earlier instances where the recruit was quizzed on precisely this material, not by FTO Mahlum, but by FTO Caden Collins, two weeks earlier. Here is what those DORs say, word for word:

DOR #31, 02/12/2026, FTO Collins, Score: 2/7

"the recruit officer was quizzed on North Dakota's five misdemeanor exceptions. The recruit officer was able to provide two of the five without needing any assistance. The recruit officer had to look up the other three and once she found them she still was not confident in her answers. The two she knew were DUI, and violation of a civil protection order. The other three being domestic, harassment of 911, and being under the influence of volatile chemicals." Daily Observation Report #31, 02/12/2026, FTO Caden Collins, Criminal Statutes, Score: 2/7

DOR #33, 02/17/2026, FTO Collins, Score: 2/7

"On 02/12/2026, FTO Collins and the recruit officer discussed no contact orders and Civil Protection Orders to include both District and Municipal Courts… the recruit officer was then quizzed on what had been gone over the week prior and could not provide any answers other than the difference between the petitioner and respondent. The recruit officer could not remember the main differences between the two orders being when the arrest could be made versus when a report would have to be forwarded." Daily Observation Report #33, 02/17/2026, FTO Caden Collins, Score: 2/7

Two quizzes, five days apart, on precisely the material the investigator later cited as proof of the recruit's mastery. On February 12 she could name two of the five exceptions unassisted; on February 17, quizzed again on the same material, she could not provide any answers beyond the distinction between a petitioner and a respondent. Both DORs were scored 2 out of 7.

Eight days after the February 17 quiz, on February 25, FTO Mahlum's DOR #36 documents the moment the recruit got there. Here is that DOR in full:

DOR #36, 02/25/2026, FTO Mahlum, Score: 3/7

"FTO reviewed several criminal and traffic laws with the RO, the RO struggled to give the elements of a crime regarding burglary and robbery, the RO also did not understand the improperly muffled exhaust ordinance. The RO was able to list all 5 misdemeanor exceptions without any assistance from the FTO." Daily Observation Report #36, 02/25/2026, FTO Joshua Mahlum, Score: 3/7

Read that DOR in full, not in fragments. On the same shift in which the recruit listed the five exceptions without assistance, she also "struggled to give the elements of a crime regarding burglary and robbery" and "did not understand the improperly muffled exhaust ordinance." Her overall score for the day, in Criminal Statutes, was a 3 out of 7. On the FTO grading scale used in this file, a 3 is below the minimum acceptable level of performance. It is a deficiency.

The investigator's one-sentence summary, that "FTO Mahlum was impressed that the recruit officer knew the five misdemeanor exceptions," is a true statement about part of one DOR. What it omits is the rest of the same DOR. The same shift on which the recruit listed the five was also the shift on which she struggled with two other bodies of criminal law, and was graded below standard for the day.

And the same category continued to show deficiencies in the weeks that followed:

"Recruit officer is generally showing her growth in knowledge on criminal statutes however the recruit officer really only had one call for service today that really dealt with criminal law and did not know the statute that would include spitting in someone's drink and had asked the FTO if that was illegal." DOR #51, 03/30/2026, FTO Mahlum, Score: 3/7

"Recruit officer was dispatched to a reported harassment, she knew that harassment did not fit the situation but struggled briefly to think of the proper statute to fit the situation. The FTO gave the recruit officer a small hint who then realized that Disorderly Conduct would be a better fit." DOR #55, 04/05/2026, FTO Mahlum, Score: 4/7

These are not my characterizations. These are verbatim quotes from the FTOs' own dated, written observation reports, produced by the City, in the same file, to the same journalist, on the same day. The recruit's learning curve on this particular topic is not in dispute. What is in dispute is the broader narrative the investigator built on a single fragment of a single deficient DOR, that my supervisory assessment of the recruit's overall performance was inaccurate enough to impeach my credibility. The full record, read in full, does not support that conclusion.

During the investigation, the recruit raised a second, much older allegation: that at the end of 2024, when she was a Community Service Officer, I had made a comment in Lieutenant Walter Hall's office about her "sleeping with her lieutenant to get to the top." I deny making that comment. I have always denied it. But you do not have to take my word for it. Here is what the record shows about the witnesses the recruit herself named.

By the recruit's own account, recorded in the file, Lieutenant Walter Hall (the supervisor in whose office the comment allegedly occurred) and Hannah (then a CSO, now "Hannah Adam") were present, and "Walter may have heard it."

Witness 1: Lt. Walter Hall

Witness 2: Hannah Adam (former CSO)

Both named witnesses, the witnesses identified by the complainant herself, tell the investigator they do not remember the alleged comment. One of them is an experienced patrol lieutenant who reacted to the suggestion that he might have "ignored" such a comment by expressing that he was disturbed by the implication.

The investigator acknowledges in the Investigation Report that "The 2024 comment was not a part of the complaint, but rather was additional information provided by the recruit officer." I want to be clear about what that means: an allegation from more than a year earlier, never reported at the time, not part of the complaint that triggered the investigation, denied by me, and unrecalled by both witnesses the complainant herself identified, was nevertheless folded into "the totality of the situation" used to justify the discipline imposed.

This one is almost impossible to read twice without shaking your head. In the "Personal Notes" section of her Administrative Summary, the HR Coordinator wrote the following sentence:

And immediately before that sentence, in the same section:

I want to address several things at once, because they all matter.

First, the concession. The investigator concedes, in writing, in her own report, that she has difficulty assessing deception based solely on behavioral indicators. That is an honest statement. It is also, I respectfully submit, the only appropriate statement to make, because behavioral "deception detection" based on breathing, body language, and casual rhetorical questions has been studied for decades and the scientific consensus is that untrained, and even trained, observers perform at roughly the level of a coin flip.

Second, the "however." After conceding she cannot assess deception from behavioral indicators, she then proceeds, in the very next clause, to do exactly that. She cites my breathing. She cites "nystagmus, " involuntary eye movement, as though she is medically qualified to diagnose it, which with respect, she is not, and which in any event would be entirely consistent with a person being accused of something he did not do. She cites my asking "did I say something stupid?" as if a human being under accusation, searching his memory, asking that question out loud, is automatically proof of guilt rather than proof of a person trying to be honest about what he can and cannot remember.

Third, the sleight of hand. She writes that my perception "appears to differ significantly" from how my behavior is perceived by others, and treats that as the substitute for a deception finding. But a disagreement about perception is not the same as a finding of dishonesty. Two honest people can disagree about what a conversation meant. Someone who disagrees with a characterization of his own words is not thereby lying about them. That is a basic distinction, and the report collapses it.

I invite the reader to sit with that passage. Read it twice. Ask yourself whether it reflects fairness.

On the morning of March 22, 2026, I came into shift briefing upset. My young child had walked in on my wife and me that morning. I was rattled. I made a comment to the shift about "marital relations" having occurred, because I wanted my officers to understand why I was not myself that day. That is the full context. The City's investigator interviewed several officers who were present.

Here is Officer Marshall, from the Investigation Report itself:

Here is Officer Norsten, the same officer who originated the hearsay chain on the other, separate allegation against me, from the same Report:

Two officers. Same room. Same briefing. Same remark from me.

Officer Marshall: not offended, just wouldn't personally have shared it.

Officer Norsten: I said "I had to peel myself off my wife" with a smile, and even though he can't actually recall whether I used the word "sex, " it was, he says, implied.

Neither version was reported at the time. Neither comment triggered an HR complaint when it occurred. Both came up only during the investigation that was already underway about something else. The investigator then adopted Officer Norsten's version, the more damning one, and quoted it in the "Corroborating Information" section of her Administrative Summary as though it were simply a fact:

I think the reader can answer that question for themselves. I think the answer is: the investigator adopted the perception that fit the narrative, and quietly left the perception that did not.

On March 26, 2026, I called HR Coordinator Larson because I had been informed, by more than one source, that Officer Garrett Norsten, the very officer who had originated the hearsay chain that led to this investigation, was standing in the parking lot of the Law Enforcement Center, speaking to Williams County Sheriff's Office deputies about an active, confidential internal investigation.

The Employee Handbook is unambiguous. All employees involved in a harassment investigation are required to maintain confidentiality. There is no "reporting party exception."

Here is how the investigator described that call in her own notes:

"He has an issue. Why is Garrett Norsten outside of PD speaking to deputies spreading rumors. He speculates it's a political smear from Verlan. From the recruit officer because she's failing FTO. He began telling me how to conduct investigation by who to interview and what to ask. I told him he does not get to dictate how I do the investigation. He apologized for overstepping." Babic phone call, 11:00, 3/26, HRC Larson's interview notes

I want to pause here. I apologized within the same call for overstepping, and my apology is documented in her own notes. That is a small detail, but it matters, because it is the behavior of someone trying to work inside the process, not outside it.

And the Investigation Report itself describes how my concern about Officer Norsten was handled:

I will also note, because I think it matters, that Officer Norsten is a former member of the Williams County Sheriff's Department, the same Sheriff's Department run by the man I am currently running against. I make no direct accusation. I simply note the connection, and I note that the confidentiality breach I reported, which the Handbook treats as a serious policy violation, received effectively no investigation.

Save this one for last. It is, in my opinion, the single most important fact in the entire file, and it is the one most easily missed, because it requires you to compare two dates that appear on two different pieces of paper.

Here is the City's own documented sequence, taken directly from the investigative file the City released:

Source: Investigation Report header and discipline letter, both in the file the City released 4.16.2026.

Read those two rows together. The discipline letter that demoted me, suspended me, removed my supervisory authority, reassigned my shift, put me in mandatory training, and placed me on probation was dated March 27, 2026. The Investigation Report that is offered as the basis for that discipline is dated, on its own header, by the same Human Resources Coordinator, April 8, 2026.

I want to be careful here, because I am aware of how serious this observation is. It is possible, in principle, that an internal investigation's findings are reached before the document memorializing them is formally typed up, dated, and signed. I understand that. A reasonable person can acknowledge that.

But the record in front of us is not a draft quietly polished over two weeks. It is a report that, on its own face, was authored, dated, and signed by HR Coordinator Larson on April 8, 2026. The discipline it purports to justify was imposed on me twelve days earlier. The records request from me that might have affected its content, filed on March 30, went unanswered. The first time the public saw the April 8 document was April 16, the day it was released to a journalist who had asked for it.

Which raises, I think, the only question that truly matters about this whole situation.

I do not know the answer. I have my suspicions, as I suspect any careful reader will. What I know is the order the file itself puts things in. March 27 came first. April 8 came second. That order matters. The public is entitled to ask why.