Former Ogden police chief defends involvement backing ex-officer in sex misconduct case

OGDEN — A former Ogden police chief, rebuked by the current chief last month in the sentencing of a former officer in a controversial sexual misconduct case, is now speaking out, defending his involvement in the matter.

Randy Watt, who served varied roles in the Ogden Police Department, including chief, testified on behalf of Colten Johansen at the man's Feb. 28 sentencing. Johansen, a former Ogden officer, pleaded guilty late last year to two counts of attempted sexual exploitation of a minor for viewing or possessing child pornography and a count of forcible sexual abuse, second-degree felonies.

Current Ogden Police Chief Jake Sube issued a statement on March 26 blasting Watt's role in the matter, among other things, and Watt issued his own response, telling KSL on Monday that he wanted to offer his side of things. Johansen received 30 days in jail and a suspended prison term at sentencing, which Sube also targeted in his statement, calling it too lenient.

"I am empathetic to (Sube's) feelings, but all he had to do was ask why I had spoken at officer Johansen's sentencing. If he had, he would have learned the truth," Watt said in his statement. Watt served as Ogden police chief from 2017 through 2020 and held other roles in the department prior to that apart from serving in the Utah Army National Guard.

The two attempted sexual exploitation counts against Johansen stemmed from child sexual-abuse material he had stored at his home related to investigations into sexual abuse cases involving minors from around 2007. Watt testified at the Feb. 28 sentencing hearing that the presence of the material at Johansen's home was the result of inadequate Ogden Police Department policy and that he, Watt, bore responsibility in the matter.

"If justice is to be served, it must to be based on truth," reads Watt's statement.

Johansen had been working child sex abuse cases as part of the Ogden Police Department's Special Victims Unit and, related to that, had agreed to take on a voluntary role in 2003 with a task force created by the Weber County Sheriff's Office called Internet Crimes Against Children. Such cases "were not official OPD cases," Watt said in his statement, and thus, how to store child sexual-abuse material from the task force was not defined.

Watt served as assistant police chief during that period and remembers telling an evidence technician or supervisor that the handling of such files was the responsibility of the task force and the Weber County Sheriff's Office, not the Ogden Police Department. Upon learning after Johansen's 2024 arrest that he had stored the files at his home, Watt came to the realization that his directives factored into the man's legal issues.

The presence of the child sexual-abuse materials at Johansen's home "was a result of the confusion as to where such items were to be stored and my direction that it was not OPD's responsibility to put them in our evidence room as ICAC cases were not OPD cases," Watt said.

He had played "a direct role" in the presence of the material at Johansen's home and had "specific knowledge" about how it got there, Watt said, prompting his decision to speak out at sentencing in a show of support for Johansen.

"When I learned that the Davis County investigator had included in his report that officer Johansen possessed 'stolen' investigative files and (child sex abuse material), I was incredulous. They were not stolen materials," Watt said.

While Watt is empathetic to Johansen's situation, others taking to social media have blasted the sentence he received as too light, particularly since he is a former police officer. The forcible sexual abuse charge stemmed from a sexual act involving a young child in 1994. That and the information about the child sexual abuse material came out during an October 2024 polygraph exam Johansen was taking as part of the application process for another law enforcement job.

In his statement, Sube called Johansen's conduct "indefensible" and said the sentence he received "falls far short of the accountability the public and this profession should expect." Sube said Watt's statements at sentencing "do not represent this department" and that his comments "do not reflect this department's policies, practices or current leadership."

Related topics