Behind Closed Doors: The Investigation and City Hall Shakeup
- John Eads
- Jul 1
- 16 min read
Updated: Jul 5
Editor’s Note: This article is Part 2 of an exclusive four-part investigative series by Lincoln CountyWatch unmasking the December 2025 Winfield bar fight. Over the last several months, our team has spoken with numerous individuals and reviewed unedited files to reconstruct the definitive account of a night that shook local government. Here is what is coming next in this special release:
Part 2 (Current - Free): Behind Closed Doors: The Investigation and City Hall Shakeup
Subscriber Bonus (Subscriber Only): The Winfield Cover-Up? Public Documents Expose Conflict of Interest Behind the Dropped Bar Fight Case
Part 3 (Subscribers Only): Tape Review: A complete overview of the newly released surveillance video footage.
Part 4 (Free for Everyone): The Nicole Hanson Interview: Facing accountability and the future of Winfield leadership.
To unlock our subscriber-exclusive bonus deep dive into regional public records and secure entry to the upcoming video overview in Part 3, support our independent journalism by becoming a subscriber today.
WINFIELD, Mo. — "Winfield PD and the Mayor are in a fight - All intoxicated."
When emergency dispatch lines went hot at 11:41 PM on December 20, 2025, that single, frantic phrase fractured any illusion of a routine local disturbance. Outside Playoffs 2, the midnight air was thick with tension as an agitated crowd postured and paced around a woman lying face down and completely motionless. The unconscious figure was Winfield Mayor Nicole Hanson. Only moments earlier, off-duty Winfield Police Officer Benjamin Freet had forced Mayor Hanson to the ground, aggressively wrapping his arm around her neck to secure a modified rear-naked chokehold. Surveillance footage captured her arm going completely limp and falling heavily to her side before Officer Freet slid out from behind her body. Right before rendering her unconscious, Officer Freet pulled a companion aside and gave explicit instructions to scan the crowd and ensure absolutely nobody was recording the incident. Only when a quick perimeter check confirmed no lenses were raised did the chokehold finish the job. Because the unfolding brawl directly involved local municipal police personnel, the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office immediately assumed total command of the criminal file to conduct the scene investigation.
While an emergency response descended on the pavement outside, an entirely different, private drama was unfolding behind the locked front glass of the bar. Once the exterior chaos subsided, the front doors to Playoffs 2 were locked so staff could clear away the floor, stack barstools, and wipe down tables. Before county deputies crossed the threshold, Officer Freet and his wife returned, knocking urgently on the locked glass under the pretext that his wife needed to use the back restroom. When we sat down with Bill Thompson's daughter—a veteran employee of Playoffs who was off the clock that evening—she provided a detailed account of those quiet, tense minutes inside. She had attended the municipal Christmas awards banquet earlier that night as a plus-one with her parents, and she was present at Playoffs when the violence erupted, sustaining visible injuries—including a swollen ear and facial bruising—when she was struck by Officer Freet. She permitted them inside under the strict condition that the tension was completely over. Standing at the bar, Officer Freet appeared heavily intoxicated. Freet immediately brought up a final shot, apologizing to her for striking her in the face during the patio melee. When we asked her directly if they actually did the shot, she told us, "Yeah, we did," identifying the liquor as Rumple Minz. Officer Freet confidently maintained it was merely his word against theirs—until she pointed toward the wall and delivered a devastating reality check: the entire physical encounter had just been captured in real time by the establishment's surveillance system.
Freet's demeanor broke instantly. He muttered "sh**," openly questioned whether his law enforcement career was over, and remarked, "fu** it, I'm already in trouble." Freet then pivotally brought up coming back to the bar later to pay off the tab. The money was flatly refused. Bill's daughter transitioned to explaining that she wanted absolutely no part of his insurance, refusing to let her silence be paid off by a bribe to keep a police assault off the record.
When discussing the initial response on scene, Bill's daughter noted that the early handling of the situation caused immense frustration for her family. She recalled that when a responding sergeant arrived, there was an initial hesitation to process formal paperwork or gather scene statements immediately. According to her recollection, when she asked about documenting what happened, the response was minimal, with the supervisor underplaying the immediate paperwork and suggesting that any further driving infractions would be left to the Missouri State Highway Patrol to intercept. She noted that off-duty Officer Dwayne Lewis subsequently left the premises in a vehicle. Lincoln CountyWatch reached out to Playoffs management twice regarding the incident, and they deferred our outlet directly to the Lincoln County Sheriff's Office. We have not independently verified these specific claims regarding the sergeant's initial commentary or scene management, and we are presenting her perspective strictly as part of the family's recorded experience of the night.
As detectives built the criminal case, they ran directly into a wall of procedural defenses and sudden memory lapses. Lincoln CountyWatch made exhaustive attempts to secure on-the-record commentary from all primary participants, but our team could never successfully locate valid contact information for Benjamin Freet. Conversely, his under-oath accounts within the investigative file document an aggressive stance during early inquiries. An investigator originally contacted Freet by phone to explain that the surveillance footage showed a patron throwing liquid in his face, asking Freet if he wished to pursue charges. Freet aggressively countered, asking, "Are you investigating it, is there a report?" before flatly declaring, "I am not going to answer any questions." When the detective asked if his wife wished to take legal action, Freet shut it down, stating, "No I don't think so, if you have anything further Travis Noble would reach out. "Moments later, Freet called the detective back with a telling procedural query: "Do I need Miranda?" When told he was only being questioned as a potential victim of a water toss, Freet defensively replied, "You should have read me Miranda,"and abruptly hung up the phone. Our tracking of Freet’s law enforcement background led us straight to the City of St. Ann, Missouri, where Freet had previously been listed as a police officer. Lincoln CountyWatch reached out and spoke directly to St. Ann Police Chief Aaron Jimenez. Chief Jimenez confirmed with us that Freet had not been employed with his department for quite some time, indicating a gap of a couple of years. While Chief Jimenez declined to elaborate on the specific personnel reasons behind their parting of ways, he pointedly remarked that looking back at how things unfolded, it might have been the right call to split ways and that he had made the right decision.
When Freet finally sat down with county detectives inside a private law office alongside his attorney, his narrative was framed entirely around self-defense. Freet claimed that upon rising from a fall over the patio fence, he observed a male bar employee standing in what he perceived as a fighting stance with hands out, feet forward, and an angry expression. Claiming he had previously arrested this specific employee in September for a driving infraction—during which the individual allegedly blew a .13 and threatened to physically assault Freet if he ever saw him off duty—Freet maintained he pushed the employee purely out of fear of an impending attack. Freet asserted he swiped at the bartender entirely by accident while people pulled at his clothes, and claimed his chokehold on Mayor Nicole Hanson was a soft, defensive takedown meant to restrain her from lunging at his wife. Freet claimed that while holding the Mayor on the ground, he repeatedly said, "Hey Nicole, it's me, it's Ben, it's OK. Just calm down. You're the mayor. It's all right," to which he claimed Mayor Hanson replied, "Fuck being the mayor. I don't care."
Officer Benjamin Freet's wife provided her own account, displaying initial discomfort regarding how their formal banquet attire stood out at the venue. She stated that she observed Mayor Nicole Hanson's body language toward her husband to be highly inappropriate, claiming Mayor Nicole Hanson was leaning closely on Officer Benjamin Freet's high stool, placing her leg on the footrest, and explicitly discussing relationships with younger men. After a verbal argument spilled onto the patio, she claimed she was sitting inside their vehicle ready to leave when Mayor Nicole Hanson climbed over the fence, entered the passenger side, and physically attacked her while she was on her back, causing a bloody nose and a cut lip.
Officer Dwayne Lewis displayed an absolute lack of cooperation, flatly refusing to answer any questions on the record and directing all investigators to his legal counsel. His attorney subsequently demanded that the Sheriff's Office cease all direct contact. Because of his silence, Lewis's actions were mapped entirely through multiple witnesses and the unedited camera lens. Witnesses stated that the male bar employee was standing in a completely non-aggressive manner with his hands out when Freet grabbed his throat, sparking a grapple over chairs. The crowd then watched Officer Dwayne Lewis lean over the fence, punch the non-aggressive employee three times in the face, wrap his arm around the employee's neck in a tight rear-naked chokehold, and lift him completely off his feet, holding him dangling over the railing. Witnesses reported the employee's face turned red and purple as he silently looked to the crowd for help, entirely unable to breathe. Officer Dwayne Lewis's wife was also interviewed regarding her actions, scrambling to describe a fast-moving physical altercation where she tried to pull people apart, denying that she or her husband acted as regressors. However, multiple witnesses and emergency logs documented that she was in an extremely intoxicated state and fell heavily while attempting to climb the patio fence, sustaining a large knot and gash to her head. Witnesses reported seeing Officer Dwayne Lewis subsequently holding his own wife up while she appeared completely unresponsive from the head injury, screaming at bystanders to get away.
In a casual passing, Lincoln CountyWatch spoke briefly with the civilian patron who threw the water. While we weren't able to secure a formal, structured interview at the time, she approached us directly to confirm that she was indeed the female patron captured on the surveillance footage tossing the liquid. She explicitly told us that she wanted to sit down and do a full interview with us to share her side of the story. She confirmed that she was the person who took off her own shirt to give to Mayor Nicole Hanson in the middle of the bar after the fight, and remarked that she initially thought they were friends but learned very quickly how fast that dynamic could change. While she saved the rest of her detailed narrative for the official record, the official statements she gave to investigators fill in the gaps of her experience. In those records, she stated that she arrived at Playoffs after a 15-hour shift and observed Mayor Nicole Hanson slurring her speech and complaining that people were being mean to her. The civilian patron claimed Mayor Nicole Hanson explicitly suggested that they should throw water in Freet's face. Following Mayor Nicole Hanson to the fence, she tossed the water when Freet began making derogatory comments. Immediately after Freet went over the fence, the patron claimed Mayor Nicole Hanson forcefully shoved her across the patio into a coworker and a window wall, leaving her furious that the very woman who had enticed her to throw the water was now assaulting her. Her account was heavily supported by her male coworker who was pushed directly through the window track, and who stated that multiple witnesses told him that same evening that Mayor Nicole Hanson had enticed the female patron to throw the water under the reasoning that women in distress stick together.
When Mayor Nicole Hanson was placed under oath, her compliance evaporated into total, convenient memory lapses. She detailed leaving a municipal awards banquet with a designated driver to visit a Christmas-themed haunted house in Old Monroe, where an acquaintance reported hearing Freet's wife calling the Mayor derogatory names over a speakerphone call—a call Hanson claimed she did not recall. Hanson stated that upon arriving at Playoffs, Freet's wife subjected her to hours of verbal abuse over an alleged affair, leading Freet to pull them onto the patio to hash it out. At this precise intersection of the timeline, Hanson's memory claimed absolute amnesia. She claimed she remembered throwing her arms up and asking who they were to judge her, but forgot the entire physical brawl, the shoving of patrons, or her climbing the fence to punch Freet's wife inside a vehicle. Her memory, she swore, only returned when she found herself on the ground being choked unconscious.
The unedited surveillance footage completely unmasked these conflicting accounts. The lens proved that before any physical contact occurred from the crowd, Officer Freet blocked the doorway with his foot to isolate the patrons outside. It documented that the male employee was completely non-aggressive when Freet lunged and grabbed his throat. It confirmed Officer Lewis striking the employee and lifting him off his feet by his neck. It explicitly disproved Freet's claim of a "soft takedown," showing a tight chokehold maintained until the Mayor's arm went limp. And it entirely dismantled Mayor Hanson's claim of passive amnesia, capturing her actively shoving a patron into a window wall, swinging punches five times over the fence, and climbing the metal railing to strike Freet's wife inside a vehicle.
As these conflicting elements came together, the question of formal prosecution divided the room. Bill's daughter firmly stated she wanted to press criminal charges against Officer Freet for the strike to her face. The male bar employee, whose boxer's fracture required medical intervention, signed medical releases and explicitly stated he wanted to press charges for assault against Freet, Lewis, and Mayor Hanson across three separate altercations. The male coworker shoved through the window frame formally declared his desire to pursue assault charges against the Mayor. Conversely, when detectives pressed Mayor Hanson on whether she wished to prosecute Officer Freet for felony assault for choking her into unconsciousness, she stalled, stating she was uncertain, found the situation embarrassing, and just wanted it to be done. Backed by these victim statements, the Criminal Investigations Division compiled their findings and formally submitted three separate probable cause packets recommending charges. The files suggested charging Officer Dwayne Lewis with Felony Assault in the 2nd Degree for wrapping his arm around the male employee's neck and lifting him off the ground. The division recommended charging Officer Benjamin Freet with Felony Assault in the 2nd Degree and Assault in the 4th Degree for grabbing the employee's throat, striking the bartender, and choking Mayor Hanson unconscious. Finally, they recommended charging Mayor Nicole Hanson with four separate counts of Assault in the 4th Degree for shoving a patron into the window track, slapping the male employee, and striking Freet's wife inside the vehicle. Recognizing an immediate, absolute conflict of interest involving an executive mayor and municipal police officers operating within his immediate jurisdiction, Lincoln County Prosecuting Attorney Mike Wood refused to handle the files. Wood immediately kicked the entire packet over to the St. Charles County Prosecuting Attorney's Office for an external review.
With the case documents sitting with an outside prosecutor, the operational fallout inside City Hall turned personal. Public works employee Bill Thompson returned to work the very next morning on Monday, December 23, 2025. Despite explicit assurances from city leadership that Officer Dwayne Lewis would face immediate suspension, Bill arrived at work only to find the officer active, armed, and on duty. Devastated as a father and acting out of raw emotion at the sight of the officer who had choked his son dangling over a patio rail, Bill repeatedly used hand gestures, flipping the officer off in passing throughout the day. The friction culminated that afternoon at the city public works shed. Bill was stationary inside his truck, parked a good distance away, when Officer Lewis pulled into the area at the end of his shift to unload his patrol gear from a city vehicle and handle his firearms. Feeling unsafe and wanting to document what was happening across that space, Bill positioned his phone on his dashboard to make it appear as if he was recording the interaction. Bill did take a photograph of Officer Lewis from that distance, which he later shared with our team; while the distance makes it difficult to clearly discern specific visual definitions from that single picture, it captures the baseline of their interaction. From his truck, Bill shouted a question over the distance, asking, "You want a video or something?" From across the lot, Lewis pulled out his own device to record the interaction. It was at that precise moment, across that distance, that Bill turned around, faced away from the officer, and mooned him. Officer Lewis filed a radically different account in a formal summons, asserting a closer confrontation where Bill challenged him to a physical fight and fully exposed his bare backside and scrotum.
The city administration utilized the shed encounter to launch an aggressive disciplinary campaign against Bill. On January 15, 2026, the Board of Aldermen issued a one-week suspension, explicitly writing into the paperwork that the city would not pursue criminal charges for indecent exposure. Yet, a municipal tracking complaint was initiated anyway, and on February 25, 2026, a criminal case for misdemeanor sexual misconduct was formally filed against Bill in Lincoln County Court. Supervisor Stacey Brooks kept up the internal monitoring, sending leaked text messages stating that Bill had charges, would soon have more, and that an upcoming board vote would terminate him. Bill was hit with a highly targeted write-up for allowing an unauthorized individual to sit in his truck during a lunch break to help hook up a heavy snowplow—while a separate department worker who regularly used a city truck after school to transport his goddaughter had his write-ups entirely erased from his file.
The political pressure extended to Bill's life partner, Alderwoman Faith "Punky" Burgess. Lincoln CountyWatch reached out to Alderwoman Burgess, who declined a formal interview out of a direct fear of political retaliation within City Hall. Her tone remained lighthearted, but she shut down the conversation completely when pressed. Records confirm that during an earlier administrative review of Bill's employment, another alderman explicitly told Burgess that, per the city attorney, she should not attend the closed executive session. She was not legally barred from the room, but the directive was clear. While standard operating procedures in Missouri dictate that an elected official should show up to closed sessions to hear evidence and simply abstain from voting due to a conflict of interest—such as a relationship with a life partner—the administration utilized the directive to keep her out of the room. This localized dynamic stood out significantly against separate municipal tracking inside City Hall. Records reveal that Burgess had previously registered vocal opposition against the potential hiring of the City Clerk's husband, Chris Kennison.
The final weight of the administrative collapse arrived in mid-May. Banned from entering city premises even to retrieve his own vehicle, Bill had to arrange a ride down to the site to reclaim his personal truck under the watch of municipal cameras. On May 14, 2026, Mayor Nicole Hanson handed down a final termination notice, abruptly severing Bill's 19-year public service career—a career that, prior to the bar fight, maintained a completely immaculate record with zero historical write-ups. Bill recalled that Mayor Hanson wept during the termination, telling him she felt terrible, to which he responded that the shoe was now on the other foot: they were all worried about losing their jobs, yet he was the one being fired over an argument.
Behind the scenes, the case file exposes an infrastructure designed to handle the fallout quietly. Officer Benjamin Freet's attorney disclosed that on the morning immediately following the brawl, Winfield City Clerk Tracy Kennison contacted Officer Benjamin Freet directly to inform him that Mayor Nicole Hanson had reached out and explicitly wanted to extend her personal apologies to him for the night before. Detectives obtained screenshots verifying the call logs between Tracy Kennison and Officer Benjamin Freet. When confronted by investigators, the City Clerk initially agreed to provide a formal statement, but the following morning she sent a text message to detectives flatly stating she had changed her mind and refused to get involved.
The criminal track against the public officials reached its absolute end point when St. Charles County Prosecuting Attorney Joseph G. McCulloch officially declined all recommended charges, ensuring no formal criminal warrants were ever issued against the officers or the mayor. In a written statement, McCulloch leveled a definitive conclusion on the entire case: "This case involved what appears to be mutual combatants, where proving assault beyond a reasonable doubt would be difficult because the actions could reasonably be interpreted as self-defense or self-protection." With all criminal cases flatly declined by the special prosecutor, the temporary administrative penalties dissolved completely. The Board of Aldermen permanently terminated Officer Benjamin Freet under at-will authority, utilizing state non-disclosure exemptions under Section 610.021(3) of the Revised Statutes of Missouri to shield the text of their reasoning from the public. Mayor Nicole Hanson has formally agreed to sit down with Lincoln CountyWatch for an exclusive interview regarding her accountability and the future of Winfield leadership; an official date has not been scheduled at this time as our newsroom awaits a final response from the mayor's office.
Ultimately, the cascading series of events concluded with two distinct administrative developments inside Winfield leadership. On May 4, 2026, following the external review by the special prosecutor, Officer Dwayne Lewis’s temporary suspension without pay was officially lifted; he returned to active duty, strapped on his firearm, and was restored to full patrol responsibilities within the city. A little over a month later, on June 11, 2026—exactly 19 days ago relative to today's date of June 30—the city finalized a special municipal meeting to officially hire the spouse of the City Clerk, to step into a prominent role within the public works department infrastructure, filling the position previously held by the 19-year public service veteran.
Complete Your Coverage of the Winfield Investigation
Read Part 1 (Free): Inside the Chaos at Playoffs II: The Midnight Brawl That Involved Winfield’s Mayor and Two Off-Duty Officers
Read the Subscriber Deep Dive: The Winfield Cover-Up? Public Documents Expose Conflict of Interest Behind the Dropped Bar Fight Case
COMING SOON: PART 3 MEMBERS ONLY EXCLUSIVE
Part 3 is currently in production and will be released strictly for premium members. Get ready to dive deep as we unmask the full surveillance video, hidden municipal files, and absolute visual evidence of the brawl—released entirely to members only. Upgrade to a premium membership today to secure immediate access upon release.
About Lincoln CountyWatch
Lincoln CountyWatch is part of the County Watch Network (CWN), an independent local news organization serving Lincoln County and surrounding communities.
If you have a correction, clarification, news tip, event submission or story idea, contact us at tips@lincolncountywatch.com.
Lincoln CountyWatch is not affiliated with any law enforcement agency, fire department, EMS agency, government entity, political organization or court system.
All individuals referenced in this investigative report are presumed innocent of any criminal wrongdoing unless and until proven guilty in a court of law. The refusal of a special prosecutor to file criminal charges means no convictions or formal allegations exist regarding this incident.
Good work