Resigned Under a Cloud: The Troubling Collapse of South Alabama Police Chief Herbert Earl “Zeke” Aull
Herbert Earl “Zeke” Aull did not leave the University of South Alabama Police Department with a celebratory farewell. After more than a decade as chief, Aull was placed on paid administrative leave amid serious allegations involving sexual harassment and misuse of his authority. Two months later, while an internal investigation remained underway, he resigned.
The publicly reported record does not establish that Aull was formally fired. It shows something nearly as consequential: a police chief removed from active command and ultimately gone from office while facing allegations that struck at the heart of his integrity as a public official.
Aull had led the campus police department since 2010 and was earning more than $101,000 annually when his career at the university abruptly unraveled. On June 8, 2022, the university announced that he had been placed on administrative leave pending resolution of what it called a “personnel matter.” Capt. Phil Fishel was immediately installed as interim chief. FOX10 reported that a contract employee had accused Aull of sexual harassment.
The accusations did not stop there.
According to a source cited by FOX10, the contract employee also alleged that Aull violated university policies involving employee pay, the hiring of contractors, the use of student workers and unauthorized remote work. Those allegations raised questions extending far beyond inappropriate personal behavior. They implicated Aull’s administration of personnel, public resources and the authority entrusted to him as the leader of a law-enforcement agency.
A police chief occupies a position that demands exceptional judgment. The chief controls assignments, influences hiring, oversees discipline and exercises substantial authority over employees whose careers may depend on remaining in the chief’s favor. Allegations of sexual harassment in that environment are therefore not merely a private workplace dispute. They raise fundamental concerns about power, vulnerability and whether employees could safely challenge the person commanding the department.
A separate warning had already surfaced when, as NBC15 reported, an officer filed an ethics complaint against Aull. The existence of a complaint does not prove every allegation it contains, but it demonstrates that concerns about Aull’s conduct had become serious enough for someone inside law enforcement to take them outside the department’s ordinary chain of command.
That distinction matters. Police organizations are built around rank, loyalty and obedience. Filing a formal complaint against a sitting chief can carry enormous professional risk. When an officer is willing to attach a name and career to such a challenge, the public deserves to know precisely what was alleged, how the complaint was investigated and what conclusions were reached.
Instead, the university revealed little.
When Aull was placed on leave, the university confirmed only that a personnel matter was pending. Aull declined to comment to FOX10. The institution’s silence may have reflected employment-law concerns, but it also left students, employees and taxpayers without meaningful answers about the man entrusted with policing their campus.
Then came the resignation.
On August 9, 2022, Aull resigned effective immediately. An email from Dr. Mike Mitchell, the university’s vice president for student affairs and dean of students, confirmed the departure. Fishel remained in interim command, and the university announced that it would search for a permanent replacement. FOX10 described the resignation as occurring amid the internal investigation.
Aull’s resignation ended his authority, but it did not answer the central questions surrounding his departure. The cited reports do not disclose whether investigators substantiated the sexual-harassment accusation, whether university policies were found to have been violated or how the ethics complaint was ultimately resolved. Nor do they indicate whether the university completed and preserved a final investigative report after Aull resigned.
That lack of closure is deeply unsatisfactory.
Resignation should not become an institutional escape hatch that allows serious allegations against a powerful public employee to disappear from view. The public interest does not evaporate when the subject of an investigation hands in a resignation letter. If anything, an abrupt departure during an investigation makes transparency more important.
Aull was not an obscure employee working beyond public view. He was the chief of a sworn police agency with statewide law-enforcement authority. He drew a six-figure salary from a public university and exercised authority over officers, contractors and student workers. The standards applied to his conduct should have been at least as demanding as those his own department imposed on students and employees.
The university owed its community more than the sterile phrase “personnel matter.” It owed students and employees an accounting of whether their police department had been administered fairly, whether anyone experienced retaliation, whether public resources were misused and whether safeguards failed beneath Aull’s leadership.
The allegations against Aull remain allegations unless supported by official findings. Fairness requires saying that plainly. But fairness does not require pretending that his departure was routine. A chief placed on leave amid allegations of sexual harassment and policy violations, following a separately reported ethics complaint, and then resigning during the resulting investigation is not the story of an ordinary retirement. It is the collapse of a public official’s command under a cloud of unanswered questions.
Aull’s badge and title are gone. The demand for accountability should not have disappeared with them.