{"id":95809,"date":"2019-02-01T16:56:52","date_gmt":"2019-02-01T23:56:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/when-colorado-cops-police-themselves-public-can-be-left-in-the-dark\/"},"modified":"2019-02-01T16:56:52","modified_gmt":"2019-02-01T23:56:52","slug":"when-colorado-cops-police-themselves-public-can-be-left-in-the-dark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/when-colorado-cops-police-themselves-public-can-be-left-in-the-dark\/","title":{"rendered":"When Colorado cops police themselves, public can be left in the dark"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"The
The ACLU, media organizations and police watchdogs in the state say the Denver Police Department is the only Colorado law enforcement agency that consistently releases comprehensive information following internal investigations. They want to change that.<\/span>Durango Herald file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Imagine you\u2019re arrested by a Colorado police officer. During the arrest, the officer uses such physical force as to injure you. You file a complaint or hire an attorney, or perhaps the American Civil Liberties Union files a lawsuit on your behalf, or the police decide to investigate themselves.<\/p>\n

This prompts an internal investigation within that officer\u2019s department.<\/p>\n

Months or a year go by before the police determine whether the officer in your case indeed used excessive force. If the officer is found to have acted in accordance with protocol, the department moves on. If the investigation shows your claims of wrongdoing are legitimate, you may settle, out of court, for tens of thousands of dollars of taxpayer money, maybe more.<\/p>\n

When it\u2019s all over, you file a records request to read documents related to the investigation. You do this \u2013 and perhaps a journalist or lawyer does, too \u2013 because you\u2019re curious to see how the police policed themselves in your case.<\/p>\n

Recent research shows that your records request is likely to be rejected or ignored. A University of Denver study that examined statewide internal investigations records from 2015 and 2016 found that about 60 percent of records requests resulted in denials or non-responses.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter requesting 61 particular internal affairs files from seventeen agencies across the state,\u201d that study\u2019s authors wrote, \u201cnearly all agencies were unwilling to release a complete file, regardless of the situation or outcome.\u201d<\/p>\n

The ACLU, media organizations and police watchdogs in the state say the Denver Police Department is the only Colorado law enforcement agency that consistently releases comprehensive information following internal investigations. But even in Denver, that practice is only a couple years old.<\/p>\n

In most cases in Colorado, a records custodian may send you a written summary of the internal investigation, but the actual documentation related to it will be effectively sealed from you and the rest of the public.<\/p>\n

The public deserves more, state Rep. James Coleman believes. For the second year in a row, he\u2019s sponsoring a bill that would require Colorado law enforcement agencies to make the files on completed internal investigations \u2013 specifically, investigations into incidents involving members of the public \u2013 subject to open records requests.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe goal for us with this bill is to make sure we have transparency between the folks who are protecting and serving us and the individuals they\u2019re serving,\u201d said Coleman, a Democrat who represents northeast Denver. \u201cAny investigation that has happened, that is a closed case \u2013 we should be able to have access to that information.\u201d<\/p>\n

The effort has an array of supporters, including the ACLU and Colorado Common Cause, the libertarian Independence Institute and media groups such as the Colorado Broadcasters Association, the Colorado Press Association and the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition. Colorado Independent Editor Susan Greene also testified last year for the bill.<\/p>\n

But the bill also has a host of critics, including police, who fear it would violate officers\u2019 privacy and perhaps invite litigation.<\/p>\n

John Cooke, a former Weld County sheriff now serving in the state Senate, believes that if the bill passes, some members of the public could cherry-pick from reports to mischaracterize police conduct.<\/p>\n

Coleman\u2019s 2018 bill \u2013 indefinitely postponed by a committee in the then-Republican-controlled Senate \u2013 was mostly supported by Democrats, though a significant number of House Republicans voted for it, while several Democrats opposed it.<\/p>\n

The primary opponents are mayors, city councils and police, including the Colorado State Fraternal Order of Police, by far the state\u2019s largest law enforcement union, which in 2018 called Coleman\u2019s bill \u201cpoorly crafted\u201d and introduced \u201cfor the purpose of enhancing civil lawsuits.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAdditionally, this highly litigious, bad piece of legislation reeked with the potential for abuse and unintended consequences,\u201d Fraternal Order of Police staff wrote in a post on the union\u2019s website. The post added, \u201cLaw enforcement officers have a legitimate expectation of privacy in any materials or information that may exist within his or her personnel and internal affairs file.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fraternal Order staff contacted for this story said the group has not yet taken a position on the latest version of Coleman\u2019s bill, though Executive Director Mike Violette did say, of last year\u2019s bill, \u201cThat is something that we cannot support.\u201d<\/p>\n

Coleman said he would like the bill to apply to existing internal investigation files, and not just future ones. He said he hopes to tack on an amendment requiring retroactive unsealing, but the bill as currently written doesn\u2019t include any such requirement.<\/p>\n

Cooke, the former sheriff of Weld County, said he believes it would be a mistake to add that amendment because many of the people who provided information to investigators did so under the belief that their testimony wouldn\u2019t be made public.<\/p>\n

With or without a retroactivity provision, however, Cooke said he\u2019ll oppose Coleman\u2019s bill.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat scares me is that it could be used more to spread misinformation than for transparency,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Cooke added that he\u2019s concerned the bill would result in the release of officers\u2019 personal information, which may appear in some of the files in question. But Coleman said that information can and should be redacted.<\/p>\n

To date, police accused of wrongdoing have, far more often than not, been afforded that privacy, according to the DU study, entitled \u201cAccess Denied.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis isn\u2019t about trying to hurt law enforcement in any way,\u201d Coleman said. \u201cIt\u2019s about making sure that we fully understand the process by which police are held accountable.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Colorado Independent<\/a> is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs and engages with Coloradans \u2013 about public policy, politics, government and issues that matter in our square, swing state.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

make internal investigation files subject to open-records requests<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":95810,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[51],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-95809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-police"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95809\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95809"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=95809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}