Rogue cops still licensed to carry a badge despite government reforms By Susan Greene, Colorado News Collaborative and Andrew Fraieli, The Sentinel in Aurora shielded the identities of most officers with proven records of misconduct. It also raises questions about whether the system of police discipline lawmakers have authorized and POST has delivered is keeping Coloradans safe from bad cops.. Editor’s note: The full story is available online by visiting www.denverurbanspectrum.com.
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he former police chief in New Castle, while drunk, pressed an AK-style weapon into his neighbor’s chest and threatened to “muzzle thump” him. A former Kiowa County sheriff’s deputy with a pattern of excessive force killed an unarmed man in a shooting for which he is now serving three years for attempted manslaughter. And a former Denver police officer who bragged to coworkers that he shot a carjacking suspect once in the head to kill him, then at least 16 times more to see his “face fall apart,” allegedly spent months trumpeting his second on-duty killing and saying he was eager for a third. Despite documented records of having abused their power, these officers remain certified by Colorado’s Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) board, the state agency that regulates police. In the eyes of the law, all three also are eligible to keep working in law enforcement. Such is the state of police accountability in Colorado, where rogue officers have gone undisciplined and unexposed despite lawmakers’ and regulators’ pledges to crack down on misconduct and make disciplinary actions transparent. Colorado’s legislature made national headlines in the weeks after George Floyd’s 2020 murder by passing a sweeping law aimed at improving police integrity. Among several ambitious reforms was an order that POST make public data that shines light on police discipline.
Over the past ten months, Rocky Mountain Public Media, The Sentinel in Aurora, 9News and Colorado Public Radio teamed up with the Colorado News Collaborative (COLab) to review that never-before-seen data, request and comb through public documents detailing disciplinary actions POST made public in 2022, and assess how officer misconduct is handled in our state. The result is “Undisciplined,” a collaborative investigation that launches today with a story questioning whether rogue cops are being red-flagged and weeded out, as lawmakers intended. The short answer is no. Shane Madrigal, the former Denver police officer who bragged about disfiguring a criminal suspect, was found to have a long pattern of what his supervisors deemed racist, homophobic and “grossly inappropriate” comments about killing people while he was on duty. Yet he appears to have an unblemished disciplinary record in POST’s database because Denver forgot to report that he resigned while under investigation. Although POST relies on local departments to report their own officers’ misconduct, it has not used its
power to sanction those like Denver that fail to do so. “What kind of system allows the certification of an officer who takes pleasure in riddling people with extra bullets?” asks the mother of the carjacking suspect whose fatal shooting Madrigal’s fellow officers say he gloated over. “That’s not police discipline. It’s a free pass. And it’s disgusting.” Our investigation shines light on several other officers whose POST certification is intact but whose fitness for duty is debatable. It identifies rogue cops who have continued breaking laws and policies as they’ve been able to bounce from police job to police job. It exposes glitches, delays and inaccuracies in POST’s data, and casts doubts on its ability to serve as a reliable resource for police departments checking the backgrounds of potential hires. And it questions POST’s practice of releasing information only about misconduct cases from 2022 forward – omitting, for example, the three Aurora officers indicted for the killing of Elijah McClain. That decision by Attorney General Phil Weiser, POST’s chairman, and his office to limit the disciplinary actions visible to the public has effectively
Denver Urban Spectrum — www.denverurbanspectrum.com – November 2023
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