Colorado Springs Police Department workers have improperly discarded evidence in perhaps hundreds of criminal cases, and the police chief has acknowledged that items in as many as 10 sex assaults are missing.
Just how crucial the materials are to the cases is unknown even to police, prosecutors and defense attorneys. But Police Chief Luis Velez emphasized that a four-month internal probe by his office has found no criminal wrongdoing in the mass purging of materials that was discovered late last year.
“Amidst this dark cloud, it’s a beam of sunlight, and a pretty big beam,” Velez said.
Still, the department’s decision to clear itself of criminal wrongdoing has raised eyebrows among some defense attorneys.
“It’s always a lot cleaner for an investigation to be conducted by someone one step removed from the problem,” said Jim Scarboro, director of the Colorado Innocence Project, which could rely on old evidence in seeking new trials for convicted inmates.
He suggested the attorney general should be consulted, but a spokesperson for that office said no formal request has been made by El Paso County officials for an independent investigation.
In his first detailed disclosure about what happened, Velez said Friday that most of the materials were inadvertently tossed by temporary employees during the past two years in an effort to reduce crowding in police storage rooms. Initially, police thought as many as 11,000 items connected to 4,000 cases were missing.
After months of auditing, the chief has determined that while 11,000 items were trashed, the number of cases in which evidence was improperly disposed is between 100 and 500 – a volume that defense lawyers say may be unprecedented in state history.
“In terms of scale and numbers, I haven’t heard of anything like this,” said Colorado’s chief public defender, David Kaplan.
Three internal police reviews, a district attorney evaluation of cases and a city auditor review of procedures are exploring the fallout among cases ranging from homicides, kidnappings and sexual assaults to missing persons. It’s still unknown how many are open, pending or unsolved, but even closed and cold cases often benefit from forensic analyses that can be performed years after a case is finalized.
Velez wouldn’t discuss whether anyone in the department has been or will be disciplined for the destruction. But he acknowledged that the temporary employees were not properly trained or supervised. He said at least one new step already has been implemented: mandating that submission of police evidence into storage rooms must be signed off by two employees.
Velez and El Paso County District Attorney John Newsome’s office declined to specify what cases appear to face serious evidentiary issues but indicated that more details could be released as early as Monday.
Last week, an El Paso County judge postponed a hearing in a kidnapping case when the defense lawyer cited possible missing evidence due to Police Department errors, according to a report in the Colorado Springs Gazette newspaper.
Lisa Kirkman, chief deputy district attorney in El Paso, said her office has contacted dozens of victims and relatives of victims to alert them that their cases could be affected.
Kirkman and Velez said that between five and 10 “open” sexual-assault cases involve lost evidence. Those cases could be either unsolved crimes, or cases in which charges are pending against a defendant.
Department officials first began to suspect evidence was missing Dec. 27 when officers with the major-crimes unit could not find evidence that logs showed should have been present.
Velez assigned an internal-affairs sergeant to probe further. A month later, Velez was told that the problem was larger than expected.
“He briefed me on findings and at that point it would be analogous to a ship’s captain being told we had sprung a leak,” Velez said. “What I didn’t know was how big the crack was.”
Velez said he waited until March to inform the district attorney so he could determine the scope of the problem. Newsome could not be reached for comment Friday.
Staff writer Miles Moffeit can be reached at 303 820-1415 or mmoffeit@denverpost.com.
