COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.—Colorado Springs police officers were disciplined during a two-year span for transgressions that included sexual harassment, shooting at a hawk after a bird attacked an officer, and oversleeping and missing a court case.
Those details were released to The Colorado Springs Gazette after an open records request of the police department’s Internal Affairs documents. The reports are from 2007 and most of 2008, the newspaper said Sunday.
Police noted that the percentage of complaints against officers is small, and that misconduct is punished or handled with additional training.
“I’m very proud that this department doesn’t have any systematic problems. When we do have a problem with an officer, it’s dealt with,” Lt. Kirk Wilson, a supervisor in the Internal Affairs unit, told the newspaper.
Police would not reveal the details of discipline against officers, saying that it would be against state law to do so.
The Gazette said that none of the officers cited in the Internal Affairs reports returned the newspaper’s calls for comment.
In one report, school resource officer Gary Partnow was accused in 2008 of sexually harassing three women at the middle school where he was assigned. The women claimed he made inappropriate comments to them and asked one about her sex life. Partnow said the allegations were false, but the principal requested that he be moved to another school.
Another report detailed how officer Kirk Montgomery violated department policy by leaving a drug suspect unsupervised at a hospital in July. The suspect was supposed to receive treatment before being taken to the jail, but he fled. He was arrested weeks later.
The newspaper reported that the officer who overslept, Eric Reed, failed to testify in the case of a child abuse suspect who was later found not guilty. Reed’s supervisor wrote that “some charges were dropped due to his absence and ultimately the jury found the defendant not guilty.”
Officer Dan Mork, a three-year veteran, got in trouble for shooting at a hawk moments after a bird flew down and attacked a sergeant’s forehead in August 2008. The report says Mork approached a hawk feeding on carrion, and the claimed to have fired in self-defense at another hawk diving in his direction.
Police faulted Mork for approaching the hawk while it was feeding, saying he put himself in danger, but concluded that Mork was not motivated by revenge when he walked up to the bird.
Mork was also disciplined a year earlier for an improper search of a residence in which drugs were seized but no one was arrested.
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Information from: The Gazette,
