It’s both stunning and revealing that the Denver police union is calling for the replacement of independent monitor Richard Rosenthal as the city election approaches its climax in two weeks.
It’s stunning because during the more than five years he’s filled the job, Rosenthal has conducted himself with the utmost professionalism. Anyone expecting a police watchdog to have a chip on his shoulder regarding law enforcement or to thrust himself into the media spotlight at every opportunity was quickly disabused of those notions by Rosenthal’s conduct.
The union’s action is also revealing because it shows the organization clinging to a bygone era when an officer who deliberately lied in his official capacity would often get nothing more than a slap on the wrist. Rosenthal disagrees with that standard. So do we.
Nor are we alone. Mayor Bill Vidal, former Mayor John Hickenlooper and the two candidates to become the next mayor, Chris Romer and Michael Hancock, all support the matrix system adopted under former Safety Manager Al LaCabe. Under that system, a premeditated lie in connection with an investigation or an administrative or judicial proceeding is a basis for firing.
Rosenthal’s unforgivable offense, in the union’s eyes, seems to be that he takes the matrix system seriously. And so he speaks up when it’s being ignored — as he did last summer, for example, when former safety chief Ron Perea barely punished two officers who filed grossly misleading reports regarding the beating and arrest of Michael DeHerrera in LoDo.
Both officers were finally fired this year for “deceptive acts” by current safety manager Charles Garcia. Naturally, the union wants the next mayor to get rid of Garcia, too, even though he’s expressed interest in staying on.
Although we like what we’ve seen so far of Garcia, we also recognize that the next mayor may want a safety manager he personally selects since he’ll have to work closely with that official. But the independent monitor is another matter: The “independent” is in the title for a reason. If the next mayor pushes out Rosen- thal, it will amount to a negative verdict on his work and a capitulation to a union mired in the past.
The irony, as noted earlier, is that Rosenthal seems to be scrupulously fair in judging officers’ conduct by the department’s own rules. “I have supported the department in not sustaining or in exonerating officers in hundreds of cases,” he told The Denver Post’s Tom McGhee. “All the volume of evidence and the reports show that I provided objective and fair oversight. I have supported exonerating officers in every officer- involved shooting that has occurred in the last six years.”
That’s more than 30 shootings since 2006, by the way, although not all have been resolved.
Rosenthal also backed five sheriff’s deputies involved in a struggle that led to the death of Marvin Booker at the city jail, endorsing Garcia’s conclusion that the deputies followed department policy in subduing the prisoner.
It’s not conscientious officers Rosenthal has a beef with. It’s the liars who betray and undermine their profession and who then expect to go on with their jobs.
