A revealing report in should inspire the governor and lawmakers to demand more transparency and accountability in the way police in Colorado move from agency to agency despite disturbing employment records.
As reporter Christopher N. Osher explained, “a police officer can be fired or resign for egregious violations of moral turpitude, such as destruction of evidence, lying under oath or excessive use of force. But so long as there is no conviction of a felony or one of the [specified] misdemeanors, the officer is free to seek employment at another agency.”
And so of course some do, and a number of them succeed in finding work. That’s especially true of those allowed to resign with a misleadingly clean personnel record before they would have been fired.
Meanwhile, the panel that decides who can work in law enforcement in Colorado will not move to revoke an officer’s certification absent a conviction.
A recipe for a disaster? You bet.
after an officer shot and killed a 12-year-old with an air gun two seconds after police arrived on the scene. It turns out the officer had resigned previously from a suburban agency after it become clear he was unfit for police work.
In fact, according to a department memo, he had displayed “a pattern of lack of maturity, indiscretion and not following instructions,” as well as a “dangerous loss of composure during live range training” and an “inability to manage personal stress.”
“I do not believe time, nor training, will be able to change or correct these deficiencies,” the memo’s author wrote.
That reviewer was proved tragically correct when this second-chance cop turned his weapon on a child.
Osher turned up a number of instances in Colorado in which roving officers went on to commit crimes or cause harm, although none as awful as what occurred in Cleveland. But why tempt fate? Here’s what the state should do.
• Strengthen the law that governs when officers may have their certification revoked. Osher found 39 states with more rigorous standards. Colorado should join them.
• Require agencies to inform the Colorado Board of Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) when an officer is fired or resigns, and — no less important — why. States such as Florida already do this and the practice makes it easier to track an officer’s career. The POST board should be authorized to intervene more aggressively based upon this information.
• Mandate public access to a state database that tracks the employment history of officers so that interested parties and the press can provide another check on rogue officers. There is simply no compelling reason for the attorney general’s office to deny access to that database, which it did when Osher requested to see it. And yet as his story pointed out, without use of that database, “the extent of the problem [of second-chance cops] is unknown. “
What possible public interest is served by keeping that information under wraps? The secrecy is not only arbitrary, it’s also potentially dangerous. Even without full access to the database, Osher discovered that a third of the 280 cops who’d been decertified for police work in Colorado over the past decade “had worked at more than one police agency.”
Most Coloradans probably assume that when a cop is fired or resigns under pressure, his career in law enforcement is over. But it’s just not so. And it’s time the state recognized the problem.
To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit or check out our for how to submit by e-mail or mail.
