As Denver city officials prepare to add to the multimillion-dollar tab to continue dealing with fallout from the Jamal Hunter jail abuse scandal, taxpayers ought to finally get a full accounting for their money.
We worry they’ll never get it. And what a travesty of justice that would be. Questions about how the scandal was investigated cast doubt at the highest levels in Denver City Hall.
As The Denver Postap Jon Murray and Noelle Phillips report, City Council members will be asked Monday to approve a , a city attorney once suspended for his apparently unethical actions during the investigation of Hunter’s abuse. Officials also plan to issue a letter of apology to Shapiro: a rare occurrence in settlements, which usually result in an agreement to admit no wrongdoing.
Translation: Something stinks. By its very existence, the settlement suggests that high-ranking city officials were culpable in Shapiro’s misdeeds.
Hunter was the victim of an atrocious attack by jail inmates led by Amos Page, a real operator who, by catching Deputy Gaynel Rumer drinking on the job, coerced Rumer into looking the other way while he sold contraband and roughed up inmates who crossed him. The setup led to Rumer’s turning out lights and avoiding Hunter’s cell while Page and others beat Hunter and scalded his genitals.
The city rightly launched an investigation. But then, another scandal. into silencing witnesses hostile to the city’s case. Investigators backed up the claim in open court, and handed over e-mails from Shapiro they considered inappropriate.
The investigators said they did not allow Shapiro to influence their work, but U.S. District Judge John Kane called the investigation of the witnesses a sham meant to silence Page from testifying.
Mayor Michael Hancock’s administration with Hunter. Meanwhile, Shapiro, on suspension, collected his salary for 19 months while the city investigated.
Last August, then-City Attorney Scott Martinez quietly sent Shapiro a termination letter, citing his judgment in the Hunter case. Yet after CBS4 reported the firing, the city retracted it. Officials also declined to provide the original termination letter, saying it did not exist.
Shapiro fought back, said the city was trying to defame him and claimed the city needn’t have settled with Hunter.
The city reinstated Shapiro in February. And turns out Martinez’s office apparently violated open-records laws by destroying their copy of the termination letter, despite the law’s requirement it be kept for 10 years. CBS4’s in March.
In May, Martinez stepped down, saying that after 2 ½ years at the helm it was time to pursue other options.
With Shapiro’s settlement, suspension salary and legal costs, the people of Denver will have paid out well more than $4 million in this matter, but itap difficult to see that proper justice has been served on the perpetrators of the apparent attempted cover-up.
City officials say they plan to release a statement Tuesday, in addition to the letter of apology to Shapiro. We hope that the statement actually settles things.
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