The Longmont Housing Authority’s attorney has concluded that police should have known better than to accompany property of apartment units in May.
Attorney David Herrera, in a letter released Tuesday, detailed the findings of his internal investigation, which had been requested by the housing authority’s board following allegations police brought dogs to conduct drug searches at The Suites subsidized apartments at 2000 Sunset Way.
Residents of The Suites have said they were unaware they could refuse the request by police and housing authority staff to search their apartments.
Longmont Housing Authority staffers thought the searches were allowed under the tenants’ leases, Herrera said, and had used police to assist in sanctioned searches at a different property that’s specifically used to house probationers.
Herrera said law enforcement officers are trained on the limits of the Fourth Amendment when it comes to third-party consent to warrantless searches, whereas the housing authority employees are not.
He said only after searches at The Suites in May were questioned in the public light did police cancel the inspections planned for June.
Longmont police did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
City officials had asked the Weld County Sheriff’s Office to conduct a separate investigation of how Longmont’s police department handled the searches.
On Friday, following the completion of the Weld County investigation, Longmont officials acknowledged the warrantless drug searches at The Suites complex were not consistent with the police department’s standards.
Longmont officials say the city’s police “have already taken corrective actions to ensure that this never happens again.” But they refused to release the 40-page report generated by Weld County sheriff’s investigators.
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