Just 11 days after Jermal Ball became a certified Colorado peace officer, he was pulled over for suspected drunken driving by an officer in his own police department.
Behind the wheel, Ball — then at the Durango Police Department — told the colleague who pulled him over that he hadn’t had anything to drink that night in 2022. He passed field sobriety tests, but he smelled of alcohol and slurred as he spoke. He couldn’t recite the alphabet, and the officer who pulled him over suspected the man was using insider tricks to beat at least one of the sobriety tests, according to police internal affairs records obtained by The Denver Post.
Officer Sam Kullberg decided he didn’t have enough evidence to arrest Ball for driving under the influence. But he called a supervisor to the scene who started an internal affairs investigation. As part of that, they forced Ball to submit to a breath test, and he blew a .157 blood alcohol content, nearly twice the legal limit. The officers left Ball in the care of his son — who was also a Durango police officer — and removed his service weapon from the door of his vehicle.
Durango police fired Ball three days later for lying about drinking that night and for having his weapon on him while drunk, according the internal affairs records. He “cannot be counted upon to uphold the community trust,” then-Chief Robert Brammer wrote in a June 6, 2022, memo.
Under state law, Ball should have faced the revocation of his Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) certification — a credential required to work as a law enforcement officer in Colorado — because he was .
But Durango police did not report his firing to the . Ball went a county over and secured a job as an Archuleta County Sheriff’s deputy two months later. He still works there today.
The case, which has only recently come to the attention of POST officials, highlights the limits of state oversight even after lawmakers passed significant police reform aimed at forcing dishonest cops out of the profession.
“This is specifically what we were trying to prevent — (a rogue police officer) going from one law enforcement agency to another to another without transparency of what that individual is bringing to the next community,” said Denise Maes, the former public policy director at the ACLU of Colorado who helped draft key police reform bills during a national push for police accountability in 2020.
Ball declined to comment when reached Thursday, and leadership at the Archuleta County Sheriff’s Office did not return requests for comment.
Drunk driving in Durango
Durango Police Chief Brice Current said that the police department didn’t report Ball’s firing to state authorities in 2022 because the man had not yet been sworn in as a police officer in Durango and they did not believe such a report was required.
“There is some ambiguity as to whether the statute applies because he wasn’t sworn in as an officer yet and he was terminated,” Current said, noting that he was not chief at the time. He denied that the police department was showing favoritism to the father of one of their officers and said the quiet termination was not an attempt to cover for the newly certified trainee.
“No, absolutely not,” he said. “We took action and fired him. And we were very aggressive on the internal investigation after he passed the field sobrieties. (The officers) took the extra step to not let it go because they still felt he was possibly intoxicated and they felt they were being lied to.”
Current noted that the officers could not use the results of Ball’s breath test to support a criminal case because the test was obtained as part of an administrative investigation and was covered by Garrity protections, a longstanding U.S. Supreme Court decision that protects public employees from incriminating themselves during internal investigations.
He did not know whether the officer who pulled Ball over sought a breath test as part of the criminal investigation before the stop pivoted to an internal affairs probe.
Maes believes Durango police were obligated to report Ball’s termination to POST under both the letter and spirit of the law. Since 2019, has required law enforcement agencies that employ POST certificate holders to notify the board if a certificate holder knowingly made an untruthful statement during an internal affairs investigation, among other circumstances. POST is then required to begin a process to revoke the officer’s certification. Ball was POST-certified on May 25, 2022, according to a certificate reviewed by the Post.
“That’s mandatory, not discretionary, language,” said Nick Mitchell, former Denver independent monitor. “…When an officer has committed perjury (or its equivalent), it is highly relevant to whether they should remain certified, and POST needs to be given that information. The failure to report official acts of dishonesty undermines POST’s ability to effectively exercise its duties.”
Current issued a letter Wednesday to 6th Judicial District Attorney Sean Murray noting that the police department had information in its possession that could affect Ball’s credibility in court. A credibility report also appeared on on Wednesday.
Law enforcement agencies can be fined or otherwise sanctioned for failing to report information to POST. Lawrence Pacheco, a spokesman for Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, whose office oversees POST, declined to comment on any such action against Durango police.
Domestic violence allegation
Although the public warnings about Ball’s credibility were only issued this week, questions about his honesty date back to his original application for POST certification in 2022, according to POST order to show cause. The newspaper reviewed more than 250 pages of records regarding Ball’s departure from Durango, his interactions with POST and his career at the Archuleta Sheriff’s Office, where he has been lauded as a caring and effective deputy but also disciplined several times for distracted driving and administrative issues.
When he applied to become a Colorado peace officer, Ball claimed that he had never entered into a diversion or deferred prosecution agreement for a slew of disqualifying criminal offenses, including assault and harassment.
However, Ball had entered into a diversion agreement with prosecutors in New Mexico in 2008, when he faced a domestic violence charge of battery on a household member after his wife claimed he struck her in the face during an argument. Court records show the charge was dismissed after Ball attended counseling as part of a court agreement.
POST officials did not discover the New Mexico criminal case when Ball applied for his certification in Colorado, according to the POST order to show cause, and it only came to the attention of the statewide oversight agency in November.
Pacheco said Thursday that POST’s background checks do not include complete information about crimes in other states because of a federal law that requires agencies devote at least 50% of their time to law enforcement activities in order to access that information. POST, as a standards and training agency, does not meet that 50% mark, Pacheco said.
“That is a reason why a POST in one state might not see a prior criminal charge in another state,” Pacheco said. He declined to discuss the specifics of Ball’s case, citing “ongoing matters” regarding the deputy.
POST records and correspondence obtained by The Post show that POST officials conducted an investigation and review of Ball’s state certification between November and April in light of the newly-discovered domestic violence incident. In an April 21 letter, POST Director Erik Bourgerie wrote that Ball could keep his POST certification and continue to work as a law enforcement officer in Colorado.
He found that Ball reasonably may not have known he was required to report the diversion agreement to POST because of the difference between Colorado and New Mexico criminal statutes, according to the letter. Bourgerie noted that Ball’s wife later recanted her allegations and that Ball had been named deputy of the year for the Archuleta County Sheriff’s Office in 2025.
It’s not clear whether Bourgerie and the POST board knew that Ball had been fired from the Durango Police Department for untruthfulness when Bourgerie allowed Ball to keep his certification. Pacheco declined to say, and Bourgerie’s April 21 letter includes only a passing mention of the Durango incident.
“Upon questioning during the hearing, you informed me that you separated from the Durango Police Department as an academy student following a traffic stop after you had been consuming alcohol but were not charged with any crime,” Bourgerie wrote in the letter. There is no further discussion of the incident in the letter.
It was also unclear Thursday how much then-Archuleta County Sheriff Rich Valdez knew about Ball’s termination from Durango when he hired Ball in August 2022. In his job application, Ball wrote that he’d been “dismissed” from the police department.
“Dismissed, although not charged with DUI was pulled over,” the application reads. “Chief Brammer Stated (sic) he will give recommendation to another department.”
Since joining the sheriff’s office, Ball has been disciplined four times for unsafe or distracted driving, including an incident in which he pulled a U-turn in front of an oncoming driver on Highway 160, forcing her to swerve to avoid a collision, sheriff disciplinary records show.
Ball also developed a reputation for focusing on drunk driving enforcement, the sheriff records show. In 2024, he was commended for making 43 such arrests.
Updated 10:30 a.m. May 11, 2026: This story was corrected to reflect who served as the Archuleta County Sheriff when Ball was hired at the agency.
