The Denver Sheriff’s Department failed to investigate dozens of serious allegations of deputy misconduct over the past 2½ years, including inmates’ claims that deputies choked them, sexually harassed them and used racial and ethnic slurs.
That finding came in the latest report from the city’s independent monitor, Nicholas Mitchell, who cited sweeping problems with the way the department investigates jail inmate grievances.
The monitor didn’t say which, if any, of the allegations were true, only that each was serious enough to warrant an internal affairs probe under sheriff’s department policies. The department’s approximately 730 deputies are primarily responsible for overseeing Denver’s jails and transporting inmates.
The report, released on Tuesday, did not mention whether any deputies had been disciplined, and a department spokesman said he did not know.
“Internal affairs units have the specialized expertise and independence required to investigate allegations of serious officer misconduct, such as alleged excessive force or sexual misconduct,” Mitchell told The Denver Post. “This is a very well-established national best practice.”
Of 861 inmate complaints filed between January 2011 and June 30, 2013, 54 were “serious grievances” that included allegations of excessive force, sexual misconduct and bias, Mitchell wrote.
But the department’s internal affairs bureau investigated just nine of those cases. Inmate grievances triggered just three of those investigations. The other six investigations launched only after inmates filed separate complaints with internal affairs or other agencies, such as Mitchell’s office.
Yet his report said the sheriff’s department also failed to routinely notify the monitor’s office of misconduct complaints per city ordinance. It said some deputies reported being told they could not refer grievances to internal affairs without first notifying their supervisors.
Of the cases that went uninvestigated, 31 were allegations of inappropriate force, 11 involved allegations of sexual misconduct, and 14 were allegations of bias. Inmates accused deputies of inappropriately striking them, choking them, slamming them into walls or doors, stunning them with Tasers or throwing them to the ground.
Racial, ethnic slurs
Other inmates said deputies made racial or ethnic slurs or insulted them about their sexual orientation. Still others said deputies inappropriately touched them, threatened them with violence and denied them access to medical care.
The report didn’t discuss the specifics of the allegations because Director of Corrections Gary Wilson has since ordered internal affairs investigations into 47 of them.
Jail supervisors looked into some of the cases, sometimes gathering written statements from officers or inmates or studying surveillance. But other complaints were not investigated at all, Mitchell wrote.
“We will consider his recommendations as well as conduct a second investigation through our Internal Affairs Unit of the less than 1 percent of grievances he has highlighted in his report,” Wilson wrote in an e-mailed statement to The Denver Post.
Maj. Frank Gale, a sheriff’s spokesman, would not elaborate on how the department would investigate the grievances, some of which are more than two years old, except to say that “the process of investigating allegations is always the same,” and usually involves a review of surveillance footage and interviews with witnesses.
Gale also noted that the department’s policies were recently praised by a national auditing group.
Mitchell also found that a small group of deputies account for a disproportionate number of inmate grievances, something he said officials should have spotted if they had better ways to analyze patterns in inmate complaints.
Of 788 grievances dealing with deputy conduct, 125 were filed against just four deputies, whom the report doesn’t name.
“Put another way, four deputies out of a force of over 700 accounted for almost 16 percent of the total number of grievances about officer conduct during a 2½-year period,” Mitchell wrote. “We believe that this pattern should have triggered a supervisory response that could have included meetings with the deputies, attempts to identify the reasons for the continued complaints against them and other supervisory forms of intervention, if appropriate.”
Deputies not ID’d
Better analysis of the complaints can also help jail officials spot inmates who abuse the system, Mitchell said, noting that six inmates accounted for 50 of the 788 conduct grievances.
Gale said he did not know the identities of any of the deputies named in grievances.
“If these officers are specifically being labeled as performing acts of misconduct, that’s going to be reviewed as well,” he said. “It could be that these officers were assigned in places that dealt with inmates that had a higher security classification and are prone to resist order and direction.”
Mitchell noted at least 10 unrelated incidents that resulted in “significant discipline” against deputies. One was fired for using excessive force, failing to report it and later lying about it; another was fired for lying in reports and to internal affairs investigators about an inmate’s actions in a use-of-force case; and another was fired for allowing two inmates to dump water and spray chemicals on a third who was in a locked shower cell, among other cases.
Leaders of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge No. 27, which represents Denver sheriff’s deputies, did not return phone calls seeking comment.
Sadie Gurman: 303-954-1661, sgurman@denverpost.com or twitter.com/sgurman
