A bipartisan effort to make it more difficult for rogue law enforcement officers to find police work in Colorado has passed a key hurdle and is gaining momentum.
The bill would require police agencies to request and review personnel records and internal affairs files on prospective hires from departments where job candidates worked as officers — and the departments would be compelled to hand over the documents.
Current law requires sharing in limited cases in which officers are found to have lied while under oath or during the course of an investigation.
The agency in charge of certifying police in Colorado would gain access to such information as well before it could grant the certification required for law enforcement work in Colorado.
The legislation also cracks down on a deferred judgment loophole that has allowed police with past felony guilty pleas to find work in Colorado.
House Bill 1262 is sponsored by Rep. Angela Williams, a Democrat from Denver, and Sen. John Cooke, a Republican from Greeley and former Weld County sheriff. The legislation passed the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday with no opposition.
“The intent is not for the legislation to make hiring decisions for law enforcement,” Williams told the committee. “It is meant to give law enforcement the necessary information to make good hiring decisions.”
If the bill is signed into law, the Peace Officer Standards and Training Board, which certifies law enforcement officers in the state, would have the power to deny certification for deferred judgments and deferred prosecutions.
In such deferred judgments, a conviction is dismissed after a successful term of probation. The Colorado courts have ruled that the legislature must determine whether deferred judgments are considered disqualifying offenses for certain professions.
Colorado law governing police certification has been silent on the issue, which has meant some officers have been certified and hired by law enforcement agencies in Colorado despite deferred felony judgements in the past. The proposed change would bring Colorado closer to the standard in states such as Texas and Florida, which consider them as disqualifying offenses for police work.
One of those who benefited from a deferred arrangement was Jeremy Yachik. Despite a guilty plea to felony fraud in New Mexico, Yachik went on to have a law enforcement career in Colorado checkered with personal transgressions and criminal convictions.
The bill has the support of the Colorado Association of Chiefs of Police, the County Sheriffs of Colorado and the Colorado Municipal League.
The legislation is in response to a series of articles in The Denver Post about second-chance officers. The Post highlighted examples of law enforcement officers working in Colorado who had transgressions that would have barred them from continued work in other states.
Colorado has a lenient standard compared with most other states when it comes to police discipline, allowing officers with serious misconduct to be decertified only after a conviction for a felony or certain misdemeanors. Most states allow decertification to occur for far less, such as personal transgressions or excessive force that doesn’t result in a conviction.
The legislation would not change what causes a decertification that brings an end to a police career in Colorado, but it would significantly tighten the hiring process for officers.
It would require an officer to submit a waiver to a hiring agency that would empower the agency to seek documents at agencies where the officer has worked. Included would be documents related to job performance, administrative files, grievances, previous applications, personnel findings, complaints, internal affairs files, early warnings and condemnations.
The legislation would require a former agency to share those files with the agency reviewing an applicant. Past nondisclosure agreements would remain binding, but such agreements entered after the legislation is law no longer would prevent a hiring agency from reviewing pertinent records, as it has in the past.
The legislation would apply to investigators for the state’s revenue department and police and investigators for the State Patrol, Colorado Bureau of Investigation, sheriff’s departments, municipal police departments, town marshals and Colorado Parks and Wildlife.
The associations representing Colorado sheriffs and police chiefs are pushing to broaden the legislation to encompass other agencies, such as police forces at universities.
“People in this profession go back and forth, and making agencies accountable for these background investigations is what we’re seeking,” Michael Phibbs, chief of the Auraria Campus Police Department, told the House Judiciary Committee, speaking on behalf of the chiefs of police association.