James Carville, Bill Clinton’s campaign manager for his successful 1992 presidential run, is famous for his quote of “It’s the economy, stupid” when trying to explain to his campaign workers that there was a simple solution to winning the seemingly very complicated presidential race. Similarly there seems to be the feeling these days that solving the endless scandals over prisoner abuse at the Denver city jail is extremely complicated.
Denver Safety Director Stephanie O’Malley has declared, “The question that continues to present itself is, ‘Is there something we’re missing?’” To answer that question, the city is about to embark on one more highly costly independent review. Actually we can save the city of Denver quite a bit of money as the answer to her inquiry is, “Yes. It’s the city’s lawyers, stupid!”
The Denver Sheriff’s Office of course has an honest method by which prisoners can file complaints against their jailers most of which, but certainly not all, will be bogus and the complaints must be fairly investigated, which has not previously occurred.
But most important of all is that something should actually happen when a police officer or sheriff’s deputy is found to have engaged in criminally wrongful behavior. Shockingly only a single criminal excess force charge has ever been filed against a Denver police officer (Charles Porter) or sheriff’s deputy in this century by the Denver District Attorney or the City Attorney. It points out the real culprit in the jail house scandals is in fact — the city’s lawyers.
By all accounts Denver Sheriff’s Deputy Gaynel Rumer helped run drug and pornography rings at the jail and had prisoner
s torture and administer beatings to inmates who displeased him.
But what did the City Attorney’s Office do about it? The lawyer(s) ran a phony investigation with the help of the Internal Affairs Bureau of the Denver Police Department to intimidate and tamper with witnesses to Rumer’s crimes.
What did the Denver District Attorney’s Office do about it? It refused to bring any criminal charges against Rumer with its entire justification for this outrageous decision being a hastily hand-written sentence on a standard form. Gaynel Hunter remains a sheriff’s deputy to this day free from any concern that the city’s lawyers will do anything about it.
Every city is confronted with charges, claims of excessive force in their law enforcement offices, but few have the massive level of indifference and malfeasance in their city attorney and district attorney offices that Denver has.
Federal District Court Judge John Kane is calling for the United States Attorney for the District of Colorado to investigate Denver’s law enforcement agencies. But what is the point of investigating the law enforcement agencies concerning how they addr
ess excessive force complaints in a city where the City Attorney and the District Attorney refuse to ever bring charges even in the most egregious cases. Moreover our City Attorney’s Office actively corrupts the investigations themselves.
Until the egregious cultures at the City Attorney’s and District Attorney’s Offices change, the corrupt culture at the Denver city jail will in fact never change. That is the simple fact that Ms. O’Malley and the mayor of Denver are apparently “missing.” Playing musical chairs with the position of Denver Sheriff will not accomplish anything. But perhaps all of Mayor Hancock’s commotions concerning the scandals at the city jail are simply as Shakespeare noted, “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
— Editorial Board