Lethal force

Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc. The IRE Journal, May/Jun 2002 by Huntley, Sarah, Crecente, Brian D

Questions raised about police shootings and official inquiries

DeShawn Hollis insists he was bolting.

The seventh-grader had broken into a home with a friend. When police arrived, Hollis sprinted out the back door. Suddenly, a bullet hit him in the shoulder blade, slicing through his spinal cord, forcing him to the ground.

The officer who fired the shot told his colleagues the would-be burglar twirled and pointed a pistol at him. The boy admits he was armed but says his only weapon - a broken and empty handgun - was tucked in his waistband.

Three years later, Denver taxpayers are out a record $1.2 million, after city attorneys concluded that the medical evidence contradicted the police account. Hollis, now 16, is paralyzed for life. And Officer Keith Cowgill remains on the force, undisciplined and undeterred.

From 1990 to 2000, Denver police officers shot 91 people, 35 of them fatally. The city has paid nearly $3.7 million to settle lawsuits and claims filed by the injured and the families of the dead.

But the officers involved were spared from a full and thorough investigation - and hardly ever faced discipline - because of a secretive and outdated internal review process that is protected by police unions, the department's top brass and city hall.

The Rocky Mountain News' analysis of cop shootings originated last July. That month, we were called to seven police shootings, three by Denver officers, the others by surrounding metropolitan agencies.

Our interest was piqued by what we were witnessing in our community and by The Washington Post's impressive series, published that same month, on police shootings in Prince George's County [See the March-April 2002 edition of The IRE Journal.

The Post, as part of its work, compiled police shooting fatality rates for the 50 largest law enforcement agencies in the country. Denver ranked among the 10 worst in several categories.

Police officials here lambasted the Post's findings, complaining that the numbers didn't tell the whole picture. So we set out to find data that would.

Shooting connections

From the beginning, we knew we wanted to include fatal and non-fatal shootings. A look at just fatalities would introduce too many variables, including the level of care provided by our trauma centers.

In Denver, we benefit from a philosophy of openness in our district attorney's office. The district attorney reviews all police shootings that result in significant injury or death to determine whether the officer should be charged with a crime. This criminal review is, in theory, separate from the internal disciplinary process that became the focus of our stories.

After making a determination about whether to prosecute, the district attorney's office issues a lengthy and detailed decision letter. When the letter is released, so, too, are the investigative files. The files, which include police reports, written statements and videotaped accounts given by officers and witnesses, are a gold mine.

Using the reports, letters and our newspaper's own archives, we created a database of more than 6,000 pieces of information, including names, dates, addresses, weapons, race and indicators of erratic behavior or mental illness.

To check our work and to fill gaps in some of the data, we gave the police department a list of the cases we were including and requested more information. Officials there provided us with a handful of additional cases and, at our specific request, a numerical breakdown of officers disciplined in connection with shootings.

The Denver Police Department refused to release the names of the officers punished, basing their denial on a state law that protects personnel records. As we continued to probe, however, we learned that the department had created a spreadsheet of cases reviewed by the Firearms Discharge Review Board, an internal group made up of the department's ton officials.

We had already done extensive research on the discharge review board and determined it would play a major part in our stories. The board is supposed to review every police shooting, including those that do not result in any injuries, and come to a conclusion about whether an officer followed departmental policy.

Police watchdog groups say this disciplinary review should be more comprehensive than any criminal investigation because it goes beyond the narrow focus of the law. By the chief's own admission, however, the Denver department's Firearms Discharge Review Board rarely delves any further.

The information in the spreadsheet backed up our finding - in stark detail.

Although the data included no names or locations, cases were listed by date and by a brief description. With some more persistent questioning, we were able to match the individual entries to each of the shootings in our database.

Here's what we found:

* Of the 126 officers who shot people, five were disciplined. The most serious punishment was a three-day suspension plus a one-day fine. In four of the cases, the officers were penalized not for shooting a person, but for shooting at a car.