COLORADO SPRINGS – An internal audit by the Colorado Springs Police Department leads to a full review of work by two detectives as it is discovered they failed to consistently forward case information to the District Attorney’s Office.
The audit started late last year upon the departure of two detectives from the Property Crimes Unit at the Sand Creek Division of the police department, which serves the southeastern portion of the city.
Police determined that some electronic case report documents were not consistently being transferring to the Fourth Judicial District Attorney’s Office. This process of transferring case documentation is commonly referred to as “discovery” in criminal cases where charges are pending against a defendant.
The documents were determined to be mostly administrative in nature, but necessary for prosecutors to keep complete information on their cases, and to provide required information to defense attorneys based on court orders.
As a result of the audit and review, CSPD made immediate changes to the Property Crimes Detectives’ case filing process to ensure this issue won’t happen again.
To cover all their bases, the police department and DA’s Office also began evaluating all filed cases from the two detectives between 2012 and 2018. At this time, the department believes the discrepancies are isolated to these two detectives.
The review is still ongoing and additional information will be released after the investigation is concluded. A spokesman for Colorado Springs Police did not clarify if the two detectives are still employed by CSPD.
