COP LINKED TO LOST DRUGS REASSIGNED

July 22, 2000 - Capping a week of scandals, Denver police on Friday
reassigned an officer who has been linked to a backpack containing
drugs that mysteriously showed up at an RTD station in Boulder.

The officer has been reassigned from the traffic division to a desk
job pending the outcome of an internal investigation, officials said.

"He is no longer on the streets," said police spokeswoman Virginia
Lopez.

Lopez declined to comment further, saying she couldn't discuss the
case because it involves an ongoing investigation. The officer hasn't
been publicly identified because of that.

Reached at home, the nine-year veteran declined to comment. So did his
attorney.

But some details of the case emerged Friday.

About a month ago, someone came to the customer service window at the
Boulder Transit Center and dropped off a backpack, indicating that a
police officer would be coming by to pick it up, said Regional
Transportation District spokesman Scott Reed.

The person who brought it "then wrote down the officer's name and
affixed it to the backpack," Reed said.

The backpack was placed in lost and found. No one came to pick it
up.

Then last Saturday, Reed said, an officer in a Denver police uniform
came to the transit center and asked to claim a backpack but was told
that lost and found was closed and he would have to return during
business hours.

"It was unclear whether it was that officer or that backpack,"

Reed said. "And it was unclear whether it was on a bus or someone just
asked that they hold onto it until the officer could claim it."

Then, on Monday, a bus rider turned in another backpack at the Boulder
station, saying a passenger had left it aboard a bus, Reed said.

The customer service representative, smelling marijuana, called
Boulder police.

When officers came to pick up that backpack, the other backpack with
the officer's name affixed to it was handed over as well, Reed said.

That's when officers checked it and discovered what authorities say
was 4.8 grams of crystal methamphetamine, a drug known as "crank."
Authorities described it as an amount that would be for personal use
and estimated its value at $500 to $600.

Boulder police also are investigating the case.

It comes in the same week that two Denver officers were charged with
destroying evidence in drugpossession and drug-paraphernalia cases.
The week also began with a controversy over revelations that Colorado
Rockies baseball player Mike Lansing accompanied SWAT officers on a
fatal "no-knock" drug raid last September.