Author: Kevin Vaughan

COP'S ALLEGATIONS INVESTIGATED

Officer said she felt pressured to falsify documents in shooting after
'no-knock' raid

A special prosecutor is looking into allegations by a well-respected Denver
cop that her superiors pressured her to falsify documents in a
controversial police shooting.

The charges by the 20-year veteran came to light this week and were passed
on to Dave Thomas, the district attorney for Jefferson County who is
looking into the Sept. 29 shooting of Ismael Mena during a "no-knock" drug
raid that may have been carried out on the wrong house.

Pam Russell, a spokeswoman in Thomas' office, would not discuss details of
the officer's allegations but confirmed Thursday that they were being
investigated. "We don't know what impact they'll have on the case," she said.

Specifically, the Denver Rocky Mountain News has learned from police
sources, the officer felt pressure to make it appear as though there had
been earlier reports of trouble at Mena's home when there had not.

The officer filed a complaint against superiors with the department's
Internal Affairs Bureau, the sources said. Then, on Tuesday, she was
transferred from her post in District 2 to a position in the office of
Division Chief Gerry Whitman, who oversees the department's patrol
officers, the sources said.

"This is a person -- I would never question her ethics," one source said.

The officer could not be reached for comment.

Lt. Frank Conner, a department spokesman, said Police Chief Tom Sanchez
would not comment on the situation.

"I can tell you right now the response will be no comment," Conner said.

At the center of a controversy over Mena's shooting is an affidavit used to
obtain a "no-knock" drug warrant on his home. A special prosecutor is
trying to determine whether that warrant was proper, or whether the officer
who wrote the affidavit mistook Mena's home for another one on the same
block that neighbors said is well known as a crack house.

No drugs were found in Mena's house, police have acknowledged.

According to police sources, the officer felt pressure from superior
officers to make it appear that the department had received phone calls
from neighbors complaining about Mena's home in the weeks and months before
the shooting. She also was encouraged to make it appear as though the
department were preparing to do a "PSP" on the home -- police lingo for the
process officers go through when they have numerous complaints about a
particular address, the sources said.

The letters stand for Problem Solving Policing, and the department operates
a computer program that helps officers keep track of complaints.

The officer, distressed about the situation, confided in a colleague, who
encouraged her to report it to Internal Affairs, the sources said.

She filed the complaint, and then she was transferred Tuesday to Whitman's
office at police headquarters in downtown Denver. She'd been a community
resource officer for a decade in District 2, located in northeast Denver.

Thomas was named a special prosecutor after it was disclosed that an
investigator in the Denver district attorney's office was related to a SWAT
officer involved in the shooting. Among the questions he's asking: Was the
warrant written for the proper home?

When officers raided the home where Mena was living at 3738 High St.,
officials said, he confronted them with a gun.

Both he and officers fired, and he was killed.

However, it wasn't until late November, after neighbors questioned the
validity of the warrant, that Denver police officials publicly acknowledged
they may have hit the wrong house. According to those neighbors, Mena's
home was near a reputed crack house.