by Colleen Slevin, Associated Press
DENVER (AP) - Routine public security information was lumped together with criminal files in police computers because officers were not adequately trained to use the computer software, a city-appointed review panel said Wednesday.
The panel examined police intelligence-gathering practices after the American Civil Liberties Union obtained files in March showing police labeled the nonviolent American Friends Service Committee and other advocacy groups as “criminal extremist.”
The panel said officers did not get enough training on the new computer filing software when the department’s intelligence bureau began putting its paper files on computers in 2000. The result was a mixed bag of records on everyone from parade permit-holders to political protesters to people who threatened visiting dignitaries.
The panel’s report did not address why police had collected files on people not suspected of criminal activity in the first place.
The computer program could generate a report on anyone in the files who might be associated with anyone else in the files. It also included rigid categories such as “mental case,” “civil disobedience” and “criminal extremist,” and officers never learned to break them down into narrower categories, panel members said.
“I don’t think there was anything nefarious in any of this,” said Jean Dubofsky, a panel member and retired judge from Boulder. “I think it was a system that was a little more powerful than what they were prepared for.”
Panel member Roger Cisneros, a retired Denver judge, said police wrongly labeled political groups as extremists because they were believed to have caused problems in other cities.
The report recommended police destroy the records after 60 days and start new intelligence files with tighter requirements. They said the old files should not be made public, but people whose names appear in them should be allowed see their files, with other names redacted, before the records are destroyed.
The ACLU, which has filed a class-action lawsuit against the city over the files, has said the records document police misconduct and should not be destroyed.
The review panel recommended against punishing anyone in the police department over the records because “there is no indication that any of the information was retained intentionally to harm someone or to inhibit the exercise of First Amendment-protected activities.”
Mayor Wellington Webb appointed Cisneros, Dubofsky and retired judge William Meyer to review the records in late March, after the ACLU disclosed the existence of the files.
Webb will decide whether to accept the recommendations soon, spokesman Andrew Hudson said Wednesday.
The records began as a Rolodex file in 1954 and included intelligence contacts as well as information for routine public security work, the panel’s report said. The files grew to include information on 3,277 people and 208 organizations.
The panel recommended officers get better training on what information can be kept and that someone from outside the department review the new files periodically.