Colo. lax on dirty cops

Police accused of sexual misconduct find work elsewhere.

Jarett Branson looked like the ideal candidate.

The seemingly bright, energetic young man seeking to become an officer with the Fort Collins Police Department came with excellent reviews from his command staff at the Butte police force in Montana. He had received an officer of the year award for his work on behalf of female victims.

But there was plenty that Fort Collins authorities didn’t know before they gave Branson a badge. Had they dug harder, they would have learned that some of Branson’s own relatives thought he was a dirty cop. So did women who said he stalked them and pressured them for sex while on patrol.

Even a few of his police partners in Montana celebrated when the man who had a reputation for sexual misconduct, excessive force and dishonesty left for Colorado in January 2014, police reports show.

The truth did not begin to emerge until a panicked Colorado State University student confided in a professor who had been deputy chief of the Fort Collins Police Department. She didn’t know what to do about the officer who stalked her and pressured her for sex.

Branson had forced his way into the student’s apartment, while in uniform, and wrapped his arms around her. She struggled, fumbling for a weapon on his belt she could use as protection, according to police reports. He exited, laughing after slapping her on the buttocks.

Fort Collins’ hiring of Branson, now serving four years in a Colorado prison for sexual misconduct and stalking convictions, shows that even the most well-intentioned police force can be fooled when it comes to second-chance officers. The Denver Post has been investigating the issue of troubled officers, and their ability to jump from department to department, over the past year.

“In the Jarett Branson case, we discovered the agency was not forthcoming with us,” Fort Collins Assistant Police Chief Cory Christensen said of the Butte department. “We were not told. We later found out that there was information they were aware of that they didn’t disclose to us.”

Fort Collins thought it was thorough. It sent a background investigator to Butte to ride along with Branson while he was on patrol. That investigator talked to Branson’s superiors and came away impressed. Branson navigated his way through a background hiring process that often narrows a pool of as many as 250 candidates down to five.

He did so even though the background investigation revealed that Branson’s family had accused him of sexual misconduct when he was a Butte officer. Fort Collins officials now say they should have probed that allegation further and not taken the word of Butte authorities who said the witness in the case was not credible.

Branson’s colleagues in Butte had remained silent about his reputation for violence and sexual misconduct on the job, according to statements given to Fort Collins officials in a follow-up investigation.

Such silence and the failure to detect it can do significant damage.

Four women alleged that Branson victimized them while he worked in Fort Collins. In a negotiated deal, Branson pleaded guilty to felony stalking and misdemeanor counts of official misconduct and unlawful sexual contact.

In one of Branson’s first calls on the job in Fort Collins, he took a report from a 20-year-old woman alleging domestic violence from a former boyfriend. She told investigators that Branson initiated sex with her when they were left alone.

“I felt like I needed help, and I didn’t know how to get help, and this was the person that was supposed to be there for me,” the woman would later tell investigators, according to a police report.

Branson, now 30, declined comment.

The case of Glenn Coyne

Branson is not the only case in Colorado where a law enforcement officer with sexual misconduct allegations moved to another department.

In 2009, a woman accused Grand Junction police Officer Glenn Coyne of raping her in her home. She had sought help from police for her teenage son, who was thought to be detonating explosives in a shed outside her home. Coyne killed himself days later after authorities fired him and arrested him on a rape charge.

It was the third time in less than three years that Coyne had been accused of sexual assault.

In 2007, a woman alleged that Coyne, then a Mesa County sheriff’s deputy, groped her during a strip search at a drug raid at her home. That accusation occurred after Coyne had accepted a job with the Grand Junction Police Department, which had checked his background. The Mesa County Sheriff’s Office did not warn Grand Junction about the allegation and never investigated it, court records show.

In December 2008, a woman alleged Coyne sexually assaulted her several days after he transported her to a mental health and detoxification facility. Mesa County prosecutors declined to bring criminal charges in that case, but Grand Junction police placed Coyne on employment probation and cut his pay. He contended the sex was consensual.

Coyne was accused of the third and final sexual assault while on probation. After Coyne killed himself, the victim in that case filed a federal lawsuit claiming Grand Junction authorities erred in hiring Coyne and in allowing him to remain on patrol while on probation.

“It appears that the Grand Junction Police Department based their hiring decision more on the fact that Coyne was already a law enforcement officer, rather than an objective evaluation as to his suitability for employment,” said Michael Brasfield, who reviewed Coyne’s hiring in Grand Junction for the lawyers who filed the lawsuit, in court filings.

Officials did not interview key relatives or neighbors and also failed to probe gaps in employment and a lack of stability, said Brasfield, a former commander of internal affairs for the Seattle Police Department and former police chief in Fort Lauderdale.

In addition, a past complaint against Coyne when he worked as an environmental officer in Florida wasn’t sufficiently investigated by the hiring authorities, Brasfield said. Grand Junction did not look into Coyne’s admission that he had engaged in drunken driving, he added.

U.S. District Judge Marcia Krieger found no deliberate indifference by Grand Junction authorities and dismissed the case. The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the ruling but noted that “the handling of Coyne could and should have been better.”

In an interview with The Denver Post, Grand Junction Police Chief John Camper said a subsequent review by the Colorado Association of Chiefs of Police found the hiring procedures to be sound.

“But it certainly caused us to look at how we hire,” Camper said. “All I can say is that now we’re very stringent. Anything that raises even a red flag, we demand and expect an answer or explanation or more likely than not we’re going to pass on that applicant.”

Law on past transgressions

Colorado law is silent on how forthcoming police agencies must be about past transgressions of their officers or how deeply agencies should dig when an officer is transferring jobs. In contrast, Arizona requires police agencies to share all personnel and internal affairs records with hiring agencies, which must review those records. Colorado leaves the scope of background investigations for law enforcement jobs largely up to local authorities.

Colorado also allows police departments to seal internal affairs files and personnel records, which can block a hiring agency from reviewing them. Negotiated settlements can occur that also can prevent disclosure.

“The country is lawsuit happy,” said former Minturn Police Chief Lorenzo Martinez. “You get hesitant. When your fellow police chief calls you up and says, ‘Give me the scoop,’ you want to be honest, but you have to be careful because you may get sued or somebody may threaten to sue you.”

After learning about Branson’s stalking and sexual misconduct as a Fort Collins officer, officials with the city sent investigators to Butte. They discovered women had been claiming for years that Branson had sexually abused them. At least two of those women sought help from Butte police without success, the investigators found.

One alleged victim told investigators that after she rejected Branson’s efforts to force himself on her, she believed he targeted her younger sister for traffic stops as retaliation. She described Branson as a “demon” who had no qualms about preying on the vulnerable.

Several alleged victims, who knew one another, celebrated when they learned Branson was leaving, according to a police report.

One told investigators “she wished we could have seen the sense of relief on their faces when Branson got sent to Colorado.

“She said the sense of relief they felt made it more obvious to them how much control Officer Branson had over their lives,” the report states.

One woman said she was threatened with prosecution by a Butte officer when she tried to alert him that Branson had groped her and tried to force himself on her. She told investigators an officer told her that her voice “didn’t matter.”

Fort Collins’ pre-hire probe into Branson’s background missed troubling signs. The city learned of a sexual misconduct allegation Branson’s family had filed against him, but Butte authorities had said they declined to file criminal charges because they didn’t find the victim credible.

Holes in hiring

When they returned to Butte, the criminal investigators from Fort Collins talked to the mother of that alleged victim, who told them her daughter never got a fair shake. She said she believed Branson had destroyed evidence in the past, and that his superiors were covering up for him because of his status as a favored officer.

Backing up her complaint was a Butte police officer who told criminal investigators that he had long known of Branson’s reputation for sexual misconduct and believed Branson was given a pass by his superiors.

That officer, Benjamin Rauch, said Branson had become so notorious patrolling the streets of Butte that Rauch assumed the top brass urged him to find a new job in Colorado, where he was raised, or risk being exposed.

Rauch did not return telephone calls and e-mail messages seeking comment. Authorities in Butte said they investigated and found no validity in Rauch’s accusations. They added that Fort Collins authorities alerted them to the misconduct allegations by the Butte women, but they decided not to prosecute those cases.

“We’ve learned that our hiring process, while very thorough, is not perfect,” Fort Collins Deputy Chief Mike Trombley said in a review of the Branson hiring.

A psychological evaluation should have been conducted on Branson before his hiring instead of after he had been offered a job, Trombley determined. He also faulted Fort Collins authorities for accepting Butte’s determination regarding the family’s allegation.

“The criminal investigation was not done to our standards, and had it been, additional information might have surfaced influencing our hiring decision,” Trombley said in a memo to Fort Collins officials.

The police department now requires a physical review of any criminal investigations conducted in the past on police applicants, and it requires psychological evaluations before job offers.

The changes are meant to improve a hiring process that already required a review of social media accounts and disciplinary records as well as interviews with neighbors and former employers.

“While no process is foolproof, the psychologist and hiring staff feel Branson might have been screened out under this process,” Trombley said in the memo.