FBI is investigating former police officer

Denver’s branch of the FBI is investigating a former Westminster police officer accused of raping a woman next to his squad car after he promised to drive her home from a local hospital.

Curtis Arganbright pleaded guilty last year to two misdemeanor charges — unlawful sexual contact and official misconduct — in connection to the 2017 crime and was sentenced to 90 days in jail and four years of probation. Now, federal authorities are investigating whether Arganbright violated a federal civil rights statute, a search warrant application filed in the U.S. District Court of Colorado shows.

“There is probable cause to believe that Curtis Lee Arganbright willfully deprived victim on her constitutional right to bodily integrity,” FBI Special Agent Donald Peterson wrote in the application.

The FBI wanted access to the handcuffs, clothes and gun confiscated from Arganbright’s patrol vehicle and work locker shortly after the assault on Aug. 24, 2017. The FBI received the evidence in the case in April but the agency wanted express permission from a judge to search the items because Arganbright’s attorneys opposed the searches during a June 27 court hearing.

The night of the assault, the woman checked herself into St. Anthony North Health for treatment for severe alcohol intoxication and alcoholism. While she was there, hospital staff caught her stealing medical supplies. The staff reported the theft to the Westminster Police Department, which sent Arganbright to the hospital to give the woman a ride home. She was not under arrest, according to the FBI search warrant application.

The woman, who is not identified by name in the document, told investigators that Arganbright then patted her down and touched her genital area over her clothes. They both then got in the patrol car and the woman gave him directions to her home.

But before they arrived at the house, Arganbright pulled off the main road and parked his car in an area near West 144th Avenue and Zuni Street without homes or businesses. He ordered the woman out of the car and handcuffed her before raping her, the woman told investigators. He also forced her to give him oral sex, she said.

He later drove the woman to her mother’s home, where she was staying, and told her to never tell anybody about the assault.

The woman told investigators that she did not run or resist because Arganbright was physically imposing, carried a gun and “had the power and opportunity to inflict even greater harm,” according to the document.

The 17th Judicial District Attorney’s Office charged Arganbright with felony counts of sexual assault by force and sexual assault through a position of authority. But the woman would not testify in court and Arganbright pleaded guilty to the lesser charges in October 2018.

Arganbright previously worked for the Federal Heights Police Department.

A spokeswoman for the FBI’s Denver Field Office did not return a call or email requesting comment on the investigation.