Retired police officer accuses city of withholding records on lost rape kits
Williams previously filed suit in which she claimed city failed to produce files on complaints against officers
A retired Santa Fe police officer is accusing the city of failing to produce public records regarding missing evidence.
Retired Lt. Michele Williams filed a petition Sunday asking a state District Court to order the city to release the records or explain why it shouldn’t. She also is asking for reimbursement for the cost of filing the petition and to award damages as the court sees fit.
Williams says in her petition she asked the city in writing May 5 for all “audit reports, memorandums, emails, text messages, other documents or notifications which identify missing SAEK (sexual assault examiners’ kits).”
City records custodian Cindy Whiting — who is named as a co-defendant in the complaint — acknowledged the request the same day, but never produced any records even after published a story May 14 about a kit that had gone missing in a 2018 case involving a 4-year-old girl, according to the lawsuit.
“Respondents have neither explained in writing when the records would be made available or provided a response,” Williams’ attorney Thomas Grover wrote.
This is the second lawsuit Williams has filed since retiring from the police department late last year. Both accuse the city of violating the state Inspection of Public Records Act. She filed a lawsuit in January, contending the city failed to produce records related to misconduct complaints against officers.
In that case — which is still pending in state District Court — she said she asked for the complaints and the results of investigations into them, but the city only produced some of the records.
According to the lawsuit, she knew the records weren’t complete because of her familiarity with the internal workings of the department — she has been the subject of an internal investigation. But the city’s records custodian didn’t say which records the city was withholding or why.
Williams filed a tort claim notice in February advising the city she intends to file a whistleblower complaint because, she says, department officials retaliated against her after she reported a now-retired deputy chief ’s alleged time card irregularities and also raised the possibility of missing firearms and a stolen scope from a gun buyback program.
City spokeswoman Lilia Chacon declined to comment Tuesday. Deputy Chief Ben Valdez did not respond to a request for comment.
The police department is in the process of implementing new software after a scathing audit by an outside consultant detailed multiple issues with the department’s evidence handling policies and procedures.
Problems in the department’s evidence room were a factor in prosecutors’ decision to plead a murder case down to voluntary manslaughter last year after physical evidence in the case was lost. The department also confirmed it had lost evidence collected during the investigation of a 2018 rape case. And it acknowledged evidence in a rape case from 2014 also is missing.
Grover said it really got Williams’ “ire up” when police and city officials blamed the loss of the evidence in the 2018 case on a retired detective when she’d been raising concerns about evidence control internally for years.