Under a policy adopted last year, Denver sheriff’s officials can toss out pre-employment background investigations of workers after three years, while other jurisdictions have far more stringent document retention policies.
Recommendations crafted by Colorado municipal clerks and consultants urge local governments to keep documents related to hiring for the duration of employment plus 10 years.
But Denver in April 2013 adopted a three-year retention policy for background records, which include job history, criminal background checks and psychological evaluations, of applicants to work in the city’s jail system.
In California, such criminal background checks must be kept forever for those hired to work for any law enforcement agency. Closer to home, in Arapahoe County, the information must be kept for the duration of employment plus 56 years for candidates hired to work for that county’s sheriff’s department.
“It’s a really bad idea for Denver to destroy this pertinent background information because it could be evidence and probative evidence in a legal case if an employee does something wrong and Denver is sued for a claim on negligent hiring,” said Mark Silverstein, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado.
Gaps in the retention of background investigations of Denver Sheriff Department employees surfaced during a Denver Post investigation into deputies’ criminal histories.
Denver officials said this week in response to an open-records request that before 2011 officials had destroyed some of the pre-employment background investigations conducted on deputies the city hired.
“There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason” to which background investigations were kept and which were destroyed, said Daelene Mix, a spokeswoman for Denver’s Safety Department.
“These records have a fairly limited purpose,” Mix said. “We don’t use those pre-employment records for a business purpose that would make us aware that they are missing.”
She said other law enforcement agencies request the records when one of Denver’s former deputies seeks new employment. Lawyers suing the city for excessive-force claims in the jail system also subpoena the records, she said.
The jail system has been under scrutiny since a $3.25 million payout to settle a lawsuit from a former inmate. The inmate, Jamal Hunter, claimed that while he was in jail on a misdemeanor assault charge, a deputy purposefully looked the other way as inmates beat Hunter and burned his genitals with scalding water. He was hospitalized for 10 days and was released back to the jail, where video caught deputies choking, beating and stunning him in his cell with a Taser.
Mix said an internal work group formed by Mayor Michael Hancock will review records-retention policies of the sheriff’s department. Mix added that a person who became custodian of the sheriff’s background investigative records in 2011 has done a good job of maintaining them. Before that, the records weren’t maintained well and in some cases were discarded inappropriately, Mix said.
She said a formal investigation into the disappearance of the records hasn’t been conducted and isn’t expected.
“Destroying these records makes it convenient for Denver when there are allegations that Denver has been negligent or careless in investigating employment backgrounds,” Silverstein added.
Denver, in response to an open-records request, also released this week the pre-employment background investigation and psychological evaluation for Deputy Andrew Archuleta. The documents show he was convicted of possession of marijuana and admitted to using cocaine and trafficking in marijuana in the 1990s. Archuleta also said he had stolen from two previous employers and had been convicted of driving under the influence and driving while ability impaired in 1989.
Archuleta could not be reached for comment.
The background investigation stated the thefts involved petty cash taken from a vending company where Archuleta had worked and stealing cases of soda and candy and chips from that company. He also worked as a mail clerk at Swedish Medical Center in Englewood, and while there he took home an old scale he said was worth as much as $700 after the hospital purchased a new one, according to the background investigation.
Archuleta also attended but did not graduate from South High School in Pueblo because of truancy issues. He received a GED diploma in 1984. When he applied to work in Denver’s jail system in 1998, he said he had not taken a drink of alcohol for more than two years.
Denver hired him as a jailer in 1998.
Archuleta was one of more than 12 deputies that The Post’s investigation found had been hired by the city to work in the jail system despite having a criminal record.
Stephanie O’Malley, who became the executive director of Denver’s Safety Department in January, said the internal work group Hancock created is reviewing the sheriff’s department’s hiring policies and considering making those policies as stringent as those governing the hiring of police officers and firefighters.
O’Malley is the civilian in charge of the sheriff’s department.
