Denver Sheriff Patrick Firman has ordered an audit of his records management unit this week because deputies have continued to make mistakes when releasing inmates from jail — either too soon or too late.
In the past month, four Denver Sheriff Department deputies have been punished for mistakenly releasing inmates. In one incident, an inmate spent 52 days on the lam after she was accidentally released a year too soon.
Another deputy was suspended for a paperwork error in 2015 that left an inmate in jail 24 days past his release date. The mistake put the city at risk of a lawsuit, the deputy’s disciplinary letter said.
“Errors regarding the proper release dates of inmates are a serious concern and deputies involved in recent incidents have been suspended without pay,” sheriff’s department spokesman Simon Crittle said in an e-mailed statement.
Starting Monday, two additional deputies will be assigned to the records department to audit paperwork in an effort to prevent further errors, Crittle said.
Erroneous releases have been an ongoing problem at the department, hitting a peak in 2014 when five people were mistakenly released.
The releases prompted then-interim-Sheriff Elias Diggins to change the release process so that any inmate’s release paperwork required three signatures.
The department’s records management unit already has been a focus of its massive reform effort.
In 2015 Hillard Heintze, a Chicago-based consulting group, wrote in a report that the Denver Sheriff Department needed a strategic plan to address issues within its records management unit. The consultants recommended shortening shifts and rotating schedules so deputies can have periodic weekends off, and they suggested hiring civilian supervisors.
While mistakes haven’t reached 2014 levels, they continue to be made.
In June 2015, a deputy and his sergeant authorized the release of a female inmate one year before she was eligible, according to the disciplinary letters. The sergeant mistook her projected release date of June 28, 2016 as June 28, 2015, and marked her as “time expired” on her sentencing history.
The sergeant, Jeffrey Smith, cleared the inmate for release, and Deputy Gerry Carter reviewed and signed the paperwork as the second records officer, their disciplinary letters said. A third deputy, whose was responsible for verifying her identity, was not punished.
It is unclear when the sheriff’s department realized the woman should not have been released, but the case was not referred to the internal affairs bureau until 39 days later. She was not captured for another 13 days, spending a total of 52 days on the loose, the disciplinary letter said.
On July 11, Smith and Carter were handed two-day suspensions.
Carter was suspended for a second erroneous release on Aug. 8 in connection with the erroneous release of an inmate on Feb. 25. In that case, an inmate being held on a parole violation was released too soon. He had the same last name as another parolee, and deputies released the wrong man, according to the disciplinary letter.
The parolee was captured the same day because a parole officer noticed the mistake.
Carter was issued a three-day suspension for that erroneous release, according to his Aug. 8 disciplinary letter. A second deputy in the case, Brenda Lujan, was given a written reprimand in the case, said Mary Dulacki, records administrator for the Department of Safety.
The sheriff’s department did not respond Friday when The Denver Post asked whether Carter still is assigned to the records unit.
Erroneous releases cause public safety concerns because of the potential that dangerous people are on the streets when they should be behind bars.
But on the flip side, keeping someone in jail too long poses a civil rights issue.
“It’s unlawful imprisonment,” said Peter Perroncello, a jail management consultant from Boston. “It can lead to significant damages against the county.”
That legal and financial risk was mentioned in an Aug. 1 disciplinary letter written to Deputy Daniel Williams, who was suspended for five days after an inmate served an extra 24 days in jail.
Williams entered the wrong information about the inmate’s sentence time when checking a drop-down box on a computerized form, the letter said.
Denver’s sheriff is doing the right thing by sending extra deputies into the records management unit to look for problems, Perroncello said, adding that the unit’s supervisor needs to answer some hard questions, too.
“The big issue here is accountability,” Perroncello said.
Jail staffs are often overworked and understaffed, causing people to work in a hurry. A deputy shortage has been pegged as a problem, but the department is on a hiring spree.
People who are in a hurry often make mistakes filling out paperwork and entering data in computers.
“They’re only as good as what you put in them,” Perroncello said. “The fact is we’re human beings and we make mistakes.”
