An investigation by the Colorado News Collaborative (COLab), The Sentinel in Aurora and Rocky Mountain Public Media revealed a host of loopholes, mistakes and regulatory blind spots that have kept …
Devyn Vick, left, and Trish Vigil – the sister and mother of the late Cedrick Vick, a carjacking suspect killed by Denver police in 2021 – want one of those officers, Shane Madrigal, decertified for his pattern of gleeful comments after the shooting. A Denver police officer bragged to coworkers that he shot a carjacking suspect once in the head to kill him, then at least 16 times more to see his “face fall apart.
But the Colorado Attorney General’s Office, which oversees POST, believes the state law that mandated the creation of the database doesn’t allow the inclusion of disciplinary data from before Jan. 1, 2022, spokesman Lawrence Pacheco said. That’s an interpretation disputed by lawmakers who pushed the bill.
“What kind of system allows the certification of an officer who takes pleasure in riddling people with extra bullets?” asked Trish Vigil, mother of the carjacking suspect whose fatal shooting Madrigal’s fellow officers say he gloated over. “That’s not police discipline. It’s a free pass. And it’s disgusting.”Law enforcement officers need to be certified by POST, an arm of the state attorney general’s office, to make arrests in Colorado.
Since it passed, 53 officers statewide have lost their POST certification for falsifying criminal justice records, misrepresenting facts during internal affairs-, administrative- and disciplinary investigations, and/or lying under oath. A year later, the legislature began requiring departments to use the database to check job applicants’ disciplinary records. The assumption was that the information in the database would be complete and accurate.In an interview, Attorney General Phil Weiser acknowledged the system isn’t performing as envisioned and said his office is working to ensure local departments know their responsibilities.
The effort to decertify Colorado State Patrol Sgt. Aaron Laing, for example, sat in 10 months of bureaucratic limbo after he was fired in November 2022 for materially changing dozens of case reports written by members of a Smuggling, Trafficking and Interdiction Section team he led, and then lying about those changes.
None of those investigations into Lolotai, nor his resignations during them, show up on the POST database. Lolotai, who could not be located for comment, remains certified to work as a police officer in Colorado.in one of the most high-profile excessive force cases in state history: the 2019 killing of Elijah McClain.
Pacheco said the pre-2022 information never should have been visible to the public because the reforms that mandated the database did not specify what years should be included. Without that guidance, he said, the office relied upon state law that says new statutes are “presumed to be prospective” rather than retrospective.Herod made a point of noting it was the AG’s office, not lawmakers, that decided not to include pre-2022 information.
Herod said she “would be very much interested” in finding a way to require POST to include pre-2022 disciplinary actions. State Sen. Rhonda Fields, D-Aurora, another co-sponsor of the reform bill, agreed, calling it a “shame” that information is missing.POST relies on police and sheriff’s departments to report the disciplinary actions they take against their officers. But CoLab found several that haven’t — and with impunity.
Rather, POST’s sole investigator — a job that has been vacant for five months — tracks criminal cases against officers so the office is aware of de-certifiable convictions, and reviews departments’ reports about officers’ untruthfulness to make sure decertification is warranted. “Public defenders see the same officers in multiple cases,” she said. “We learn pretty quickly who the bad actors are and do all we can to identify them. Yet these bad officers show up over and over again in our cases. Clearly, not enough is done to root them out.”
Weiser said he understands that POST is giving up some control to local prosecutors, but that the criminal justice system is designed to start at the local level “and comfortable honoring that system and working with it.”Shane Madrigal was an infantry Marine veteran with combat experience when, in his early 20s, he went to work as a Denver police officer in 2017.
“Officer stated that Officer Madrigal is typically smiling when he talks about his officer-involved shooting,” the report continues. “Officer stated that has never heard another officer talk about being involved in a shooting the way that Officer Madrigal does because most people are not happy about killing people.”
Madrigal resigned while under investigation in 2022, his fifth year in the department. When he was contacted by a reporter for comment, twice, he declined.As much as Devyn Vick misses her brother “Ced,” and as deeply as their mother Trish Vigil grieves, they know that his own shooting spree led police to shoot and kill him that day in May 2021.
Public records suggest Madrigal has moved to Alabama, where the state’s POST board is not nearly as transparent as Colorado’s. Without his permission, it won’t say whether he is working in law enforcement there. Denver is getting a direct flight to this sunny island, full of rainforests and rum, beaches and bananas
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