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The Denver Police Spy Files

City and County of Denver News Release - Police to Modify Access to inteligence Files
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Sep 16, 2002

DENVER - Denver Police Chief Gerald Whitman announced tonight that the Denver Police Department will modify the process for citizens wanting to determine if they are part of the City's purged intelligence files.

Starting tomorrow, the Denver Police Department will begin to attempt to contact those individuals and organizations that have a purged intelligence file. Not all purged files have contact information, however, when possible, the DPD will make the contact. In addition, Whitman announced that the DPD will honor written requests for purged files and will allow for individuals to retrieve their file through power of attorney. Both methods must include a notarized affidavit.

The modifications come after the police department had received requests from individuals outside of Colorado wishing to determine if they had a purged file, but were unable to do so because the City required a personal appearance at DPD headquarters.

The Denver Police Department also noted that the new policy was adopted because additional documents were discovered in the police intelligence bureau that may contain relevant intelligence files. The documents were discovered after a routine discovery process in relation to a federal lawsuit.

The DPD will examine each of the documents to determine which ones may be considered intelligence files. Any documents determined to be intelligence files will then go through the same process to determine if it will be part of the purged files or if they will be retained in the intelligence bureau. While the recommendation to purge or retain an intelligence file will be made by the DPD, a third-party auditor will determine if the recommendation fits the reasonable suspicion criteria.

If it is discovered that there are intelligence files that will be purged and they contain names of individuals or organizations that had previously been told they did not have a file, those individuals and organizations will be notified by the DPD. In addition, if the files contain additional information of those that had already retained their files, those individuals and organizations will be notified by the DPD.

"While the original procedure was designed to protect the privacy of individuals, I believe that the modified policy addresses new concerns that we didn't anticipate early on," Chief Whitman said. "If there are new intelligence records in the newly discovered files, we didn't think it would be reasonable to ask those who already came to the Police Department to go through the process again."

Those that still wish to come to the Denver Police Department to see if there is a purged file, may still do so.