Loss of physical evidence in a homicide, missing weapons from a burglary call, allegations of drug use and assistance to drug dealers were among the alarming list of concerns raised by 12th Judicial District Attorney Anne Kelly in a special public meeting with Costilla County Commissioners.
“I have never said ever that I do not trust a police agency and I do not trust the Costilla County Sheriff’s Office,” Kelly said during the special meeting on July 9.
Standing in front of Sheriff Danny Sanchez, Undersheriff Cruz Soto and a handful of their deputies, Kelly told the commissioners of a “regular and material” lack of evidence and reports being provided to the District Attorney’s Office, allegations of drug use among deputies and assistance to drug dealers, evidence mishandling, a lapse in Colorado POST-certification and training, and the ramifications this has for her office and the community of Costilla County.
“I’m at the point where I need to take some kind of action,” she told them, though she said she is limited in what actions she can take.
Watch a recording of the meeting here:
Alamosa Citizen reached out to Sheriff Sanchez for a comment in response to the special meeting. He told The Citizen that he did not have a comment at this time and directed the inquiry to the Costilla County attorney. Sanchez was first elected as sheriff in 2018 and re-elected for a second term in 2022.
Kelly said she is limited in what kind of action she can take. She suggested seeking assistance from the Colorado Attorney General’s office and oversight from an outside agency. She said she wanted to have the meeting with the commissioners to open her office for assistance and to bring the commissioners up to speed.
“I don’t want to cause any issues, but I’m at the point where I need to let you know what’s going on.”
With an investigator who is “overwhelmed” and a deputy district attorney who is working full-time to “salvage” the Costilla County court docket, Kelly said her office does not have the resources to continue “to do this at the level we’re doing it at.”
Costilla County Commissioners Steven Romero, Robert Espinoza, and Lorrie Quintana were all sent emails from the Citizen but responses haven’t been received at the time of writing. Chief Administrative Officer Ben Doon told the Citizen the commission hasn’t released a formal statement at this time.
Doon also noted that because the sheriff is an elected position, the commissioners do not have any jurisdiction over the day-to-day operations of the Sheriff’s Office.
However, the Sheriff’s Office released a statement on the county website regarding “Response Protocols for Calls of Service.”
ISSUES RAISED
Several months ago, Kelly said she had a meeting with Sheriff Sanchez and Undersheriff Soto to address her concerns and create a procedure for remediation. During that meeting, Kelly said both Sanchez and Soto reassured her that things would be turned around. According to her, that hasn’t been the case.
Of the issues and allegations Kelly raised, one of her larger concerns was with evidence discovery. District attorneys and their offices are held to an ethical standard known as Rule 16. Rule 16 requires prosecutors to disclose information to defendants in a timely manner. As Kelly put it, it protects defendants from prosecutors who turn over evidence at the last minute and withhold exculpatory evidence.
“We cannot be that office,” she said.
The “regular and material” lack of police reports being provided to her office and a lack of consistent body-worn camera footage were among her biggest concerns.
She said that bodycams were being left to die, not being charged, were not being turned on or her office received incomplete footage. This is against Colorado law, she said.
The lack of bodycam footage could lead to sanctions against her office.
Kelly said it often takes more work than necessary to receive police and incident reports from deputies. She noted that it often requires multiple emails back-and-forth between her office and deputies to get reports and in some cases it has taken months.
The week prior to this meeting, she said, four cases were dismissed because her office did not receive the information it needed in time.
“We cannot afford, as an office, for a judge to rule that we are making discovery violations.”
She said she’s had to subpoena the Sheriff’s Office, which hasn’t resulted in improvement in getting information from them.
She said these are not minor traffic cases and theft cases, but “these are cases involving real victims that suffered real harm in this Valley, in this county in particular.”
“My predecessor did many of those things,” she said, referring to former DA Alonzo Payne’s embattled office and resignation due to how he handled his office’s caseload. “That brought a lot of shame and embarrassment to this community. I do not want to repeat that. So I take the reputation of my office very seriously.”
Kelly said she’s going to avoid “at all costs” any information that suggests her office is withholding information against defendants. “We will not do it.”
“It breaks my heart that I cannot trust the Sheriff’s Office,” she said.
Her office has asked about the location of seized narcotics and drugs. She said she has been told by the Sheriff’s Office that the drugs have either “gone missing” or are “at CBI.” When asked to confirm, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation said it wasn’t the case. “We were told incorrect information from the Sheriff’s Office.”
Kelly said she has heard allegations that Sheriff’s Office employees are using drugs and aiding drug dealers in their efforts.
“These are only allegations. I make that very clear. This is the information that I’m hearing from your citizens and I’m not hearing it about any other agency in the San Luis Valley,” said Kelly. “This is the only one.”
In one burglary case, where firearms were stolen from a county resident, Kelly said the deputies involved in the case were “friendly” with the suspects. According to Kelly, dispatch traffic relayed that the firearms were booked into the Sheriff’s Office as evidence “and then they went missing. They were never to be found.”
The weapons were missing for several months. When the victims complained to the Sheriff’s Office about the whereabouts of the weapons, the Sheriff’s Office said they must have given them to the DA’s office.
Kelly said her office never takes firearms into their possession and never would.
“Then all of a sudden, after a couple of months” and an Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms investigation, “the firearms suddenly appeared.”
The explanation she received was that weapons were under an armor vest in a corner “somewhere.”
She said, “I have never worked with a police agency, ever, that has just lost firearms.”
Firearms collected as evidence are said to have been lying throughout offices, on desks and cabinets. Some firearms were not booked into evidence and were not put through a police-recognized tracking system.
The Sheriff’s Office told them that this is due to a lack of funding for an evidence room, to which Kelly noted everyone needs more funding and that a proper system for managing evidence is not “insurmountable.”
She said her investigator as well as locals and former Sheriff’s Office employees have said there are “guns and evidence just lying around for anyone to collect and take.”
There is no secure evidence property room or management software, which is “well below” standards in the state and the nation. “This is something that should have been in a place for a long time.”
Any kind of rudimentary way of organizing evidence should have been in place, she said. “It has not been in place.”
Currently there is a homicide case pending in Costilla County. “I learned that the Sheriff’s Office lost physical evidence in a homicide. I have never heard of this. I have never experienced this. This is unprecedented. They just lost physical evidence in a homicide.”
Physical evidence from a strangulation kit in a domestic violence case is “simply gone. We don’t know where it is. Then it turned up again. We were relieved. Then it went missing again.”
Because there is no system for evidence tracking, the DA’s office had to tell the victim in the case, “I’m sorry. I cannot ethically proceed with the case against your strangler. We cannot proceed against your abuser, because I don’t have faith or trust in the evidence that we would use against this individual.”
Photographs of injuries taken on a suspect that could be used as exculpatory evidence are gone, she noted.
Colorado Peace Officer Standards & Training compliance is in question and Kelly’s office is investigating compliance of training and training records. POST is a unit of the Criminal Justice Section at the Attorney General’s Office responsible for documenting and managing the certifications and training of all peace officers in the state. Agencies have to comply with the standards set by the agency.
“The citizens of Costilla County deserve better than this.”
District attorneys get citizen complaints all the time, she said. “Ninety-percent of the citizens that call my office are complaining about the Sheriff’s Office in Costilla.”
She said follow-ups and interviews with these complaints are taking place and what her office is finding is that cases are being neglected, cases aren’t being followed up on and reports aren’t being given over.
“These are your citizens,” she told the commissioners. “I hope you recognize that it is incredibly difficult for me to stand in front of you and tell you these things.”
SHERIFF’S OFFICE RESPONSE
After Kelly presented her concerns with the commissioners, Undersheriff Soto said budget requests for improved access to the Axon bodycam system were denied by commissioners. The four-year contract with Axon, according to Soto, would cost the county around $17,000 a year. Commissioner Romero apologized for that request’s denial and said he didn’t think the board understood the “significance or magnitude of that situation.”
Soto agreed that the evidence room “has been a mess.” The Sheriff’s Office has been without an evidence technician, and the jail administrator has taken up evidence duties. The office is also working with the Colorado Springs Police Department with evidence assistance.
Soto said the missing firearms were the responsibility of the former evidence technician, who he called “disgruntled.”
A high turnover rate has left the department with four deputies, including Soto, to cover the entire county with full 24-hour coverage.
He said the Sheriff’s Office has been trying to achieve a clean slate.
There was discussion on what a future evidence room would need. Ownership of the Sheriff’s Office building put into question what grant funding might be available.
Romero went on to say that the county is looking at “severe” budget cuts this year. The one percent sales tax passed in 2022 has been tapped out due to inmate transportation costs to different counties.
Romero wants to find a way to get an Axon bodycam contract as soon as possible.
He also said he wants to find the best way to help the Sheriff’s Office, but conceded that county offices are understaffed in many places and as a commission they don’t want to cut other office’s budgets to supplement the Sheriff’s Office.
“We can throw money all we want,” Romero said. “I don’t know if it’s gonna solve the problem.”
Soto said “I hate to say it this way, but you get what you pay for. And when we’re not able to pay some of these deputies to stay here, good deputies, we get what we get.”
“How do we move on from here?” Commissioner Espinoza asked Soto.
Soto replied, “Once again I say, we get what we pay for. If we’re paying deputies that we can’t trust or don’t know, what do we do? We can’t work 24-seven. I’m killing myself working the shift I am now.”
He said the office needs better policies and procedures to reprimand deputies and a bigger budget to hire more deputies.
Romero said that the history and culture of Costilla County and the San Luis Valley is that it is used as a stepping stone. Teachers, emergency medical personnel and law enforcement often get their beginning experience here and move on.
“I don’t know how to ever solve that,” he said.
Sanchez said, “We’re not here to challenge Anne’s office in any way, in any form.”
He said all his officers were current with their POST certifications.
Soto said officer turnover rate is high. The challenge of living in Costilla County and the salary are often cited as reasons why he can’t fill positions.
Some of the issues raised from Kelly happened with former employees, Soto said.
Employees were asked about the missing firearms because they were in a closet, but “I have no idea who the hell put them in there. … They were [taken] by the evidence tech at the time and then they acted like they didn’t know what was up and then they started this whole other case and it was something where they had their hands in it not us,” Soto said.
The public complains about everyone, he said, not just the Sheriff’s Office. “There’s allegations about everything. I did take a little offense and I’ll tell you guys right now, every one of my employees will submit to a drug test.”
Sanchez agreed, telling the commissioners that he will back drug testing.
Soto said his office takes accusations of drug use and assistance to drug dealers with a grain of salt due to personality issues and grievances from past arrests.
Commissioner Quintana only saw finances as part of the reason for Kelly’s raised concerns. She asked Kelly if the bodycam footage and police reports issue could be solved financially.
Kelly said she didn’t want to answer for what the Sheriff’s Office does with its budget, but said, “This is not a money issue. This is an issue of making sure that there are systems in place to get the work done.”
NEXT STEPS
Kelly said it was important for the commissioners to be aware of what’s going on and to hear it from her. The meeting was held to bring them up to speed but also to highlight and bring about some suggestions of what the county could do and what Kelly’s limited options are.
“On my end I have an ethical duty to take action. I can’t simply sit back and wait for things to change anymore,” she told them.
She said she’s been asking for suggestions from her fellow DAs throughout the state.
One of the suggestions, she said, was to ask the Attorney General’s Office to investigate a pattern and practice of corrupt and unlawful acts.
She may also ask the attorney general’s POST Division to investigate POST requirements for the Sheriff’s Office.
The 3rd Judicial District had a similar situation with the Huerfano County Sheriff’s Office and its compliance. Kelly said that it wasn’t nearly to the degree of Costilla County, but Henry Solano, the former district attorney, brought a federal injunction against the Huerfano County Sheriff’s Office.
“I could take the very draconian action of saying we are going to be declining a majority of cases from Costilla County until we can see improvement,” she said. “I do not want to take that. That doesn’t do anything for your citizens. That does not help anyone here.”
She said that because she has to weigh her ethical obligations to prosecute cases fairly she’s having “a hard time reconciling that with what I’m seeing from the Sheriff’s Office.”
She said she believes Costilla County citizens deserve to know what’s going on and that she met with Sen. Cleave Simpson and Rep. Matt Martinez because they wanted to raise concerns they’ve heard from their constituents to her.
She’ll be weighing talking directly with the citizens of Costilla County because she doesn’t want to bring outside scrutiny into the county.
Kelly said that she’s had conversations with judges, including Chief District Judge Amanda Hopkins, who are now aware of the situation.
“I’m not saying there’s an easy solution to this, mostly because your sheriff is an elected position,” she said.
The powers of an elected county sheriff can only be taken away through a recall election.
“I’m not suggesting that,” she said, “but I just wanted you to know that some of the struggles I’m having is there’s not a lot of things I can do legally and officially to make sure there’s compliance.”
But if the Sheriff’s Office is willing to engage with commissioners it could make the process easier.
The Colorado Association of Sheriffs could potentially provide oversight. The Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies, a national agency, could also be brought in for further oversight and assistance. The International Association of Police has programs in place for remediation.
“I don’t know what else to do. I really don’t.” She told the commissioners that she would be keeping them up-to-date on her next steps and she left the door open to further communication.
“I pray for your county,” she said.