BYRON GRANDY NEWS DIRECTOR KMGH-TV

August 17, 2001

123 Speer Blvd.
Denver, CO, 80203

Mr. Grandy:

This letter is in response to the story broadcast by KMGH-TV regarding the Lakewood police officer who left a message for Richard Lucero, which was interpreted as a threat, and the resulting disciplinary action taken by the Lakewood Police Department.

I'm a former investigator for the Jefferson County and Denver County District Attorneys' offices. I've been in private practice in Colorado since 1987.

From that viewpoint, the discipline given to a Lakewood Police officer for leaving a message that was interpreted as a threat has sent a very bad message to the rest of us, as well as other police officers.

The Lakewood police officer was sticking his neck out for a woman he believed could be in danger of physical harm. The fact that he left a message he knew was being recorded should be sufficient evidence of a lack of malicious intent on his part.

Published accounts indicate that the officer was punished for "a poor choice of words." Given the choice of words in the threat allegedly made by Richard Lucero after a minor traffic accident involving Ron Norris and his wife, my choice of words would have been on a par with those used by the officer.

If anyone thinks that police officers don't occasionally advise suspects of their rights… in a rather unofficial but generally effective way… in order to head off further bad acts, they've been watching too many Adam-12 reruns and not enough episodes of Adam-12.

All of that said, my primary complaint with the coverage of this incident, particularly the coverage offered by KMGH-TV, is that no real effort apparently was made to describe the actual nature of Mr. Lucero's alleged threat or the impact it had on Mr. and Mrs. Norris. Was any effort made to speak to Mr. and Mrs. Norris? We know that apparently Mr. Lucero claims to have been frightened by the message left by the Lakewood cop. What impact was there on the other side of Mr. Lucero's alleged threat.

And the reporter who presented the story doesn't have to be a trained private investigator to attempt to determine whether Mr. Lucero has a record, specifically with regard to threats, physical assault, and restraining orders. That would have gone a long way toward establishing any real danger represented by Mr. Lucero's alleged threat, and any justification the police officer felt that had for his actions, not to mention whether the officer's record includes any other incidents of interest.

There's no question that police officers deserve a public boot from time to time, but an amateurish and incomplete job by a reporter who may never have been closer to real violence than the outside of a line of yellow police tape doesn't cut it.

I assume you had a show producer and an assignment editor on duty before this story ran. Am I to assume that neither of them had any questions about the story before it ran? Am I to assume that you didn't have any questions about the story before it ran?

If any of these issues where important to anyone at KMGH-TV, there certainly was no indication of it when the reporter who broke the story was on KHOW Radio with Peter Boyles, and he apparently had nothing at all to say about the specific nature of the alleged threat by Mr. Lucero, the impact it had on Mr. and Mrs. Norris, Mr. Lucero's record, or the police officer's record.

Maybe you tried and couldn't get at the information? But then, I would have expected someone to mention it. You hardly would be expected to fail to mention something that would add to your credibility, right? Didn't think so.

Rick Johnson
Rick Johnson & Associates of Colorado, Inc.
1649 Downing Street, Denver, CO, 80218
rick@denverpi.com