A Letter to Denver’s Police Chief

Dear Chief Whitman:

I’d like to share with you a string of amateurish experiences that I recently had with the Denver Police Department. I think you too will find it pathetic at every step.

On March 14, 2005 I had my car stolen from my garage. I immediately called the DPD. Officer XYZ promptly arrived at my house and took a report. While cordial, she acted as if my skateboard was stolen. “Not much we can do really.” At the most, she spent 1 minute looking at the crime scene. (When my garage was broken into once before and only a tool or two was stolen, the same officer insisted that the crime lab come over and finger print the entire garage). She took the report (#200511XYZ) and left. I was told to keep calling the impound office to see if it had turned up. I did so every day for 12 days. No luck.

On March 17th, I received a phone message (and a subsequent postcard) from the DPD stating that my case was moved to an inactive file because I failed to come up with any suspects. I was also told in the message and by postcard that the case would not have a detective assigned to it. Zero effort on behalf of the DPD to find my car or the thief. I didn’t know that I was going to shoulder the entire burden to come up with suspects.

When I woke up on Sunday morning, March 27th my cell phone revealed that the DPD called my mobile phone at 12:35 am. Excited, I thought that perhaps my car had surfaced. I checked my messages. There was no message left by the police. So, I figured to be safe I would call the DPD to check. The officer that answered told me that the car was not found. Then, I was lectured about prank calling the police. I was told by the officer that the reason why the police called me at 12:35am was because someone from my mobile phone number was calling 911 and hanging up. Impossible.

Later in the day on the 27th the DPD called to inform me that indeed my car was impounded at 12:15am on that day. The police found it on the 1100 block of Osage in Denver. The report which was read to me (and I read it in person later) noted that the car was parked in an obstructive way, that the stereo/ dash had been removed, the paint faded, drivable and otherwise okay. I was told that I could call Detective X on Tuesday 3/29 (no one would be working on Sunday or Monday) to see when he planned to release the car from the impound lot. The rude and unnecessary lecture I received about prank calling 911 and hanging up was a waste of both the officer’s time and mine.

On Tuesday, I called Detective X as instructed. While friendly, he seemed ambushed by my call. Confused, he told me he had to call me back after he sorted some things out. He then called back and told me that I could wait for a few days so that they could fingerprint the car (it would take them a few days to get the crime lab over there) or I could just come and pick it up. I, of course, asked him if fingerprinting the car would realistically help crack the case. He said “almost never.” With that in mind and an itch to have my car back, I told him to please release the car. He told me it would take two hours of his day to get it released.

Two hours later, I went down to the DPD impound lot where I waited in line for an hour and forty five minutes. Finally, I was escorted to my car. On the drive to my car, I read the aforementioned police report that detailed the reported the discovery and damage. When I got to the car, I found that the report was 100% inaccurate. While the dash was fine, stereo in place and the paint not faded, the car had a massive dent on the driver’s side door, the sunroof open (in the rain), locks broken, not driveable etc. My keys would not unlock the door, so I was not able to take possession of the car. Back inside the office, I told the friendly counter folks that the report was inaccurate. They told me, “It doesn’t matter.” To me and my insurance company, this information matters. I told them that I needed to send a tow truck to take it to the repair shop that the insurance company suggested. Impound had me complete a release form to release it to the repair shop. To confirm, I asked them if I’d better off releasing it to the towing company instead of the shop, since they would be the actual party taking possession. They said release it to the shop. I did. Then, I left.

An hour later, the repair shop called. The form that I was told to fill out was incorrect. They needed me to fill out a form and release it to the towing company. So, I had to drive back down to the impound lot, wait in the absurd line again and fill out the same form again. This time releasing it to towing company.

At every step, this experience was a disaster. And, at the end, I was left most angry with the DPD, not the car thief. If I didn’t know many others whoÃ?¯Ã?¿Ã?½ve had their cars stolen in Denver, I’d assume that this was the first case that the DPD had ever seen. At every step the DPD was ill prepared, difficult to work with and completely incompetent.

The next police report that I complete will likely be for a missing police department.

Respectfully submitted,
Luke Beatty