Nearly 70 Colorado law enforcement officers have lost their state-mandated certifications since 2020 after being untruthful on the job.

While that number is far higher than state officials expected when a law passed several years ago that cracked down on dishonesty on the job in law enforcement, the real number of officers who get caught being deceitful is far higher.

Those officers’ stories are concealed from the public through resignations, retirements and transfers within agencies to protect the officers’ ability to work in law enforcement — even when state law would seem to mandate the revocation of their certification.

Most everyone, including police chiefs and sheriffs, agrees that lying under oath during a criminal investigation should not only be a fireable offense but also decertifiable, which means an officer loses his license to ever be a peace officer in Colorado again. 

But untruthfulness is obviously subjective: What about cheating a bit on a timecard? Or crashing a patrol car and not being upfront about what actually happened? What about not showing up for a 911 call even though an officer tells his boss he did? 

A review of hundreds of pages of internal affairs investigative documents by reporters from Colorado Public Radio News and 9News found that officers were frequently fired or allowed to resign when caught not telling the truth but not then reported to state authorities as being untruthful. 

Or, they were reported, but state officials didn’t decertify them. This allowed them to keep the certification to work as a law enforcement officer somewhere else.