A complaint from the Ouray Police Department’s former evidence technician played a key role in the termination of the agency’s chief of police this week.

Jessica Tice’s complaint alleged police misconduct, including violation of state law, lack of compliance with department policies and unprofessional behavior.

The 19-year law enforcement veteran resigned as a contract employee in September. She witnessed how the department handled the investigation into a report that a school janitor took inappropriate photos of second-grade girls and left the position as a result.

Tice, who worked for the department for two years, raised concerns about the department in her resignation letter and in a meeting with City Administrator Silas Clarke last fall. However, the city didn’t launch an investigation until seven months later after she filed an official complaint.

Her complaint detailed 24 allegations of misconduct. An outside consultant hired by the city to investigate confirmed several of those allegations in a report released this week, almost a month after it was completed.

Those allegations included failure to wear and activate body cameras in accordance with state law and botching an investigation into a Ouray School janitor who was fired after he took cellphone photos of children at school, bent over with their underwear showing.

Tice, who was surprised when she learned the city fired Chief Jeff Wood on Monday, said there’s still more work to do in bringing the department up to the standards the community deserves.

While she was glad to see some action taken in response to her complaint, Tice said she has concerns about the investigation report and plans on detailing those concerns in a memo she will submit to the city.

Tice also expressed concerns about the length of time it took for the city to release the report prepared by Municipal Police Consultants owner Paul Schultz.

The police department’s policy on complaints says the complainant should be informed of the outcome of the investigation “as soon as possible after completion of the investigation.”

Tice said she inquired about the results and was told by City Attorney Carol Viner she would receive the document on June 28, but then she received an email with the document Monday, when the city issued a press release announcing Wood’s termination.

Schultz’s investigation report was dated May 30, the day before the Plaindealer filed an open records request with the city for the public record. Clarke responded to the Plaindealer’s request on May 31, saying the document didn’t exist and he was closing out the request.

The last straw

In her time working for the police department, Tice noticed problems with the culture and lack of professionalism. But she said the way the department handled the case with the janitor last fall was the final straw.

She thinks if she hadn’t witnessed the department’s response, no one would have ever known what happened. Technically, the case is still open, with no path forward for prosecution.

“I feel like the janitor case was whitewashed,” she said. “I’m happy that it was acknowledged that they didn’t handle the investigation, the interviews and the evidence properly.”

She said she had never worked in such a toxic, unprofessional department, and hoped bringing the concerns to light would help raise awareness about the situation and fix it.

Tice has served as a part-time officer with the Vail Police Department since 2005 and a part-time deputy for the Ouray County Sheriff’s Office since last year. During her career, she has served as a patrol officer, detective, drug unit commander and incident commander of SWAT operations, among other positions.

In this photo, Jessica Tice is pictured in 2015 with her dog, Lorax. She was working as a patrol sergeant with the Vail Police Department at the time. Tice works part-time in law enforcement in Ouray County, and formerly worked as the evidence technician at the Ouray Police Department, before she filed a complaint alleging misconduct.
Courtesy photo

Tice took time off from her full-time law enforcement career to have children, and recognizes most people here have no idea she’s a highly decorated police officer.

Most folks she’s met here know her from activities involving her kids and probably wouldn’t guess she’s received commendations for helping a family of a child who drowned, awards for her narcotics investigation work and the “top stun” award for arrest control when she was completing her police academy training.

“Most people think of me as a soccer mom,” she said.

The investigation

Tice filed her official complaint on April 18. The city hired Schultz to look into it on April 29.

For the investigation, Schultz talked to eight people, including Tice, Wood, Ouray Police Sgt. Gary Ray (who has been the acting police chief), Ouray Police Officer Casey Canfield and Ouray Police Officer Brady Suppeland. Wood, Ray and Canfield brought lawyers to their interviews.

Schultz found the department didn’t properly handle evidence, didn’t wear or activate body cameras in some instances (as required by state law), didn’t follow investigative protocols, and in at least one instance rendered a criminal case useless for prosecution with poor investigative practice. He also confirmed that Wood expressed his opinion that Black Lives Matter is a “terrorist organization” and had a practice of boycotting businesses that displayed support for the movement.

In several situations, Schultz classified the department’s actions as poor or inadequate, but not malicious.

But Schultz largely dismissed Tice’s complaints that involved statements or behavior that others denied – mainly accusations of inappropriate remarks. He classified these as “unfounded,” meaning the allegations were not true, instead of stating they were “not sustained,” meaning they could not be proven true or false.

Tice said she was frustrated by Schultz’s determination that some of her complaints weren’t true just because others said things didn’t happen.

“Just because two people say something doesn’t happen doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen,” she said.

“I just want people to know that I told the truth about everything I claimed in my complaint and I offered to take a polygraph (test),” she said.

Tice’s offer to take a polygraph test was included in a follow-up email to Schultz, along with a list of professional references familiar with her career and ethics, which she invited him to contact. She also offered to let him look at her personnel files and previous job performance reviews.

He did not take her up on those offers.

The janitor case

The investigation into Tice’s complaints involved looking into a case involving Tyler Smith, who was fired from his job as the Ouray School janitor after a teacher noticed him taking photos of second-grade girls. The issue was reported to police on Sept. 15, and the report involved Smith photographing students bent over, with their underwear showing. The photos were not pornographic, but police found evidence of pornography involving an unknown, underage subject on Smith’s phone during the investigation.

Tice alleged the police department didn’t follow investigation procedures and destroyed evidence in the case. She expressed these concerns when she resigned from her job Sept. 29 and had a meeting with Clarke.

Schultz’s report details a long list of issues with the janitor case, including an extended back-and-forth between the police department and the Seventh Judicial District Attorney’s Office regarding moving forward with prosecution.

The problems with the investigation started immediately after the case was opened. Police failed to interview the teacher who first reported Smith taking the photos, according to the report. Other problems included:

• Officers failed to notify Smith of his Miranda rights and did not let him know he was free to leave when they interviewed him at the police department. “The officers knew he was special needs and that could have a bearing on how the interview would be viewed by the court,” Schultz wrote.
• Officers failed to interview Smith’s grandfather, who lives with him and came with him to the police station.
• Canfield was twirling a bullet between his fingers during an interview with Smith. This could be seen as intimidation and affect the ability to use the interview as evidence in court.
• Canfield returned a cellphone to Smith. This gave Smith the opportunity to remove any illegal images from the phone, and Ray had already instructed Smith to delete images “to keep you out of trouble later,” according to body cam footage of the interview. Schultz did not agree with Tice’s allegation that this constituted destruction of evidence, but characterized it as “poor investigative technique.”
• The police department did not obtain a search warrant for the phone until Nov. 6, more than two months after they interviewed Smith at the police station.
• The police department did not seek a warrant for Smith’s home computer or other electronic devices until January 2024. Smith told officers his computer was broken when he was interviewed in September. A judge refused to sign the warrant.
• The police department spent months going back and forth with two different deputy district attorneys, revising warrants, answering questions and requesting prosecution for the case.In one instance, the officer waited 50 days for a response from the district attorney’s office. An officer tried to get an arrest warrant in the case in April, based on one pornographic image allegedly found of an underage girl on Smith’s phone. The district attorney responded with corrections, but then didn’t communicate further with the officer after April 10.Schultz talked with Deputy District Attorney Ryan Hess in May, who told him there will be no felony summons issued in the case, and said he was frustrated with the department’s investigation.

  “There were many delays in this case that would be viewed in an unfavorable light by the court or a jury,” Schultz wrote.

Schultz also said the police department should not have released the body cam footage and reports from the criminal case to a parent from the school who requested the records.

“The release of these records could have and should have been delayed until the investigation was completed,” he wrote in the report.

Technically, the case remains open. That means all the documents and information showing how the department handled the investigation may not have come to light if the parent had not obtained the public records and shared them with Tice, who filed the complaint.

‘A good outcome’

The department is undergoing a top-to-bottom audit, also performed by Schultz, and will be advertising for a new chief in a national search.

Tice said she hopes the department increases its professionalism, the culture issues are resolved and the officers who work there understand and follow the law and policies. She’s concerned that the audit won’t be completely objective, since the city is paying Schultz, and she said she wished another law enforcement agency was performing it.

When she filed the complaint, she said she did so because she thinks the community deserves better. And she still believes that, especially when it comes to protecting children and conducting criminal investigations. She’s frustrated and appalled at how the department handled the janitor investigation.

“Kids are our most important, most vulnerable population, and we owe it to them to protect them at all costs,” she said. “The outcome of having it recognized that they didn’t handle that investigation properly was a good outcome.”

She said she thinks pressure from the community who knew about her complaint helped.

“Without the push from the community demanding protection of our children and accountability for how the officers handled the case, I don’t think there would have been an internal investigation,” she said. “Because the city has known about this since September.”