Tuesday, December 24, 2002 - Denver Police Chief Gerry Whitman has asked his department to conduct an internal investigation of the intelligence unit over its collection of the so-called spy files, a city spokeswoman said.

"Chief Whitman has taken the criticisms seriously and launched an internal investigation," Department of Safety spokeswoman C.L. Harmer said. "He did this when it all came to light" in March.

Harmer's statements to The Denver Post confirm what Deputy Chief David Abrams said in a deposition taken as part of a lawsuit against the city over the spy files, yet contradict what another police official said.

"I believe the chief had ordered - when I say an investigation opened, I mean we actually formally assigned it an IA number," Abrams said in his Sept. 18 deposition.

That differs from what Lt. Judy Will, now interim head of the intelligence unit, told The Post two weeks ago.

"There isn't anything formal at this point," Will said in response to an inquiry about a possible internal affairs case opened by the chief.

Whitman declined to comment for this story. Will could not be reached Monday to respond to Harmer's statement.

In his deposition, Abrams said there were also at least two other internal affairs complaints filed by citizens over the spy files.

His and other depositions, recently viewed by The Post, were taken as part of a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union, which is suing the city over the spy files. After learning of the existence of the 3,200 individual and 208 group files in March, the ACLU filed suit on behalf of six plaintiffs, challenging the department's custom of spying on peaceful protesters, maintaining the files and sharing the files with other law enforcement agencies.

Depositions in the case show a sloppily run intelligence unit, where detectives had no protocol to follow in deciding who to surveil and target for the gathering of information.

The city hired a three-judge panel to review the spy files and intelligence-gathering practices of the department. The panel found that none of the computer files it viewed held pertinent criminal information. The panel did not investigate any hard-copy files held by the department.

Often, the depositions show, individuals and groups were targeted simply because they participated in protests or other venues of free speech.

"Did you take any steps to determine why individuals' political beliefs were being included in surveillance files?" Abrams was asked in his deposition.

"No," he said. "That will all be part of the process in the internal investigation."

However, as the civil case winds its way through court - it is currently before a federal magistrate and has yet to go to trial - it is holding up the internal investigation, Harmer said.

"It can't be completed until the litigation is over," she said of the internal-affairs investigation. "You let the legal stuff work its way through."

The investigation is centered on the eight-person intelligence unit, Harmer said, and the spy files.

Steve Nash, a plaintiff in the lawsuit against the city and a subject of a spy file, said he does not have confidence in the investigation. As a member of Copwatch, a police accountability group, he has studied such cases before, he said.

"What we've generally seen is that internal affairs investigations tend to exonerate the people involved."

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