One of the candidates for the Juneau Chief of Police post includes Derek Bos, who also was a candidate for other police chief positions in Southeast in 2018 and in 2019.
In the past, while he was the police chief within Brush — which is a tiny town located in eastern Colorado The town of Brush is located in eastern Colorado. Bos conducted an investigation that led to the town split. The investigation targeted 2 school officials who kept explicit images of a child as evidence in an investigation into sexting.
The judge dismissed the charges as did the board of school reappointed the school’s administrators. Both men were charged which could have put them in prison for many years and required them to sign up as sexual offenders.
on Thursday. Bos said to KTOO by email the fact that he “would not alter the general direction or actions of the investigation” and that every stage in the probe was “carefully scrutinized with shrewdness and discernment prior to any decision was made.” Bos added that the investigation was an “victim determined action.”
However, Shannon Najmabadi, who reported on the case on behalf of The Colorado Sun, told KTOO that it’s uncommon for cases such as this to result in prosecutorial proceedings. The victim and her family members were completely opposed to the investigation, and felt that the prosecution, as well as Bos’s press releases on the case did not reflect their views.
Najmabadi who is now a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, spoke with the KTOO’s Yvonne Krumrey about what happened in Brush.
Listen:
This transcription has been edited to improve clarity and length.
Shannon Najmabadi: It was an instance of sending sexts. One parent reported that the images were shared with the school. The school began an investigation. The way the tip was received was to both the high school administration as well as officers from the department. And the administrators of the high schools following the morning began investigating the matter, as is what they’re required to do if they receive a an information of this kind.
The administrators then spoke to students who were involved. At some point, they made pictures of these images and these explicit pictures to use as evidence.This person took the photos on his mobile phone at work and uploaded the photos to the cloud-based school server.
This is where the situation gets complex. In essence, this is typical practice at this school, right? when they take marijuana, or anything similar to this, or any other illegal drugs, they snap a picture of the item as evidence and then they place it on the server, where they store the records of their disciplinary files.
There isn’t any evidence that authorities kept these images to satisfy sexual desires however, it’s still illegal under the state law. The way the statute was made, having any image that is classed as child pornography would be a violation of this law, which is what we could call the child porn law. Whatever the motive the reason, if you own it, you are legally possessing child pornography, in essence. The only exceptions are law enforcement personnel such as police officers who are investigating the situation.
If we look back to the beginning that the tip came in, it was referred directly to police. It’s unclear why however, it took several days to get back with this particular case.
They later detained two administrators from high schools involved. They also issued press releases with aggressive language, calling the events as atrocities. This case ended up being heard by the courts The prosecutor was able to bring these people in for prosecution. Then, the case was dismissed by the judge.
But, the girl in the photographs — also the presumed plaintiff in this instancewho owned the pictures of her, which were stored at the high school her parents, and her were extremely against the matter, believing that even the fact it was reported in press releases and being discussed in the court proceedings, could be a re-victimization, and that their demands weren’t being respected.
Yvonne Krumrey: It seems that you have looked at other similar cases to find out the commonality of individuals to be charged in situations like this. What did you learn regarding the decision to bring charges and prosecute school officials?
Shannon Najmabadi: It’s definitely not uncommon. I believe that in the end there are cases like this that happen and are more frequent than we realize as sexting has become a commonplace in high school age students. Administrators may not be aware of what the proper procedure is. There isn’t any standardized training which teaches administrators “Hey when you are dealing with this type of Sexting matter, and you do happen to be in possession of these pictures you may be charged with a crime and face imprisonment.” Although this may seem like common sense to a few people however, it’s not something that’s taught in any training. There’s no way people learn about this other than through meetings and similar things.
However, it isn’t like this could lead to any prosecution or at all.
Yvonne Krumrey: What can you share with us about the way this investigation impacted the community?
Shannon Najmabadi caused a divide in the town from what I could be able to tell, between those who were in support of the police as well as the ones who supported this administrator and the school district as a whole. It also led to a variety of unique occasions — there were protests in front of the courthouse quite often. These packed hearings, where attendees would wear the school colors or t-shirts that showed their support for the administrators. It might seem appropriate in a large city however, it was, to my knowledge, observe, a rare thing in this particular community. This case went for a considerable duration. It was a major problem during that period.
Yvonne Krumrey: In the final the charges were dismissed and the administrators returned to work. In the meantime, Bos left town – He found a new job. He claims he didn’t quit due to the controversy. What do you think of the situation that all this has put Bos in as the city’s most senior public safety officer?
Shannon Najmabadi: I do not exactly what job it placed the Chief Bos in. What I do know is that what I heard from him was that he accepted the job in Eagle which is a different location in Colorado and he told me that the police chief in that area was retiring, and had approached him in May prior to when all of this went out in Brush. He claimed that he had submitted an application, but then pulled out of consideration due to the fact that the issue had been brought up. When the town Eagle approached him, he was able to decide to accept the position and I’m sure that the start date was the month of December in 2022. That’s less than a full year more than a year ago.
Juneau residents are able to get to meet Bos along with the other finalists, Joshua Kingsbury, current Juneau Officer Krag Campbell next week during townhall meeting. Bos will appear on Thursday at 5:30 in City Hall.
