Colorado cop Nathan Meier won't face DUI charges after being found drunk inside patrol car, Aurora p -

There is no question that Aurora Police Department Officer Nathan Meier was drunk when first responders and other police officers found him slumped in the driver’s seat of his idling patrol car along a busy road in the Colorado city just east of Denver.

According to medical records, Meier’s blood alcohol content on that afternoon in March last year was more than five times the legal limit. Multiple police officers on the scene also recalled smelling alcohol in the car or wafting from Meier. And then there was Meier’s confession. The veteran officer told internal affairs investigators that he had gone home while on duty that day and drunk “vodka from a bottle.”

But unlike most people facing what seems to be an open-and-shut DUI case, Meier won’t be charged, according to the local prosecutor, because his fellow Aurora police officers failed to conduct a criminal investigation into the incident as they would with anyone else. Meier was demoted but has been allowed to continue working for the department.

“What happened with Officer Meier was a product of him being an Aurora police officer,” 18th Judicial District Attorney George Brauchler told KCNC on Wednesday. “The decisions that were made were made to protect him.”

On Thursday, Brauchler held a lengthy news conference where he explained why he can’t move the case forward. He said the police department didn’t properly investigate the episode as a DUI. Brauchler added that he can’t use Meier’s medical records from that day or his statement to internal affairs because such evidence is inadmissible under court rulings and state law.

“I don’t think ethically I can charge him with anything,” Brauchler told KCNC. “It is really frustrating. At the end of the day, I think this guy beats the system, and part of the system helped him to do it.”

Since news broke in December that Meier avoided criminal charges and wasn’t fired, the police department has faced backlash from city residents accusing them of protecting their own, KDVR reported. On Thursday, Brauchler stopped short of calling the situation a “coverup,” suggesting that Meier may have benefited from preferential treatment.

“Bottom line is if one of us had been in that car and not Officer Nate Meier, you ask me, do I think it would have been treated differently? I do,” he said.

The Aurora Police Department did not respond to a request for comment late Thursday. But interim chief Vanessa Wilson, who was not in charge at the time of the incident, acknowledged that Meier’s case “was done wrong” in an interview with KUSA on Thursday.

“I echo his frustration in the way the case was handled,” Wilson said, referencing Brauchler. “I think people within the community are angry and people who are in the police department are angry.”

District Attorney George Brauchler explains to public and news media why he has concluded his office cannot ethically bring charges against Aurora Police Officer Nate Meier.

Posted by 18th Judicial District Attorney's Office - Colorado on Thursday, February 6, 2020

The incident unfolded on the afternoon of March 29, when two people called 911 to report that a man wearing a police uniform was passed out inside a dark gray Ford Taurus in the middle of the road.

Aurora Police Deputy Chief Paul O’Keefe was the first person at the scene, where he found Meier in the still-running patrol car with his foot on the brake, the Denver Post reported.

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“His eyes were open slightly and his head rolled around as if he was trying to find some cause of the disturbance,” O’Keefe wrote. “He did not appear to be aware of his surroundings.”

Soon, other officers and first responders arrived, and it was determined that the only way to free Meier was to break a window. Body camera footage showed the car’s passenger side littered with glass as Meier sat unresponsive behind the wheel. What appeared to be a bottle containing clear liquid lay on the passenger seat. It took at least two people to pull Meier from the car and place him on a waiting stretcher.

“He’s a little intoxicated,” one officer could be heard saying in another recording before the body camera was quickly shut off. Others wrote in reports that they caught faint whiffs of alcohol coming from the car and Meier.

Meier was rushed to a hospital. A DUI investigator who came to the hospital was sent away and a sample of blood from Meier, who was unconscious, was not obtained, Brauchler said. At Thursday’s news conference, prosecutors said several people in the police department’s command staff, including O’Keefe, had been responsible for the decision to not involve the DUI officer.

A letter released by prosecutors Thursday detailing the case indicated that O’Keefe believed he had insufficient evidence to open a DUI investigation. The letter cited a report in which O’Keefe wrote that he “erred on the side of protecting [Meier] and in fact anybody else under the same circumstances.”

Instead, Meier’s case was handled as an internal investigation. Brauchler said his office didn’t even hear about the incident until December — 257 days after it happened — when KCNC obtained a copy of the internal affairs report and broke the story.

In the report, Meier admitted to investigators that he was “impaired by the alcohol” on that March day and “had no recollections of anything else” until he woke up in the hospital.

But Meier’s admissions to internal affairs investigators were useless because a 1967 U.S. Supreme Court ruling prevents compelled statements that would incriminate an officer from being used in trial. A blood sample taken by the hospital, which indicated that Meier’s blood alcohol content was 0.43, was part of a medical examination and also could not be admitted as evidence. The bottle containing the clear liquid found in Meier’s car was never tested, according to Thursday’s letter.

“This would be the weakest DUI we’ve ever moved forward on,” Brauchler said at the news conference.

Though the criminal proceedings against Meier are now at a standstill, Aurora officials have not given up on holding people involved in the incident accountable. In December, Aurora’s city manager tasked former U.S. attorney John Walsh with completing an independent investigation of how the case was handled, KMGH reported. Wilson, the interim chief, said Thursday that an internal affairs investigation would also be opened into O’Keefe, according to the Denver Post. Shortly after Wilson’s announcement, O’Keefe, who was expected to retire in March, said he would be resigning Friday, the Post reported.

“Despite this, I believe the men and women of the Aurora Police Department are some of the finest law enforcement officers in this part of the country and they do tremendous work,” Brauchler said, later adding, “It’s embarrassing for the 99.9 percent of the men and women there that they have to go through the community with this kind of thing hanging over their head.”

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