Ouray’s embattled police chief was fired Monday after six months on paid administrative leave because of his “poor work performance, violations of state law and other actions inappropriate for the Chief of Police,” according to city officials.
City leaders put Chief Jeff Wood on paid leave on Jan. 29, 11 days after the Ouray County Plaindealer first reported allegations that Wood’s stepson and two others raped a 17-year-old girl in his house while he was asleep upstairs.
In a termination letter dated Monday and first reported by the Plaindealer, Ouray City Administrator Silas Clarke described internal investigations into Wood, including complaints of police misconduct, not complying with state laws for body-worn cameras and inappropriate comments and actions.
“…I find you have engaged in misconduct and violations of policy and state law. I no longer trust you to comply with policy, let alone enforce it or lead by example, and I do not trust your judgment to lead the police department,” Clarke wrote.
Clarke confirmed Wood’s firing in an email Monday afternoon.
In a statement, Wood’s attorney Reid Elkus said Wood has never been terminated from a law enforcement position in his nearly 30 years as an officer.
“This is a shock and we are looking at every legal option,” Elkus said.
Clarke’s letter and other records of the city’s investigation detail several complaints and concerns about Wood, including a photo of Wood’s truck taken Friday that shows a rear window of two stick figures having sex while another person and two children stand nearby.
Clarke described the images as in poor taste and offensive given the allegations against Wood’s stepson.
“These photos show, at best for you, a horrible lack of judgment and, at worst, an intent to make a mockery of allegations of rape and a continued cavalier attitude as to sexual related offenses and your actions associated therewith,” Clarke wrote.
The city’s investigation was prompted in part by a complaint from a former police department employee, who described Wood as having a cavalier attitude while investigating an elementary school janitor accused of taking inappropriate pictures of students with his phone.
Wood failed to require interviews with several key witnesses during the investigation, returned the janitor’s phone and failed to act when a deputy district attorney was responding slowly to the investigation, according to the investigative report by Municipal Police Consultants.
City officials also found that while he was on duty, Wood told a 22-year-old woman “he would take her out to dinner, but he would have to explain to his wife why he was out with a pretty young blonde girl” and described the Black Lives Matter movement as a “terrorist organization.”
Wood also refused to wear a body-worn camera as required by Colorado law, according to the city’s investigation.
Wood’s stepson and two other men are charged with sexual assault in Seventh Judicial District Court, and those cases are still pending, according to court records.
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Originally Published: June 24, 2024 at 2:21 p.m.
