Mother of man killed by former deputy claims county deleted video evidence

LARAMIE – Albany County officials altered and destroyed evidence related to the police-shooting death of Laramie resident Robbie Ramirez, according to a motion filed as part of a wrongful death lawsuit brought by his family. 
Former Albany County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Derek Colling killed Ramirez by shooting him three times during a traffic stop in 2018. A grand jury declined to indict Colling of manslaughter in 2019, but now the county faces a $20 million civil lawsuit announced by Ramirez’s mother, Debra Hinkel, in 2020. 
When Colling shot Ramirez, two of the bullets were to his back. 
Hinkel, along with community advocates, have maintained that the killing was an unjustified use of force against Ramirez, who was unarmed and struggled with mental illness. 
The lawsuit also says Colling has a history of excessive use of force, which then-sheriff David O’Malley has been accused of overlooking. 
The recent motion claims that video submitted from Colling’s body camera was altered to omit the last five seconds of footage. The video submitted in response to the lawsuit also has no sound and ends one second before Colling begins shooting Ramirez. 
Similarly, dash camera video was altered to delete recordings of the beginning of the encounter as well as secondary camera feeds, the evidence audit log and sound, the motion claims. 
These missing pieces of evidence are crucial to the lawsuit, as they would have provided a perspective of the shooting other than Colling’s testimony, the motion says. 
Video of the final shots Colling took could have supported a claim that Ramirez was not a threat and that Colling’s use of force was not justified. 
Albany County officials falsely claimed they didn’t have the body camera log and dash camera video with a time overlay, which would have made it clear that original footage had been altered, the motion says. 
Hinkel’s legal team didn’t gain access to this information until after they consulted with experts from Axon, the company that made the body camera. 
“When police lose or destroy video evidence of a fatal shooting, the civil rights plaintiff suffers a degree of prejudice that is simply incomparable to other contexts,” the motion states.
Colling, O’Malley and the Albany County Board of Commissioners are named as defendants in the motion. Sheriff Aaron Appelhans, who was appointed after O’Malley left office, also is listed in his capacity as Albany County Sheriff, though the motion clarifies that the allegations are not directed toward him personally. 
Lawyers for the Ramirez family did not respond to Boomerang inquiries by press time. 
“Defendants have offered no explanation for the device log discrepancies, missing metadata, missing audio prompts or forensic evidence indicating the camera powered off after the shooting and the video was subsequently shortened,” the motion says. “Defendants were also unable to authenticate the body camera video ‘copy’ as a faithful duplicate of the original, and did not even attempt to authenticate the dash camera video.” 
After the shooting, more than three hours went by during which the whereabouts of the body camera were unaccounted for. For the dash camera footage, this length of time is nearly 29 hours, the motion says. 
Beyond the altered footage, the motion claims evidence was wrongfully withheld and deleted. 
Sheriff’s Lt. John Beeston deleted the original body camera video, as well as the dash camera video and corresponding evidence audit log, in the fall of 2019, the motion says. 
This happened after the county attorney said evidence would be preserved for any impending civil suits. 
The motion requests a default judgment, meaning the court would automatically rule in Hinkel’s favor. 
In February, The Spence Law Firm LLC, which is representing Hinkel, filed a motion to make the 2019 grand jury proceeding public, arguing bias on the part of experts who testified to the grand jury. 
One was attorney Eric Daigle, who works specifically to defend and consult with law enforcement officers, according to WyoFile. 
“We all had faith in the justice system and it feels to us like the system has failed Robbie and our community as a whole,” Ramirez’s family said in a statement released after the failed indictment. “Our fear is that the continued lack of repercussion is only serving to embolden Derek Colling’s instinct to shoot first. 
“Rather than permitting officers to escalate a situation, we should be recognizing and rewarding police officers who show compassion and consideration for their constituents and weed out those that only seem to want to be police officers so that they can exert their power over others.” 
Ramirez graduated from Laramie High School and attended University of Wyoming. He was known as an athlete in hockey, skateboarding and other sports. He loved music and talking about his white Ford Ranger, according to previous Boomerang stories. 
His killing ignited protests and events across Laramie demanding Colling be fired and for local law enforcement to employ safer practices. 
A community group, Albany County for Proper Policing, was created and members attended county commissioners meetings and started petitions to remove O’Malley from office and demand body and dash camera footage. 
The group brought a petition with 2,608 signatures to the Peace Officer and Standards Training office calling for Colling’s decertification. 
O’Malley retired from his position in November 2020. Peggy Trent, the Albany County Attorney in charge of the grand jury trial, left her position in spring 2021. Neither said it was because of the community response to the shooting. 
Colling also resigned from a position at the Sheriff’s Office in spring 2021. 
The Spence Law Firm did not respond to a request for comment on Hinkel’s motion by press time.
 
 
This story was published on March 23, 2022.