LAKEWOOD, Colo. — An outside report made public Tuesday paints a harsh picture of the previous leadership at the Colorado Bureau of Investigation’s Forensic Services.
The 105-page audit, commissioned by CBI and conducted by the firm Forward Resolutions, states that former leadership was “ill-equipped to handle crises and critical incidents” while failing to address staff concerns. It says a “singular focus on productivity” led to low morale and a fear-based culture “perceived as autocratic, punitive, or indifferent.”
The report involved interviewing CBIFS staff and stakeholders and reviewing policies and procedures. The assessment “evaluated the organizational systems, workforce dynamics, quality management infrastructure, and leadership climate to identify strengths, challenges, and opportunities for system-wide improvement.” It focused on practices from 2022 to 2024, though “additional review was performed on specific topics dating as far back as 2010.”
- Read the full report below
On Tuesday, Denver7 sat down with Stan Hilkey, executive director of the Colorado Department of Public Safety, which oversees CBI, to get answers about what was happening during the period described in the audit.
“There's nothing in there that's a surprise,” Hilkey told Denver7. “There's a lot of constructive criticism in there that might be hard to read. I don't look at it that way. I look at it as, it creates a lot of opportunity for us.”
Denver7 asked if this process should have started sooner, given that the issues have been ongoing for years.
“Well, I think you do it when you find out there's challenges, right?” Hilkey responded. “And it takes a while to get these things in place.”
- Watch our full interview with Stan Hilkey in the video player below
Those challenges involve former CBI forensic scientist Yvonne "Missy" Woods, who is accused of mishandling DNA and impacting more than a thousand cases before resigning in 2023. In January, she was charged with more than 100 felonies.
CBI has since spent a lot of time reviewing Woods’ cases for integrity, but in that time, the state’s sexual assault kit backlog has snowballed. The testing turnaround time is more than 500 days, but CBI's goal is 90 days.
Hilkey said the department is ahead of schedule, and that goal could be possible by next fall. CBI has outsourced hundreds of kits to private labs to help with the backlog.
However, legislation passed this year by Colorado lawmakers sets a turnaround time goal of 60 days for the sexual assault kits.
“On behalf of the State of Colorado to everybody who is out there waiting, I'm sorry,” said State Sen. Mike Weissman, a co-sponsor of that legislation. “We owe you better.”
“We really do need to be ensuring that not only can victims and survivors have answers, but that they're able to proceed with justice,” said State Rep. Jenny Willford, another co-sponsor of that legislation, who said she was sexually assaulted last year by a man posing as a Lyft driver.
“It was really difficult to be a survivor and a lawmaker this last legislative session, to learn that my own case was stuck in the backlog,” she said Tuesday. “The audit, in my mind, is a roadmap of where we're going to need to go next if we're truly going to ensure that we are not in this situation again.”
State
Colorado Bureau of Investigation launches dashboard to address rape kit backlog
The report makes 52 recommendations, which include ways to improve internal communication and professional development.
“We're already working on policy improvements, training improvements, you know, selection, hiring the best people that we can hire, those kinds of things are already in flight,” said Hilkey.
CBI also said it is training 15 DNA scientists, 10 of whom will complete training this year. That will bring the total to more than 30 by next year, allowing the lab to further address the backlog.
A significant recommendation is to establish the forensic unit as an independent division, separate from the criminal investigations under CBI, giving the lab “greater autonomy, transparency, and accountability." Willford agrees with that idea, saying it would help make it easier to communicate concerns to leaders.
“It ensures that there is a very, very direct link between the lab to the executive director of the Colorado Department of Public Safety,“ she said.
Making CBIFS its own division will require waiting for the next legislative session and accounting for a tightening state budget, but Hilkey said CDPS is already considering the option and is working with Governor Jared Polis’s office.
“Anything that we can do to build trust and build confidence in those services and make sure that it is impartial, that we're reporting the facts and doing good science, that's what we want to be doing,” said Hilkey.
“It will be imperative to do that for as close to $0 as possible, and I know the department is already thinking about that,” said Weissman. “If they can address that, I personally don't anticipate a whole ton of controversy to making this just change in how the lab is organized within our code.”
The report does credit improvement within CBIFS once new leadership took over, saying staff interviewed and surveyed had “overwhelmingly positive feedback,” citing “early signs of improved communication, openness to staff input, and a more supportive approach to management.”
However, the report recognizes that the Woods crisis, as well as the intense public scrutiny surrounding it, is still a challenge for staff to overcome.
“The CBIFS stands at a critical inflection point,” the assessment says. “While individual contributors remain committed and pockets of excellence persist, the organization requires strategic intervention to address chronic stressors, systemic inefficiencies, and uneven leadership.”
Willford is optimistic there will be bipartisan support for ways to further reform the department.
“The fact that the audit was very direct, and in some ways scathing… it's very telling about the level of change that needs to take place,” she said. “I see it as a road map and a huge opportunity.”
Weissman said a scandal like the Woods investigation cannot “ever happen again, because that injects uncertainty and delay into the criminal justice system.”
“The end of the day, people don't care about the management details of the CBI labs,” he said. “They just care that the work gets done quickly and accurately.”
