Perfect Murder, Perfect Town - Lawrence Schiller [279]
Jenkins also told the reporter that if there was any notion of Burke being a suspect, the interviews with Schuler had ruled out the possibility.
Tom Koby had attended the department’s presentation of the Ramsey case to the DA’s office though he had less than a month left on the job. A new director of police services would be announced shortly. On June 10, Koby sent an e-mail to city employees, friends, and business associates.
From:
TOM KOBY
To:
COBO1.IS.SPRINT
Date:
6/10/98 5:19pm
Subject:
“What a Long Strange Trip it has Been”—Who said that?
If my memory serves me correctly it was the Grateful Dead. However, knowing that I am entering into the senility time of life, who knows for sure.
Still it has been an interesting seven years that I would enjoy sharing with folks, excluding media types, over a few beers next Thursday, June 18th, at the West End Tavern, 936 Pearl, from 4:30PM-7:00PM. So stop by if you would like to, “Say Hello, I must be going,” (Phil Collins said that,) before I slip away into the void.
Feel free to extend this invitation to anyone outside the city who might not get this e-mail but who I might have encouraged, discouraged, pleased or abused over the last seven years. The only requirement is that they like to drink beer while enjoying the humor in all that we tend to make so serious in our lives.
Two of Koby’s friends couldn’t make it to his going-away party. His closest friend, Tim Honey, former city manager of Boulder, had already sold his house and was in Budapest advising city managers in emerging Eastern European democracies. John Eller had already moved to Florida to look for a job as police chief in a small city.
Some forty people showed up at the party on June 18. None of the Ramsey case detectives or police union leaders attended. Only two reporters showed up, and Jeff Shapiro was one of them. Alex Hunter and Phil Miller were there on behalf of the DA’s office. It was a sad affair for Hunter, who considered Tom Koby a friend. The DA didn’t have much to say that night.
CHIEF CANDIDATE SEES LACK OF CONFIDENCE
The past 18 months haven’t been easy for Boulder police.
JonBenét Ramsey’s unsolved murder, Susannah Chase’s unsolved murder and student riots in the University Hill area have put the department in an unflattering spotlight and have caused the public to question the department’s competence.
But even more troubling, said Cmdr. Tom Kilpatrick, is what is happening inside the department.
The unsolved murders, the negative attention, the riots all have exacerbated the problem, Kilpatrick said.
“But it has its roots in how we do our work, how we prioritize.” To restore the confidence, Kilpatrick said, “we need to roll up our sleeves and do good work. We need to reaffirm our commitment to basic police work—how we investigate crime scenes, how we staff the street.”
He acknowledges there are union-mandated constraints on supervisors, “but the chief and the union have to get together on this.”
Kilpatrick…said working in patrol, as he does now, “is tremendously rewarding” because patrol officers interact directly with the public. “It is the essence of policing.” But as a commander, he has noticed a gulf between the rank-and-file officers and management.
Management staff, he said, is too far removed from the work. Kilpatrick doesn’t quarrel with the decision, made in the early ’90s, to adopt a community-oriented approach to police work, in which officers are involved in programs like mentoring troubled kids, working with community groups to