ADAMS COUNTY, Colo — Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser announced Thursday that his office has charged former Adams County Sheriff Rick Reigenborn and two members of his command staff with felony counts related to an alleged scheme to falsify training records while they were members of the sheriff's office.
Reigenborn, his former Undersheriff Tommie McLallen and his training supervisor Mickey Bethel are each charged with felony counts of forgery, attempt to influence a public servant, conspiracy to commit forgery and conspiracy to attempt to influence a public servant.
Reigenborn lost in a primary election last year and has since left the sheriff's office. McLallen and Bethel resigned from their positions with the sheriff's office last year amid this investigation.
> The video above aired Feb. 15, 2022
According to an affidavit, Reigenborn, Bethel and McLallen were accused of signing training rosters for classes they didn't attend to count the hours toward their annual Police Officer Standards and Training (POST) certification.
One of the trainers for a June 2021 class on Arrest Control and Driving told investigators that several high level staffers were missing from that training, the affidavit says.
At the end of the day, the trainer said he got a phone call asking him to meet Reigenborn and bring the training rosters to him. The deputy told investigators that he watched Reigenborn and Bethel write on the training rosters and remembered Reigenborn calling McLallen to say the rosters were at the front desk for him, even though McLallen didn't attend the training either. All three were listed on the training roster, according to the affidavit.
Reigenborn came under scrutiny in February 2022, after a livestream video appeared to show him breaking department policy when he drove out of the department's jurisdiction to arrest a car theft suspect.
Reigenborn later ended the livestreamed ride-alongs and announced that his department had signed an agreement with the TV show "COPS."
Bethel, the department's training supervisor at the time, is accused of logging in as McLallen to complete critical police training at the end of 2021 while McLallen was at another training at Northwestern.
According to the affidavit, Bethel told another deputy "I think I f***ed up" and went on to say he got McLallen's username and password, logged into the police training program and did online PoliceOne training for McLallen and later gave McLallen the training certificates.
Bethel was once a member of the Pueblo Police Department but was fired after a sex tape featuring Bethel, his wife and another man surfaced, the Denver Post reported in 2015.
A jury acquitted Bethel of official misconduct in 2007, relating to the sex tape, the Pueblo Chieftain reported at the time. He later became the Rocky Ford police chief before leaving that post to work for Adams County when Reigenborn took office as sheriff in 2019.
McLallen was the chief of the Walsenburg Police Department before it dissolved in 2017.
All police officers in Colorado are required to complete a minimum of 24 hours of annual in-service training. Twelve of those hours include so-called perishable skills training in arrest control, driving and firearms training.
Police officers can have their POST certification suspended if they don't complete the training, and police departments can lose grant funding if they're found out of compliance with POST training rules.
Contact 9NEWS Reporter Steve Staeger with tips about this or any story by e-mailing steve@9news.com.
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