Police Kept Files On 'Trench Coat Mafia' Group After Columbine

[Anonymous]

http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/Central/02/20/files.columbine.ap/index.html

DENVER, Colorado (AP) -- City police monitored a group of teens known as the Trench Coat Mafia after the Columbine school massacre, intelligence files released this week show.

Investigators found no evidence of criminal activity, according to the files.

Officers opened a file on the teenagers -- who wore long trench coats and described themselves as outcasts -- six months after the April 20, 1999, shootings at Columbine High School.

Officers ran computer checks on about 75 teenagers who were either thought to be in the group or believed to be friends of those in the group, but found nothing.

Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who fatally shot 12 students and a teacher before killing themselves, had been rumored to belong to the Trench Coat Mafia. Investigators later concluded that they didn't.

The documents were among intelligence files that the city released as a result of an unrelated lawsuit in which the police are accused of violating the constitutional rights of protesters.

The American Civil Liberties Union sued the city last March after learning that the Denver Police Department had compiled surveillance files on at least 3,200 people and 208 groups. The organization said the police didn't just target known or suspected criminals, but also singled out peaceful activists.

The documents released Wednesday indicate that officers watched people ranging from anti-war protesters to members of militia groups and motorcycle gangs.
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so this is why i was given a hard time in school after the shootings...people just thought i was part of some crappy rivethead gang of retards that weren't even from around here. i get it now... :hmph:

 

[Mighty_Emperor]

Some other Columbine-related news:

Columbine to unfold

Salazar announces release next month of investigation, videotapes, other evidence

By Kevin Vaughan and Lynn Bartels, Rocky Mountain News
January 21, 2004

An independent investigation into a mysterious 1997 report about Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold is expected to be released next month, along with videotapes and other evidence that have never been made public.

Colorado Attorney General Ken Salazar on Tuesday announced his plan to try to answer lingering Columbine questions in one sweeping release on Feb. 26.

Salazar, who heads the inquiry into the 1997 report about Harris and Klebold, and Jefferson County Sheriff Ted Mink expect to meet first with the families of victims to go over the results of the investigation and make evidence in the case available to them.

It will then be made public.

"This is essentially what I've been asking for - the ability to review all the evidence," said Brian Rohrbough, whose son was among those killed in the April 20, 1999, Columbine High School attack.

Attorneys for the Harris and Klebold families did not return calls Tuesday. The families have previously fought the release of some documents.

Salazar's investigation is nearly complete. Two families were told Tuesday that only one out-of-state interview remains to be done.

But Salazar, who launched a task force to push for the release of records in the Columbine tragedy, wanted to go beyond his investigation and deal with other, unresolved issues at the same time. That's when he settled on a plan to make a number of items public at once.

The Feb. 26 date was chosen to give investigators time to complete their report and prepare other evidence for release, the attorney general's office said.

Salazar will address:

• The investigation into what happened in pre-Columbine contacts that authorities had with Harris and Klebold, including an Aug. 7, 1997, report that the pair were vandalizing a neighborhood. As part of that tip, several pages of Harris' violent Internet rants were turned over to sheriff's deputies.

The report was discovered last October in the pocket of a notebook left behind by former Jefferson County Detective John Hicks, who now works in South Carolina.

After the discovery, a stunned Sheriff Mink, who had taken office earlier in 2003, asked the attorney general to investigate what happened to that tip and why it was never disclosed after the Columbine attacks.

Hicks was the same investigator who handled a 1998 report by Columbine parents Randy and Judy Brown that Harris and Klebold were building pipe bombs and had, on the Internet, threatened mass murder. Questions also have lingered about how the 1998 report was handled.

The investigation has included interviews with a number of current and former sheriff's officers, including Hicks, who met with investigators in December.

• More than an hour of video of Harris and Klebold, including a movie they made for a school project called Hitmen for Hire.

The video, which is between 75 and 90 minutes long, includes dozens of clips of Harris and Klebold from more than 70 tapes in the possession of the sheriff's office since 1999. The Harris and Klebold footage was viewed and edited after an open records request from the Rocky Mountain News.

• Evidence in the possession of the sheriff's office that was not taken under the authority of a search warrant.

Evidence that was taken under a warrant - such as writings from the killers' homes - could still be released, however, if the Colorado Court of Appeals rules on a lawsuit filed by The Denver Post seeking access to the materials.

• A proposal to archive all Columbine material and make it available to an expert who would write a report on the lessons that can be learned from the tragedy.

In all, Harris and Klebold gunned down a dozen students and a teacher and wounded more than 20 others in the worst school shooting in U.S. history.

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/columbine/article/0,1299,DRMN_106_2592104,00.html