Prosecutors on Thursday showed jurors image after image of the mass shooting inside a King Soopers grocery store in Boulder, as they delivered opening statements in the long-delayed jury trial for Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, 25, who is charged with killing 10 people in the March 22, 2021, attack.

Alissa’s attorneys do not dispute he carried out the mass shooting. But Alissa has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, claiming he should not be held legally responsible for the murders because he was either so mentally ill at the time of the killings that he could not tell right from wrong or so mentally ill he could not form the criminal intent to carry out the massacre.

Alissa has been diagnosed with schizophrenia and began experiencing symptoms in his late teenage years, including hearing voices, experiencing visual hallucinations and feelings of paranoia, defense attorney Samuel Dunn said. Alissa frequently heard voices screaming and yelling in his head and believed he was being followed by the FBI, Dunn told jurors.

“Prior to the offense, and on the day of the shooting, Mr. Alissa was in the throes of a psychotic episode,” Dunn said.

“He targeted Boulder”

Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty told jurors Alissa was sane during the mass shooting, and pointed to Alissa’s months of planning and preparation, the lethality of the attack and Alissa’s surrender to law enforcement as evidence of his sanity.

Alissa, who lived in Arvada, started to research mass shootings in January 2021, Dougherty said. He looked at more than 6,000 images of guns, ammunition and equipment on his phone between January and March, including 400 photos of bomb-making materials.

On Jan. 20, 2021, he visited a webpage with a URL that read, in part, “what-is-the-most-deadly-type-of-round-bullet.” Alissa then purchased the type of bullet highlighted on that page, Dougherty said, and used it in the killings.

In the same timeframe, Alissa also researched other mass shootings and began to zero in on Boulder, Dougherty said.

“We know he targeted Boulder,” he said.

Alissa is charged with 10 counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of King Soopers shoppers, employees and a responding Boulder police officer. He faces dozens of other charges connected to the attack.

Those killed in the shooting: Denny Stong, 20; Neven Stanisic, 23; Rikki Olds, 25; Tralona Bartkowiak, 49; Teri Leiker, 51; Boulder police Officer Eric Talley, 51; Suzanne Fountain, 59; Kevin Mahoney, 61; Lynn Murray, 62; and Jody Waters, 65.

In court Thursday, Alissa sat with his defense attorneys, frequently fidgeting in his chair and looking around the courtroom. Dunn argued to jurors that Alissa could not tell right from wrong when he carried out the attack because of his untreated schizophrenia.

“He thought people were following him, thought people were surveilling him,” he said. “He became delusional.”

Dunn recounted a story in which Alissa’s father found him sitting on a couch at the family’s Arvada home in the middle of the night. Alissa believed there was a man in the bathroom, Dunn said, but Alissa’s father could not find anyone there.

“Ahmad Alissa was insane,” Dunn said. “…The motivation was his own insanity. …He could not cognitively distinguish right from wrong.”

“I heard someone die”

Several witnesses described the mass shooting when testimony began Thursday afternoon, including Alison Sheets, a now-retired emergency room doctor. She’d stopped at the store to pick up supplies after skiing, and wore a bright yellow jacket. When the shooting started, she hid on a bottom shelf among bags of potato chips, lying on her stomach.

“Fortunately many of the potato chips are colored yellow,” she said. “I did just look up, seconds after I hid, and saw the gunman walk past that aisle I was in. I looked away pretty quickly after that. I didn’t want to be seen in any way.”

Within a minute of hiding, Sheets heard a person shot in the aisle next to her, she said.

“I heard someone die — just a little breath of exhalation of someone collapsing and dying, and I smelled blood after that,” she testified.

Alissa shot and killed eight people in 68 seconds, Dougherty said.

“The victims are completely random, but the murders were absolutely planned, deliberate and intentional,” Dougherty told jurors, citing Alissa’s lethality as evidence of his intent: nine of the 10 victims were shot multiple times. No one who was shot survived.

“If he hit the person, he then moved in and executed them by shooting them again and again,” Dougherty said. “Anybody that got hit, he finished them off.”

Dougherty also argued that Alissa’s surrender when police surrounded the building shows his sanity: He put his weapons and ammunition down, stripped down to his underwear and put his hands up, the prosecutor said. Alissa later told mental health evaluators that he’d expected to go to jail and hoped he might die instead of being incarcerated.

The trial comes after years of delays because Alissa was too mentally ill to participate in his own defense — a different question than his mental state during the shooting. The trial will focus on Alissa’s mental condition at the time of the attack, rather than whether or not he carried out the shooting.

Testimony is expected to last several weeks. The trial is being streamed live: Visit this link and select Boulder Courtroom G.

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Police have identified 10 people linked to the Tren de Aragua gang who are operating in Aurora, and six of those people have been arrested and are in custody, Aurora police spokesman Joe Moylan told The Denver Post.

Details on the identities of the 10 people and the nature of the charges against all of the six arrestees were not immediately available, though some are in custody in connection with a previously reported shooting on Nome Street in July.

Moylan said officers have not arrested any gang members on charges related to collecting rent from residents at three Aurora properties owned by CBZ Property Management.

The properties took center stage in the conversation about the Venezuelan gang in Aurora when CBZ Property Management claimed unlivable conditions at its properties were due to criminal activity by Tren de Aragua gang members.

Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman and other city officials repeated the company’s claim, suggesting the apartment complexes “fallen to” the gang. The claim was then amplified by local and national media and fueled by a viral video showing men with guns knocking on a door in the apartment complex.

Other Aurora officials — and the properties’ residents — have said the unlivable conditions at the company’s properties were longstanding and the result of the company’s mismanagement, rather than an overwhelming gang presence. Aurora’s interim police chief on Friday said gangs had not “taken over” one of the complexes.

Aurora has a population of about 400,000, and a study of its gangs last year identified 36 separate gangs with 1,355 members, about .34% of the city’s total population.

The 10 identified people linked to Tren de Aragua represent less than 1% of Aurora’s identified gang members, though Moylan said officers expect the number of documented Tren de Aragua members to grow as investigations into the gang continue.

“Every day we learn more about TdA, how it operates and how we can identify suspected members,” he said. “…It’s still too soon to try to quantify TdA’s presence in Aurora one way or the other.”

Aurora police have “investigated numerous claims and allegations” about gang members collecting rent from residents at the properties, but “have not yet established probable cause or made any arrests,” Moylan said.

Moylan declined to comment on how many criminal acts connected to Tren de Aragua members are currently under investigation, citing the ongoing investigative work. He said the police department has been investigating the gang for a year and that the residents making complaints about the gang’s activity have largely been migrants who live in the buildings.

Aurora police have publicly tied just one crime this summer to the Tren de Aragua gang: a July 28 shooting in which two men were shot and a third broke his ankle at the apartment building at 1568 Nome St.

One of the suspects in that shooting, Jhonardy Jose Pacheco-Chirinos, 22, is a known Tren de Aragua member, police said in a statement last month. He was arrested after the shooting and charged with assault with a deadly weapon.

On Wednesday, Aurora police confirmed they also arrested Pacheco-Chirinos’ brother, 24-year-old Jhonnarty Dejesus Pacheco-Chirinos, on attempted-murder charges on July 29. Both are documented gang members and remain in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody.

Aurora police also arrested two other possible Tren de Aragua gang members on charges of tampering with evidence in connection with the July 28 shooting. “These two have gang ties and are suspected to be members of TdA,” police said.

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Right-wing social media influencers and citizen journalists seized on video shared by Denver’s Fox31 television station showing armed men at an Aurora apartment complex, often adding their own captions and commentary, as it made the rounds on TikTok, X and Facebook.

Even former President Donald Trump weighed in during a podcast interview, repeating unverified claims that gangs were taking over big buildings with “big rifles” in the city.

Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman appeared on national TV and posted about the Venezuelan gang on his Facebook page, contradicting his police chief about the severity of the situation, and saying the city was preparing to go to court to get a judge’s order to clear out the apartment complexes where the Tren de Aragua gang operates. However, city staff on Tuesday said that is not the immediate plan.

Aurora and Denver police have publicly acknowledged there are Tren de Aragua gang members in their cities, but they say the gang’s numbers are not large and they operate in isolated areas. Others say the Tren de Aragua presence in Aurora, a city of nearly 400,000 people, has been overhyped.

“Those stories are really overblown. If you didn’t live here, you would swear we were being taken over by a gang and Aurora was under siege,” Aurora City Councilwoman Stephanie Hancock said Tuesday. “That’s simply not true.”

Aurora officials over the Labor Day weekend contradicted each other on the scope of the problem and the city’s responses to it.

Coffman claimed on Facebook that five apartment buildings along Dallas Street are “associated with gang activity,” and told Fox News that “several buildings” under the same ownership “have fallen to these Venezuelan gangs,” repeating claims made by property management company CBZ Management that the apartments fell into disarray because of gang activity.

Coffman did not return a request for comment Tuesday.

Aurora Councilwoman Danielle Jurinsky, who has been most outspoken about the gang’s presence in the city, also did not return a call from The Denver Post seeking comment Tuesday.

The mayor’s claim of a gang takeover is disputed by other city officials, who say the longstanding disarray and poor conditions at the apartment buildings were the fault of poor oversight by CBZ Management — not because of criminal acts by Tren de Aragua members.

“There’s this hysteria that we apparently have a gang problem, but what we have is a slumlord problem in the city of Aurora,” City Councilwoman Alison Coombs said.

Aurora interim police Chief Heather Morris said in a video Friday that residents are not paying rent to gang members.

“I’m not saying there’s not gang members that live in this community,” she said in the video, taken at the Edge at Lowry apartments at Dallas Street and 12th Avenue, where officers were talking with residents.

“We’ve really made an effort these last few days to ask the specific questions and direct questions in terms of the gang activity and… making sure that people aren’t paying rent to gang leaders, gang members. That’s not happening. And we’ve discovered here today and yesterday, talking with so many residents, that that is not the case.” she said. “…We’re standing out here, and I can tell you that gang members have not taken over this apartment complex.”

“We don’t feel threatened by gangs”

Dozens of residents who gathered in the courtyard at the Edge at Lowry apartments Tuesday afternoon said they have not been threatened by — or even interacted with — gang members.

“They say there are gangs and criminals, but the only criminal here is the owner,” resident Moises Didenot told a crowd of reporters.

The residents demanded city leaders hold the “slumlord” building owners accountable for untenable living conditions, including rodents and bedbugs. Didenot held up adhesive mouse traps with three dead mice stuck to them.

Aurora officials have disputed the property manager’s claims that issues at the apartment buildings are due to gangs, instead citing poor upkeep that has resulted in repeated code violations.

Tenants on Tuesday said they were more afraid of the hatred sparked by news coverage.

“We don’t feel threatened by gangs,” said resident Gladis Tovar.

Multiple people interviewed by The Post, including the two City Council members, specifically referenced the Fox31 report about gangs at the Edge at Lowry complex — featuring the video of armed men in the building — as elevating the national attention on the story.

On Aug. 28, Fox31 reporter Vicente Arenas, who had been reporting on problems at the complex, posted to social media a video that shows six men, one of whom was holding a rifle and four of whom were carrying pistols, knock on a door and go inside an apartment.

Since the footage was first posted on the news station’s website and X accounts, Fox31 says its network partners have confirmed with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that the men were affiliated with the Tren de Aragua gang. Efforts to reach the Fox31 news director Sean McNamara were unsuccessful Tuesday.

On Friday, Coffman wrote in a Facebook post that the city was preparing to seek an emergency court order declaring additional buildings a criminal nuisance — a tactic the city used before evicting 85 families from a building at 1568 Nome St. earlier this year. But city officials denied that Tuesday.

Aurora representatives are planning to meet with the property managers and owners before taking any official action in court, and an emergency court order is “one of several considerations at this time,” city spokesman Michael Brannen said.

“The state law is clear when it comes to a property owner’s responsibility when it comes to addressing health hazards and code violations at the apartment buildings they own,” he said in a statement. “We will continue to aggressively pursue a resolution in order to address the poor conditions impacting residents.”

A decrease in crime in Aurora this year

Venezuelan migrants have been arriving in metro Denver as they flee political upheaval, a poor economy and a humanitarian crisis. So far, an estimated 42,700 migrants have come through Denver since January 2023, according to a tracker on the city’s website, although many have moved to other parts of the country to be closer to family and friends.

While some claim the Venezuelan gang is bringing danger to the city, crime in Aurora has declined in 2024 compared to 2023, statistics published by the city show. Overall reported crime dropped 20% in the first eight months of the year when compared to the first eight months of 2023, the statistics show. The city saw declines in homicides, robberies and aggravated assaults.

Aurora police did not answer questions Tuesday about whether they have identified any instances of Tren de Aragua members collecting rent from Aurora residents, how many people have been identified as Tren de Aragua members in the city, or how many criminal acts have been connected to the gang.

Aurora city officials have publicly tied just one crime this summer to the Tren de Aragua gang: a July 28 shooting in which two men were shot and a third broke his ankle at the apartment building at 1568 Nome St.

One of the suspects in that shooting, Jhonardy Jose Pacheco-Chirinos, 22, is a known Tren de Aragua member, police said in a statement Thursday. Pacheco-Chirinos, who uses the alias “Galleta,”  was charged with assault with a deadly weapon in connection to that attack.

Pacheco-Chirinos was also charged with aggravated assault after an incident at the apartment complex in November, Aurora police said.

Across the metro area, Tren de Aragua gang members have been arrested in two other incidents this summer: a jewelry store robbery in Denver and an enforcement action by the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office.

The sheriff’s office on Aug. 21 arrested six people during a routine policing effort near South Quebec Street and High Line Smith Way — a slice of county land sandwiched between Aurora and Denver, spokesman John Bartmann said. Four of those arrestees were later found to be Tren de Aragua members, he said.

“We weren’t looking for them,” Bartmann said, adding that deputies found some drugs and recovered a stolen vehicle during the “proactive” policing effort. He was not able to identify the four arrestees or say Tuesday what charges they faced.

Denver police spokesman Doug Schepman said many people on social media were conflating Denver and Aurora in a “misleading” way. He said officers have no evidence that Tren de Aragua members are targeting Denver apartment complexes for “takeovers.”

Jon Ewing, a spokesman for Denver Mayor Mike Johnston, said the national attention was “fanning ugly rhetoric” during an election year. The mayor’s office is concerned that immigrants who moved to Colorado to start a better life will be harmed. But the city is also working to stop the spread of Tren de Aragua.

“We can walk and chew gum at the same time and be concerned about both of those things,” Ewing said.

Hancock, the Ward 4 Aurora City Council member, said the city is working to build trust among new arrivals so they will report crime to police.

“Our immigrant population is being targeted by gangsters from their own communities,” she said. “They often don’t report for fear of retaliation.”

“The hardest thing is getting people to tell us these things are happening. We need to develop trust with our agencies and we need APD to develop a relationship with people who came here to seek a better life.”

Aurora leaders also are worried about how the national reports reflect upon the city’s reputation.

“It definitely makes it seem like our city is not safe, that it’s not a good place to live, not a good place to do business,” City Council member Coombs said. “It also makes it seem like our city staff and our police department are not trying to serve the public.”

Denver Post reporter Katie Langford contributed to this report. 

This story was updated at 10 a.m., Wednesday, Sept. 4 to correct the Aurora ward represented by Stephanie Hancock.

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The Colorado Bureau of Investigation DNA scientist made her way around the state laboratory in a walk-run, a signature forward-leaning gait. She handled two and three times as many cases as other analysts, worked the maximum 40 hours of overtime a month. Spent nights, weekends on the clock.

And for nearly 30 years, she reaped rewards: accolades and awards, high scores on performance evaluations, assignments to the state’s most high-profile criminal cases. She was the matriarch of CBI’s DNA lab, the go-to expert, an intimidating, entrenched force of a scientist who was frustrated with slower-paced colleagues, with people who insisted on following every little rule.

Former CBI Director John Camper called her an “all-star.”  One supervisor dubbed her a “workhorse.” She was one of the highest producers across the entire law enforcement agency.

And when her colleagues at the Arvada CBI lab raised red flags about the quality of her work, about how working fast had become working rushed, they were largely brushed off, considered complainers and pot stirrers.

“They say it is quality over quantity, but sometimes it doesn’t feel that way,” CBI DNA analyst Katrina Gomez told internal affairs investigators in December. “I don’t know if that was the fuel to her fire, right? ‘I keep getting accolades, I keep getting recognized because I keep pumping out cases.’ But then at what point does the system take a step back and say, ‘How is she doing so many?’ Or do they just turn a blind eye because they enjoy the fact she is doing so many cases?”

The Denver Post obtained more than 800 pages of CBI investigative documents and 10 hours of internal employee interviews that lay bare how Woods took advantage of the state lab’s focus on results and productivity — and professional trust between colleagues — to hide her widespread manipulation of DNA data.

She leveraged her high regard at work and intense personality to bypass protocols, cover up her alleged misconduct and dodge questions when colleagues raised concerns about her work in 2014 and again in 2018, the investigative materials show.

“I often wondered how she could be so efficient, and I had always asked her to help be a part of teaching the new scientists that we were hiring to be that efficient,” Jan Girten, now-retired deputy director of CBI Forensic Services, told internal affairs investigators. Woods always refused to help with training, she added.

“At the time I thought she just didn’t want to help, you know, not being a team player with management, even though she got frustrated at the slow ones, but now… I’m like, maybe she was jacking with us all along,” Girten told investigators. “And it’s just really sad. It’s really sad. It will blemish us.”

CBI leaders began to discover the full scope of Woods’ misconduct in late 2023. The agency found Woods cut corners in much of her DNA testing, then covered up her shortcuts by altering, deleting or omitting data from lab work. The agency has so far identified problems in 809 of Woods’ cases between 1994 and 2023, and state lawmakers set aside $7.5 million to remedy the wrongdoing.

Colorado’s criminal justice system is bracing for a slew of people challenging their criminal convictions based on Woods’ flawed work. Already, one man says he was wrongfully convicted of murder based on Woods’ faulty DNA testing, and prosecutors in Boulder said a triple murderer received a plea deal with a lighter sentence in part because of her misconduct. Woods’ flawed testing will seed doubt deep into Colorado’s criminal justice system for years to come.

Woods’ attorney, Ryan Brackley, did not comment for this story but in the past has maintained that Woods never created false DNA results or offered false testimony in court. CBI spokesman Rob Low declined to comment and, with the exception of Camper, everyone else named in this story either declined to comment or could not be reached for comment.

CBI officials last year quickly recognized the potentially massive ramifications of Woods’ misconduct and worked to protect their lab’s professional certification and the agency’s reputation, the material shows.

“God forbid we have someone in prison that shouldn’t be…” Assistant Director of Investigations Kellon Hassenstab told Woods in November. “We’re all crossing our fingers and toes that we don’t… because I don’t know how we would come back from that as an organization.”

A Friday afternoon confrontation

Late on a Friday afternoon in July 2018, CBI forensic scientist Kiffin Champlin reviewed Woods’ DNA work on a cold-case triple homicide.

Woods sat a few desks away, waiting for Champlin to finish so she could call the investigators before the weekend and tell them the 1984 “Hammer Killer” mystery was finally solved.

But Champlin found a problem: evidence of contamination in the sample, which should have required more testing — and more time — to address. And then she saw Woods had deleted data to make it appear as though the sample wasn’t contaminated, to eliminate the need for those additional steps.

“I was pissed,” Champlin told internal affairs investigators in November. “I was super angry… I’m like, that’s not an accident.”

She turned to her colleague, forensic scientist Jennifer Dahlberg, for a second opinion, and Dahlberg reacted with alarm.

“She’s done this before,” Dahlberg remembered saying. “And this needs to escalate now.”

Dahlberg had four years earlier, in 2014, reported a similar problem with Woods’ work to the lab’s DNA technical leader, Sarah Miller — the manager responsible for supervising the science side of the Arvada lab. At the time, Miller simply required Woods to fix the problem in that case, then moved on without further scrutiny.

That didn’t sit well with Dahlberg, who tried to distance herself from Woods in the following years. In January 2016, she met with two lab supervisors to go over a list of problems she perceived in the lab’s DNA testing and quality control.

The first line of her list reads: “Problem — Poor quality of work.”

Then, in bullet points: “Everything is rushed. People don’t take pride in their work.” “Everything is ‘good enough,’ not best practice.” ” ‘Hippie lab’ — everyone does what they want, too much analyst discretion.”

The list continues with seven specific examples of DNA analysts’ recent mistakes — including one by Woods — and ways the processes and training could be improved.

The managers blew her off, Dahlberg told investigators, and she was instructed to better her communication with Miller. Weeks later, Dahlberg voluntarily took a demotion and a pay cut to stop handling DNA for CBI, instead focusing her work on blood testing.

She hoped the problem she saw in Woods’ work in 2014 was a one-time issue. But when Champlin turned to her on that Friday afternoon in 2018, that hope was dashed.

“I truly hoped that if it was on purpose she would have stopped, but then at that moment I knew she hadn’t,” Dahlberg said during a December interview with internal affairs investigators.

When Champlin confronted Woods about the deletion in the triple-homicide case, the senior DNA analyst looked back at her “like a deer in the headlights,” Champlin told investigators. Woods didn’t say much. Silence and obfuscation were her go-to responses to confrontations about the quality of her work over the years, the internal materials show.

Champlin cried on the drive home out of frustration and anger, and spent that weekend screwing up the courage to report the incident to the lab’s higher-ups, vowing not to let Woods “commandeer her” before she could do so.

On Monday morning, Champlin went straight to Miller and Aaron Koning, CBI’s assistant director of quality for Forensic Services, and detailed the issue. She suggested a procedural change to ensure Woods couldn’t make similar deletions going forward.

She told another supervisor that Woods “should never touch evidence again,” but she didn’t want to see Woods fired.

This time, the lab’s supervisors did take action. They interviewed Woods about the deleted data. She said she wasn’t sure how it had happened, and that she was overwhelmed at work, handling too much and feeling burned out.

They removed Woods from casework and reviewed everything she’d done so far that year, about six months of DNA testing. Several people in the lab felt at the time that the data deletion couldn’t be an accident, but Miller — the sole person responsible for reviewing Woods’ prior work — was not convinced.

“Because I knew Missy for so long, I didn’t think that she intentionally did anything,” Miller told internal affairs investigators. “…I trusted what she was saying, in that it was a mistake and that’s how it was. She didn’t have a history of lying to us by any means. I wouldn’t have expected that. And it was such a weird thing that I’d never seen before. In talking with other managers it was like, ‘What is this? It must have been a fluke situation.’ ”

Miller found no other deletions in her review of Woods’ work, which she estimated took a few days. The lab’s supervisors sent Woods to counseling and stopped her from working overtime. After about three months, Woods returned to casework in November 2018. She started working overtime again in December 2018.

The way the inquiry was resolved suggested to others in Forensic Services that supervisors suspected Woods deleted the data on purpose, Lance Allen, deputy director of Forensic Services in Grand Junction, told internal affairs investigators in February.

“I mean if it wasn’t intentional, why didn’t we just fix the process and not send her to counseling?” he said. “It felt like they knew it was likely intentional. She wouldn’t say it, but they felt it likely was. But it was a one-time thing. It was caught, it was not characteristic, (so) we’re gonna address it this way.”

Miller later said she didn’t make the procedural change that Champlin put forward because it seemed like an “overreaction.”

“Keeping that data, it seemed like something that we’d never needed to do before, never thought about doing, because we trust each other’s work,” she said. “And we follow the (standard operating procedures), and the SOPs say take that data and put it into here to work off of. It was like, ‘Oh, is this an overreaction to do a lot more work when it just didn’t seem necessary.’ ”

Champlin, who’d gone on maternity leave shortly after reporting the 2018 deletion, returned to find Woods back at work just as before.

“I just felt that no one believed me before, and I felt almost targeted a little bit as a pain in the butt, someone who is stirring the pot,” she told investigators. “I was pissed, super pissed.”

Right back on casework

Woods took the return to work as a stamp of approval.

“I figured CBI Forensic Services had investigated me, and then they put me right back on casework,” she told Hassenstab during her internal affairs interview in November. “So I’m thinking, ‘Oh, OK, well, I must not have done anything.’ ”

“I would just flip that,” Hassenstab responded. “I would say, ‘I just got away with this.’ ”

“Yeah,” Woods said.

Content warning: This audio clip includes an expletive

When the two-and-a-half-hour interview ended, Woods awkwardly joked with the investigators that she’d worn orange that day in case she had “to go to the penitentiary,” so she’d know how she looked in that color. A criminal investigation is ongoing but she has not been charged.

The 2018 review was the closest CBI came to discovering Woods’ misconduct before the 2023 revelations, but it wasn’t the sole incident that caused concern among her colleagues in the lab.

Woods regularly avoided the formal workflow for making corrections to her work, the internal affairs investigation found. CBI’s DNA analysts can make changes to their cases up to a certain point, and after that must ask an employee with higher-level clearance to make changes through a formal process.

At least once or twice a week, Woods went to one particular person with that higher-level clearance, forensic scientist Marko Kokotovic, and asked him to make changes for her without doing that formal documentation. He had “complete trust” in her and regularly agreed to do so, he told investigators in December.

“Honestly she was always very resistant to (the formal process),” Kokotovic said. “I would ask her to do it. She was always giving me a hard time of, ‘It’s so stupid, it’s just a little deletion, why waste all this time doing a correction when it just takes two seconds to delete this.’ It was pretty much always a time thing… She was a little bit more on the intimidating side. And she was always getting so much done that I didn’t want to hinder her progress, in a sense. So I was like, ‘You’re right, I’ll just do it for ya’ and it’s this tidy thing, moving on.”

Woods and other DNA analysts also manipulated the technical review process — what is supposed to be a random process in which analysts review each other’s work for accuracy — to ensure that their allies at work got their reviews, the internal affairs investigators found.

Champlin told investigators she purposely avoided reviewing Woods’ work after the 2018 incident. And some of the top performers in the lab would pass their work back and forth among each other for technical reviews, Miller said.

“You have your friends, and your friends don’t question or argue,” Miller said. “The technical review process can be very argumentative between analysts, where one person thinks it is this kind of sample and the other person thinks it’s this. There can be a lot of arguing. When you are doing it with your buddy, who kind of has the same thinking as you do, you don’t have as many problems, as much fighting over the data.”

Woods’ reputation in the lab and her personality might have helped push her work through the technical review process with less scrutiny, she added.

“She had a very strong personality and a lot of experience, and we all really looked up to her,” Miller said. “And she’s not an easy person to challenge. Some things could have gone away because, honestly, cognitive bias could have been involved — thinking you trust what she is doing, she knows what she is doing, she’s been doing this for 20 years — and, ‘It’s OK, what I am reviewing, I am signing off on it.’ ”

Miller defended her 2018 review as aimed at catching Woods’ mistakes — not carefully hidden misconduct and data manipulation.

Purposeful misconduct like that is much harder to identify, Allen said.

“A quality system does a great job of catching unintentional errors and mistakes,” he said. “A quality system will never be able to always catch the intentional, malicious, deceitful acts of someone trying to hide things.”

Anger and accreditation

An intern at CBI stumbled onto the problems with Woods’ work in September 2023 while going through large amounts of data for a Loveland nurse’s proposed research project on whether the law enforcement agency should regularly start testing additional material in sexual assault cases.

It was routine data entry — until data was missing in one of Woods’ cases.

The intern alerted a supervisor, who alerted her supervisor, who investigated. The team quickly found additional examples of missing data and discovered the deletions were limited to Woods’ cases, not other analysts, the material shows. An initial review showed a wider pattern of deleted data across at least 30 of Woods’ cases.

CBI officials put Woods on leave nine days after the intern flagged the first case.

The agency’s leaders immediately recognized the severity of the problem, internal affairs records show.

“You can literally be the person whose work brings down CBI Forensic Services, and I’m not even exaggerating that,” Hassenstab told Woods in November.

“This is devastating for the agency,” Girten, the retired deputy director of Forensic Services, told investigators. “All these cases are going to come back to us, and they’ll get thrown out. … It’s going to wreak havoc on the criminal justice community in Colorado.”

CBI alerted its forensic services accreditation agency, the ANSI National Accreditation Board, to the situation on Nov. 3, saying Woods’ conduct called into question her integrity. The letter included more detail than CBI provided to the public three days later when it announced the investigation in a press release.

The agency has since provided monthly reports on the ongoing effort to fix the problems to the accreditation board, the materials show. A spokeswoman for the accreditation board did not return a request for comment on CBI’s standing.

Camper, who served as CBI’s director from 2018 to February 2023, told The Post in an interview last week — and internal affairs investigators in February — that he would have opened an investigation had anyone raised concerns about Woods’ work that went beyond an employee struggling with “personal issues” who needed to take time off.

“We certainly weren’t shy about opening up investigations for misconduct, and we opened up investigations for a hell of a lot less than that,” he told The Post. “If serious issues like that had been brought to our attention, by all means we would have investigated it thoroughly.”

He called Woods’ actions “extremely disappointing, extremely discouraging,” and said there was clearly a breakdown within CBI in how her case was handled.

“I think any employer wants personnel issues and performance issues to be handled at the lowest possible level — but that said, if there was that sense of frustration that things weren’t being addressed or taken seriously, then that is obviously something that CBI is going to have to ensure doesn’t take place in the future,” he said.

By the end of June, CBI had spent $59,000 of the $3 million it received in state funding to retest DNA samples that Woods handled, said Low, the spokesman. The agency is also administering $4.4 million to reimburse district attorney’s offices for work on wrongful conviction claims due to Woods’ work. So far only $1,900 of that money has been claimed, Low said, by the First Judicial District Attorney’s Office.

During the internal affairs investigation, Woods’ colleagues reacted to her conduct with anger, betrayal and bewilderment, their interviews show.

All recognized the long-reaching impact of her misconduct in Colorado criminal justice.

“Before… I would have said she was a good analyst, maybe not the most thorough,” Gomez said. “I would have said she cares about the case and the people associated with the case. But after learning the extent to which she altered her data, I have no words. …We sign a code of ethics, a code of conduct every year. These are people’s lives — you’re a public servant, you’re supposed to be doing your best to help these people. So I don’t understand how she thought it was OK to do what she did.”

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Incidents of officers using profanity, insults, threats and inappropriate language dropped by 57% among 220 Aurora police officers during a six-month span from July to December, according to an executive summary from researchers at the University of South Carolina and Clemson University that was obtained by The Denver Post on Thursday.

The first-ever empirical results showing the AI software’s impact come months after Aurora stopped using the system. The city opted not to renew its deal with AI company Truleo in March, when its one-year, $250,000 contract ended for the automated body-worn footage review service.

The police department began using Truleo during the tenure of interim chief Art Acevedo, who had previously worked as a strategic advisor for Truleo but said he disinvested from the company before joining Aurora’s police force. He at the time hailed it a “tool to help us identify the good, the bad and the ugly.”

At most police agencies, including Aurora’s, the vast majority of body-worn camera footage is never reviewed — departments simply do not have the staffing to regularly look through officers’ day-to-day footage. Truleo’s software automates that review process, using AI to analyze the videos’ audio for language the software considers either professional or unprofessional.

The software is designed to flag poor behavior and highlight good policing. It doesn’t account for an officer’s tone or consider the use of force, but is focused solely on the words an officer says.

After Acevedo’s departure in January, the city opted not to renew its contract with Truleo, bringing the technological oversight to an end.

“We had concerns about its functionality, is my understanding,” city spokesman Ryan Luby said, citing problems with the accuracy of the software’s transcriptions. He declined to comment further Thursday.

Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman and a spokeswoman for Aurora police did not immediately comment.

The city’s newest police chief, Todd Chamberlain, declined to say whether he’d bring back any similar AI body-worn camera monitoring during a news conference last week, but said he embraces the use of emerging technologies in policing.

“I am going to look for the most effective, efficient ways to use technology to enhance the Aurora Police Department’s commitment and service to the community we serve, and I never will shy away from that,” he said.

Truleo CEO Anthony Tassone said Thursday he’d like to see Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser mandate that the software be used at the Aurora Police Department, which is currently under court-ordered oversight and reform after Weiser found a pattern of racially biased policing in the troubled agency.

“In Aurora, it’s not going to work for Truleo to contract directly with the department, a one-year contract,” he said. “We see what happens. A chief leaves, and all of our work gets thrown out of the window. We would be willing to go back into Aurora, but it’s got to be with the attorney general. And with a long-term mindset.”

The independent study into Truleo’s impact at the Aurora Police Department examined 124,443 videos from body-worn cameras and divided Aurora’s officers into three groups: a control group of officers who did not receive feedback from Truleo; a self-auditing group of officers who could review their Truleo metrics on their own; and a supervisor-mediated group of officers who received feedback about their Truleo findings from their supervisors.

The system varies across departments, but, generally, officers can log into Truleo and see their own videos, professionalism scores and transcripts. The system sends congratulatory emails to officers who score well for professionalism and composure, and alerts supervisors to unprofessional incidents, Tassone said.

Incidents of unprofessionalism dropped by 48% in the self-auditing group and by 67% in the supervisor-mediated group, when compared to baseline rates, the executive summary states. The document does not say whether the control group changed.

The summary outlines the study’s initial findings; the work has yet to go through the additional vetting of the peer review process and full results have not been published.

Researcher Ian Adams, an assistant professor at the University of South Carolina, on Thursday praised the Aurora Police Department for opening up to the study of the brand-new AI technology. He emphasized that the executive summary shows preliminary results.

“It’s not easy to be at the cutting edge of this sort of thing,” Adams said. “This is the first time it has been tested empirically and carefully. That is a vulnerable place for agencies to be. And it shows they want some change, or at least did during our time there.”

The researchers looked not only at Truleo in Aurora, but also examined how the AI software impacted 180 officers in the Richland County Sheriff’s Department in South Carolina. There, researchers saw an 82% increase in highly professional behavior over a six-month span, according to the executive summary. The summary did not describe changes in unprofessionalism in that department.

Highly professional behavior is defined as interactions in which officers not only use appropriate language but also offer explanations to members of the public about the officers’ actions before acting, like before frisking a suspect or issuing a citation, Adams said.

Tassone, the company’s CEO, on Thursday hailed the executive summary as “absolutely conclusive proof” that reviewing all body-worn camera footage improves professionalism at police departments.

“This study is two opposite departments, one in a consent decree and one that is a very squared away, super professional, first-class sheriff’s department,” Tassone said. “Truleo benefits both.”

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Lawayne Mosley, 54, pleaded guilty to felony assault on a police officer and driving under the influence. Charges of careless driving and possessing a gun while drunk were dismissed, according to court records.

He will be sentenced on Oct. 28 in Arapahoe County District Court.

Mosley was stopped by a Colorado state trooper on Jan. 20 after another driver reported that he was weaving and not maintaining his speed while driving on Interstate 70 just before 5:30 p.m. Mosley had already pulled off the highway and into a gas station in Adams County when the trooper contacted him, the agency said.

Mosley didn’t follow a trooper’s instructions to get out of the vehicle, and when the trooper “began to assist” him out of the car, Mosley assaulted the trooper, the state patrol said.

An Adams County sheriff’s deputy who arrived at the scene used a Taser on Mosley, who was then treated for injuries caused by the Taser. He suffered no other injuries in the arrest.

Mosley identified himself as McClain’s father during the arrest. Mosley’s son was 23 years old and had committed no crime when Aurora police officers violently and wrongly arrested him in 2019. The officers put McClain in a neck hold and an Aurora paramedic injected him with an overdose of the sedative ketamine, leading to McClain’s death.

Three first responders were convicted of crimes in McClain’s death, including two paramedics and a then-Aurora police officer. The case led to court-ordered oversight and reform of the Aurora police department and statewide reform to limit the use of ketamine during police encounters. The city of Aurora paid $15 million to settle a civil rights lawsuit brought by McClain’s parents.

An attorney for Mosley did not immediately return a request for comment Tuesday.

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Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, 25, is charged with 10 counts of first-degree murder in the attack at the Table Mesa store, as well as more than 100 other charges.

He pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, meaning that his attorneys do not contest that he carried out the mass shooting but say he should not be held legally responsible because he was so mentally ill at the time of the killings that he could not tell right from wrong.

The trial will focus on Alissa’s mental state at the time of the attack, rather than whether or not he carried out the mass shooting.

Alissa’s attorneys argued in a hearing earlier this month that his comments to police officers in the chaotic moments after the killings should not be allowed as evidence in the jury trial because he had not been advised of his right to remain silent.

Boulder County District Court Chief Judge Ingrid Bakke ruled against the defense in an order last week, finding that Alissa’s comments were voluntary and not coerced by police officers.

Defense attorneys had also argued that jurors should not hear about Alissa’s long road to becoming competent to stand trial, and Bakke agreed, ruling that testimony about Alissa’s years of mental illness after the attack — his competency — do not factor into whether he was insane at the time of the attack. Jurors will not hear about Alissa’s competency treatment, Bakke ruled.

Those killed in the March 22, 2021, shooting: Denny Stong, 20; Neven Stanisic, 23; Rikki Olds, 25; Tralona Bartkowiak, 49; Teri Leiker, 51; Boulder police Officer Eric Talley, 51; Suzanne Fountain, 59; Kevin Mahoney, 61; Lynn Murray, 62; and Jody Waters, 65.

Jury selection is expected to last all week, with opening statements likely to come after Labor Day. The trial is expected to last three weeks.

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“Give me a chance,” Todd Chamberlain said. “Let’s partner, let’s collaborate. Let’s work together. I’m here for the long haul.”

The 61-year-old Los Angeles Police Department veteran made the appeal after he was selected to be the city’s sixth police chief in five years through a hiring process that happened entirely behind closed doors and with no public input — a departure from past chief selections and an approach both he and City Manager Jason Batchelor defended during a news conference Thursday at the Aurora Municipal Center.

“I think the question has to be, well, has the selection process worked in the past?” Chamberlain said. “And I’m gonna be very candid with you, I don’t think it has. You’ve had five chiefs in five years… but I know I’m here to commit. I’m here to say that I am part of the city of Aurora.”

The closed-door approach was criticized by Aurora community members, including state Sens. Rhonda Fields and Janet Buckner, both Aurora Democrats, who said in a joint statement Thursday that the city’s private hiring process “signals an unwillingness to learn from past mistakes.”

“Excluding community members and leaders from this important decision once again has missed a crucial opportunity to heal past traumas and build towards stronger collaboration between the community and law enforcement,” the statement said.

Batchelor called the city’s last attempt to hire a permanent police chief “a failed public process” and said he opted to select the city’s next chief in private in order to “provide the highest probability to find the best-qualified candidates,” noting that a non-public process allowed candidates to apply without jeopardizing their standing with their current police departments.

Chamberlain repeatedly said Thursday he wanted to interact with the community but did not give any specifics on how he would do that or whether he would hold any public meetings before Aurora’s City Council votes to confirm his hiring Monday. If he is confirmed by the council, Chamberlain will be sworn in Sept. 9, ending more than two years of interim leadership at the police department.

In wide-ranging comments during Thursday’s news conference, Chamberlain focused on the breadth of his prior experience in law enforcement, his commitment to stay in Aurora for the long term and the need to rebuild trust both between officers and leadership within the police department and between officers and community members.

“Aurora is now my home,” he said.

Chamberlain spent 34 years at the Los Angeles Police Department before retiring as a commander in 2018. He briefly worked as the police chief for the Los Angeles Unified School District but resigned after less than a year on the job over budget cuts, and was previously a finalist for chief jobs in Cincinnati; Little Rock, Arkansas; and Chattanooga, Tennessee.

While at the Los Angeles Police Department, he was named in a 2011 lawsuit — though not as a defendant — brought by a Black police officer who said he experienced racist pranks and harassment in his unit, including the presentation of a cake topped with fried chicken and watermelons to mark his 20th year of service at the police department.

The officer claimed Chamberlain knew about the harassment but failed to take action. A jury awarded the officer $1.2 million in 2013, court records show.

Chamberlain denied the officer’s characterization of events Thursday, saying he took over leadership of a unit that had a years-long pattern of inappropriate racist misconduct and within “two weeks” identified the problem and alerted a workplace evaluation team, then the department’s internal affairs investigators. Chamberlain also reassigned a sergeant who was responsible for much of the problem, he said.

“It was Black on Black officers, it was Hispanic on Black, it was Asian on Black, and then there were a couple of white officers that were involved in this as well,” he said. “Basically, it was a practice that this unit had been allowed to cultivate. I was there for two weeks. I saw this, I identified it.”

He said the experience of flagging and addressing that misconduct helped to prepare him to take similar action in Aurora, if needed.

“You have to have someone in charge who is willing to step forward and take those on,” he said. “And I’ll tell you, it’s not a pleasant experience. You’ve all probably been involved in workplace issues, or seen it, and know how it can basically eat away the core of not only that unit, but the whole organization. And I’m not going to accept that. If I find that here, I’m going to do the same thing.”

Aurora’s police department is undergoing court-ordered reform and oversight after Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser found a pattern of racist bias and excessive force among the city’s police officers that repeatedly violated state and federal law.

Weiser on Thursday called for the creation of an independent monitor position to continue outside oversight of the police department after the court oversight expires in 2027.

“It is clear to me that Aurora must have an independent police monitor in place when the consent decree expires,” Weiser said. “A permanent structure for independent review of the police department would help ensure that reform, accountability, and transparency continue, and that the city is responsive to community concerns.”

Batchelor said the city will include funding to re-establish an independent monitor in the 2026 budget. Chamberlain also said that he supports continued independent oversight.

“I believe in it, I think it’s an important aspect,” Chamberlain said. “It’s something that we should not ever shy away from. I think if you have an organization or department that is running properly, running ethically, doing all the right steps, that should be applauded. That should be seen. That should be very transparent.”

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Stephan Long, 26, was initially charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the June 13, 2023, killings, but said he acted in self-defense when he shot the two men after they rushed his car in stopped traffic.

Prosecutors dropped one of the first-degree murder charges against Long in October, saying they could not prove the charge in court — but the murder case continued for the second brother.

Prosecutors on Wednesday informed the brothers’ family members that they plan to drop the second murder charge as well, said their father, Arthur Lucas.

“This system has failed me,” he said. “I will not trust this justice system anymore.”

Denver District Attorney Beth McCann said in a statement Wednesday that “the evidence establishes a strong and valid self-defense claim” for Long, and she could not prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

“We will ask the court to dismiss the remaining charges against Mr. Long,” she said. “This was an extremely difficult and heart-wrenching decision but, ultimately, in my opinion, the correct one.”

The expected dismissal is a victory for Long’s supporters, who have railed against the criminal prosecution as racially biased and have said Long never should have been charged with the killings.

“This is the justice Stephan should’ve received from the very beginning,” said Alex Landau, co-director of the Denver Justice Project.

It’s a blow for the family of slain brothers Blake Lucas, 21, and Damon Lucas, 22, who say Long should be punished for killing two people.

“It really does come as a surprise,” Arthur Lucas said. “The whole time this hearing was going on I thought, ‘He’s going to walk, he’s going to get away with it. He’s not going to get anything.’ And when it actually happened, no matter what you tell yourself, you’re not ready for it.”

Long, who is Black, is accused of shooting and killing both brothers, who were white, on the interstate near the intersections with Sixth and Eighth avenues. Witnesses told police that Long, who was driving a red Ford Taurus, was tailgating a silver sedan driven by the brothers, and that the sedan then cut off the Taurus, according to prior court testimony.

When traffic came to a standstill, Blake Lucas got out of the passenger side of the silver sedan and went up to Long, who was in the driver’s seat of the Taurus. Blake Lucas then started punching at Long through the window, according to testimony.

Long shot the man. As Blake Lucas retreated after being shot, his brother, Damon Lucas, rushed at the Taurus and started hanging on the driver’s side window as Long drove away, according to testimony.

Long then shot Damon Lucas as well. Both brothers died. Long did not stop at the scene or call 911, but a police officer who happened to be nearby in an unmarked car followed Long’s Taurus until Long stopped near the intersection of Meade Street and 13th Avenue. He was then arrested.

Prosecutors last year dropped the murder charge in the killing of Blake Lucas, the brother who allegedly threw punches at Long. The dismissal came days after 11 Denver City Council members sent Denver District Attorney Beth McCann a letter expressing concerns about the prosecution.

Arthur Lucas said prosecutors told him Wednesday they “didn’t have enough evidence” to prove Damon’s killing was a murder. He said he understands how Blake Lucas’ killing could be considered self-defense, but not Damon Lucas’.

“He was just jumping on the car to stop the man from fleeing the scene, and he never laid hands on him,” Lucas said. “I don’t understand how that is not murder.”

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Aurora leaders plan to hire a former Los Angeles Police Department commander as the next chief of the Aurora Police Department, the sixth person in 5 years to take on leading the troubled agency.

Todd Chamberlain will be sworn in as chief of the Aurora Police Department on Sept. 9 if the City Council approves his hiring on Monday.

In a statement, Chamberlain said he was deeply honored to be selected as the department’s next chief and committed to serving the city, police personnel and community.

“I look forward to embracing the challenges and successes ahead, with a focus on fostering strong relationships, building trust and ensuring collaboration at every level,” Chamberlain said in the statement. “Together, we can make a lasting impact on the safety and well-being of our city.”

Chamberlain worked at the LAPD from 1984 to 2018, when he retired as a commander, Aurora city officials said in a news release.

He went on to serve as police chief for the Los Angeles Unified School District and was most recently a public safety consultant and a lecturer at California State University Los Angeles.

Chamberlain resigned from his job as police chief of the Los Angeles Unified School District in 2020 when the department’s budget was cut 35% — a reduction of $25 million, according to the Los Angeles Times. He’d been in the chief position there for less than a year. The budget cut required that 65 officers be laid off in the 471-employee department, the Times reported.

He was previously a finalist for chief jobs in Cincinnati; Little Rock, Arkansas; and Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Chamberlain has not worked in law enforcement since 2020, but the gap doesn’t worry Marc Sears, president of the Aurora Fraternal Order of Police union.

“As a commander in LAPD, the guy had roughly 1,800 men below him that he was commanding,” he said. “That is larger than any police department in the state of Colorado, and that was just the district he had. So I am very confident he has the capability to effectively lead this organization.”

Sears said he met with Chamberlain a few weeks ago and spent some time talking to people who had worked with him in the past.

“I heard he was very matter-of-fact, very stoic, chill, laid-back kind of a guy, but also very authoritative and not afraid to make a decision,” he said.

He joked with Chamberlain about how long his tenure as Aurora police chief might be, Sears said. The police department has seen five chiefs in five years as a cascade of temporary leaders took the helm only to quickly bow out.

Most recently, interim Chief Heather Morris declined to apply for the permanent position in July. Morris, a deputy chief, took the role in January after former interim Chief Art Acevedo resigned after 13 months on the job. Acevedo hired her in April 2023 after they previously worked together in Houston and Miami.

“I said, ‘Can you please not be here for just six months then leave?'” Sears said. “And he said, ‘I can promise you it won’t be just six months.’ ”

Instability in the police department’s top job is one of a series of challenges Aurora city leaders have faced in recent years.

The Aurora Police Department has faced continued fallout from the death of Elijah McClain after his wrongful arrest as well as a court-ordered reform effort after the Colorado Attorney General’s Office found the agency routinely conducted racially biased policing and used excessive force.

That context is what raises concerns for community organizer Candice Bailey, who said she’s concerned about an apparent lack of community involvement in selecting Chamberlain.

“This is something our community has talked about for five years as we’ve shuffled back and forth between interim chiefs and a lack of applicants,” Bailey said.

Bailey said she’s disappointed in City Manager Jason Batchelor for not upholding his commitment to community input and engagement and continuous transparency.

“I’m calling on the city manager to show us how the community was engaged in this decision, or was this decision once again made with no community engagement?” she said.

A city spokesperson referred questions about the hiring process to a news conference with Batchelor, Chamberlain and other city leaders scheduled for Thursday.

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