Jakob Rodgers, The Gazette

A Colorado Springs police dispatcher was at the center of six internal affairs investigations over her six-and-a-half-year career, including one quashed by a former deputy chief against the advice of others in the agency, documents show.

The dispatcher, 28-year-old Kayla Hogan, has been arrested three times over alcohol issues since she was hired by the department in 2005, spurring the bulk of the internal probes.

The Gazette obtained details of three of the investigations through the Colorado Open Records Act, revealing department concerns over how some of the cases were handled.

One investigation appears to have been stopped prematurely. Another report chides the dispatcher’s supervisor for failing to instigate an internal investigation.

The most recent investigation began in June, when Hogan was arrested on suspicion of motor vehicle theft. Police say Hogan was drunk in late June when she tried stealing a hot dog vendor’s truck. Reports say Hogan claimed to be pursuing a wanted felon.

A Tuesday status conference is scheduled in that case.

Police declined to comment on disciplinary actions for earlier cases, but summaries of each case offered details of what investigators found.

Hogan wasn’t disciplined by the department after her first conviction of driving under the influence in 2005, the documents show. Her performance evaluation that year never mentioned the DUI.

The arrest came nearly six months after she began working as a dispatcher.

Hogan told her immediate supervisor of the conviction, but not about a stipulation in her deferred sentence barring her from drinking alcohol.

According to internal affairs documents, Hogan continued to drink despite the court ordered ban, sparking another internal investigation ordered by Deputy Chief Pete Carey and approved by Chief Richard Myers.

On March 11, she met co-workers at the Ritz Grill, 15 S. Tejon St., downing eight or nine shots, she told investigators.

Sometime that evening, Hogan’s co-workers called an on-duty officer to help her leave.

Witnesses that night said she had “a bit much” to drink, according to the internal affairs review. The officer that arrived said she was “trashed” and “highly intoxicated,” the report said.

After beginning an investigation into the incident, detectives concluded that a policy violation had occurred, a report said.

But despite their initial findings, former deputy chief Steve Liebowitz ordered the inquiry stopped, the report said.

At the time, Liebowitz made the decision because “it was a personal issue and that he didn’t know if we wanted to get involved with it,” according to the reports.

He also said that Hogan’s actions “did not bring discredit to the department” and that “no one knew she was a department member.”

A human resources director in the department told Liebowitz she was “concerned that we were not holding civilians to the same high standards as officers when it came to alcohol use.”

The deputy chief wasn’t swayed, the report said.

In an interview, Liebowitz said he stopped the inquiry because he didn’t think there were any policy violations to investigate. He said supervisors didn’t know Hogan was barred by court order from drinking alcohol.

“The information I was given was that she was off duty; it’s not against he law to be intoxicated and if an officer was giving her a ride home, that was something that was not a policy violation at that time,” Liebowitz said. “Based on that limited information that we had at the time, there was nothing to investigate.”

On April 2008, the department opened another internal investigation into Hogan’s alcohol use – this time after her second DUI arrest.

Police said Hogan was found unconscious behind the wheel of a vehicle at a Village Inn restaurant. Police didn’t disclose whether disciplinary actions were taken.

Leibowitz declined to comment on the results of that investigation, citing privacy concerns.

He retired in August 2009 after more than 30 years in the department.

Hogan, however, remains on paid administrative leave after her most recent arrest, said Sgt. Steve Noblitt, police spokesman.

Liebowitz said he was saddened to hear of her most recent arrest. The two communicated with text messages in late 2007 and 2008, according to an internal affairs document.

He is good friends with Hogan’s father, retired Sgt. Tim Hogan, and he once offered to write a letter of recommendation for the woman, Liebowitz said.

“It’s a stand-up department, it really is,” Liebowitz said. “Anytime you’ve a department with about 1,000 employees you’re going to have things that happen from time to time.”

Copyright © 2011 LexisNexis, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All Rights Reserved.