Duel over database vote

Beauprez backed stiffer rules; Ritter camp questions memory

Lynn Bartels and M.E. Sprengelmeyer, Rocky Mountain News

Published October 23, 2006 at midnight

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GOP gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez voted in Congress to strengthen protections against abuse of a national crime database for non-law enforcement purposes.

But last week, Beauprez portrayed an "informant" who gave his campaign information - which critics say came from that database - as a heroic whistleblower.

Beauprez used the information in a TV ad to attack his Democratic rival, former Denver District Attorney Bill Ritter, over Ritter's plea-bargaining with immigrants charged with crimes.

In addition, The Denver Post reported last week that Beauprez said until the controversy over his ad erupted, he was unaware of the existence of the database, the National Crime Information Center, which is better known by its initials.

But the Ritter campaign pointed out Sunday that the NCIC has figured into key provisions of legislation Beauprez has either co-sponsored or supported in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Ritter's campaign blasted Beauprez.

"He's either not being completely truthful, or he's suffering from politically expedient amnesia," said Ritter's spokesman, Evan Dreyer. "We find this somewhat less than honest."

Beauprez's campaign manager, John Marshall, was asked about the earlier votes that the Ritter campaign uncovered.

Marshall said Ritter is the one who is being dishonest.

"He told the Rocky Mountain News in August that he did everything in his power to detain and deport illegal immigrants, and we find out later that he went out of his way to make sure they stayed here and avoided deportations," Marshall said.

Beauprez, a two-term congressman from Arvada, voted for a massive Department of Justice spending bill introduced in 2005, which included a provision to strengthen protections so the national crime database would not be abused .

The NCIC figured more prominently in several immigration, border security and crime measures that Beauprez supported or co-sponsored.

Almost all major pieces of immigration-related legislation have included provisions to require that immigration violations be added to the NCIC database.

The database became part of the campaign crossfire after Beauprez launched a series of ads accusing Ritter of using a little-known charge of farm trespass so immigrants initially charged with other crimes could avoid deportation.

One ad featured an illegal immigrant arrested on a heroin charge in Colorado in 2001 who received a plea bargain from Ritter, and then went on to be arrested in California under a different name on a lewd contact charge.

But the fact that that information couldn't be verified in public court records prompted inquiries to Beauprez's campaign as to where it got its facts.

"In federal criminal databases, the guy's information matches up," Marshall told 9News on Oct. 11.

That comment set off alarms in Ritter's campaign because federal criminal databases are off- limits to anyone but law enforcement and can be used only for law enforcement purposes.

Two days later, Marshall backed off, saying he had "deduced" that campaign researchers used a criminal database.

"I don't necessarily know exactly how they went about that," he said at the time.

Ritter successfully sought an investigation that began with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation and now has spread to the FBI.

A federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, Carl Vorhees, is the focus of the investigation. He has declined to comment.

Beauprez has not mentioned his informant by name, but in a news conference last week blasting Ritter, he described the source as a "conscientious" member of law enforcement who performed "a great act of public service by bringing this story to the public domain."

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