The former Rangely police officer who fatally shot a man in December 2018 and the town’s ex-police chief are alleging the sheriff of Rio Blanco County interfered in a post-shooting investigation that resulted in their terminations.

Last week, the county and Sheriff Anthony Mazzola asked a federal judge to dismiss the lawsuit from Roy Kinney and Vincent Wilczek, saying Mazzola did not violate their rights when he allegedly “inserted himself” into an interagency review of the Rangely officers’ actions.

 “Defendant Mazzola is not constitutionally prohibited from providing another investigative body with information potentially pertinent to their investigation; and, in no way does Defendants Mazzola’s provision of relevant information to a law enforcement entity indicate a violation of Plaintiffs’ rights,” wrote lawyers Sean J. Lane and Alex M. Pass in an Aug. 5 legal filing.

Wilczek, the town’s former police chief, and Kinney, an officer for 32 years who was a lieutenant at the time, say they were forced to resign on May 1, 2019, nearly five months after Kinney shot 58-year-old Daniel Pierce.

The shooting was the subject of a 2019 investigation from The Colorado Independent and The Rio Blanco Herald Times. The reporting examined how Pierce led all three of Rangely’s police officers and a sheriff’s deputy on a car chase, which resulted in Kinney shooting Pierce in the head.

Pierce suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, and Kinney was aware of his delusions. When Pierce stole a truck with a rifle on the front seat, law enforcement rammed the vehicle inside the town limits until the officers were able to corner Pierce. Wilczek yelled that he would shoot out the tires, but Kinney did not hear him. Kinney, upon hearing gunshots, thought Pierce had fired. He shot Pierce twice in the head.

Rangely officials released no information about the killing and deterred The Herald Times from reporting the story. The joint investigation detailed the conflict between Wilczek and Mazzola, with the sheriff worried about the department’s recklessness after Kinney previously fired shots into the air in the presence of civilians and a deputy.

District Attorney Jefferson J. Cheney declined to bring criminal charges against any of the officers for Pierce’s death, based on the findings of a Critical Incident Team that involved the Colorado Bureau of Investigation.

According to the lawsuit filed on April 30, there was a second review from an Administrative Investigation Team, featuring personnel from a neighboring judicial district. The second inquiry focused on whether Wilczek and Kinney followed the Rangely Police Department’s procedures, and it was here that Mazzola, allegedly “acting outside the scope of his employment, but in the capacity as Sheriff of Rio Blanco County, provided false character information about Plaintiffs.”

“I honestly believe that they were trying to get us torn down so the sheriff could take over,” Kinney told The Independent and The Herald Times.

Wilczek and Kinney claimed the information from Mazzola – the nature of which went unaddressed in their federal complaint – directly influenced the team’s findings. Among other legal claims, they asserted a violation of the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment, which protects against religious expression. (The county argued the former officers were misapplying the constitutional clause.)

Prior to the motion to dismiss, Wilczek and Kinney attempted to disqualify the attorneys representing the Rio Blanco County Board of County Commissioners and Mazzola. U.S. District Court Judge R. Brooke Jackson  rejected the request, calling it a “litigation tactic.” He then scolded the officers’ lawyer for suing both the board of county commissioners and Rio Blanco County itself – a non-suable entity.

“Plaintiffs have also displayed a poor understanding of the relationship of a county to its board of county commissioners,” Jackson wrote in an August 3 order.

The ex-officers’ attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The lawsuit asks for monetary damages, including back pay, for Wilczek and Kinney.

The joint media investigation noted that both rural western Colorado’s mental health services and training for police on how to respond to people in crisis were inadequate at the time of Pierce’s killing.

The case is Wilczek et al. v. Rio Blanco County et al