DENVER – A Denver sheriff’s deputy suspended for allegedly telling a mentally ill inmate on suicide watch to “just die” had his suspension overturned Friday by the Denver Career Service Board.

The mentally ill inmate was being housed in a special suicide cell that is designed to prevent suicide.

Read the hearing officer’s judgment in full by clicking here.

Denver Sheriff’s Deputy Ryan Bosveld had been suspended for 10 days for neglect of duty and failure to observe written departmental or agency regulations. He served his suspension beginning Sept. 21.

THE ORIGINAL INCIDENT THAT LED TO SUSPENSION

The discipline letter issued in September states a Denver Health jail nurse heard Bosveld tell the inmate on suicide watch to “just die.” The incident happened at the Downtown Denver Detention Center.

The nurse, Tamatha Anding, then wrote an email to her supervisors voicing concerns about his behavior. The subject line of the email said, “Need Direction Please.”

The nurse said after she heard Bosveld make the inappropriate comment he giggled and then turned to her and said, “that wasn’t very professional was it?”

When asked what the nurse thought of Bosveld’s comments she said, “I figured that probably wasn’t the safest thing to say to any of our suicidal patients. If they’re in the floor flush, there’s a reason and that we’re monitoring them closely.”

During Bosveld’s interview with the Internal Affairs Bureau, he said this comment “isn’t my personality. I wouldn’t have said that to the inmate.”

The letter states, “It is also more likely than not that Nurse TA’s version of events is more credible than that of Deputy Bosveld. Nurse TA via email, reported this incident to her supervisor three days after it occurred, after having witnessed another act of misconduct by Deputy Bosveld.”

Bosveld did admit to another incident he self-reported where he told an inmate, who was also in the medical unit, “I’d rather go f*** your mother.”

Deputy Bosveld’s behavior goes against new crisis intervention training all deputies are now required to go through.

The five-day, forty-hour course teaches deputies through role playing how to better deal with the mentally ill and deescalate situations without using force.

HEARING OFFICER OVERTURNS SUSPENSION

Career Service Hearing Officer Valerie McNaughton wrote in the appeal decision that there was “not enough evidence to prove or disprove whether this allegation occurred,” citing a report on the video of the alleged incident from a sheriff’s office investigator that found the deputy mentioned the comment off-hand, and not directly to the inmate.

She also decided that since Anding didn’t report the incident immediately that meant she did not believe Bosveld told the inmate to die either.

Denver Independent Monitor Nicholas Mitchell said the hearing officer’s decision was “troubling” in a statement to Denver7:

“The Director of Safety was right to suspend this deputy.  There is a burgeoning mental health crisis in our jails, and the current reforms of the Sheriff Department are intended to eliminate the mistreatment of vulnerable individuals,” he said. “The hearing officer’s decision is very troubling, and hinders those reforms.”

Daelene Mizx, a spokesperson with the Department of Safety, said the city plans to appeal the hearing officer’s decision.

“It is the Department of Safety’s view that applicable Denver Sheriff Department rules and regulation related to the facts and circumstances of this specific matter support the suspension given to Deputy Bosveld,” she said in a statement to Denver7. “As such, the Department has appealed the hearing officer’s decision to overturn the suspension to the Career Service Board.”

DOUGLAS COUNTY, Colo. – The husband of a Colorado state trooper hit and killed by a retired Army colonel who was driving drunk last November on I-25 near Castle Rock has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the colonel and the bar that served him.

Eric Henderson, 52, was sentenced in June to eight years in prison after he pleaded guilty to vehicular homicide and tampering with evidence in the crash that killed 33-year-old trooper Jaimie Jursevics.

She was investigating a minor crash with another trooper near Plum Creek Parkway in Castle Rock in November 2015 when she was informed by dispatchers about a possible drunk driver in a pickup truck headed toward her.

Jursevics called the driver who reported the suspected drunk driver. The caller was still following the driver and told Jursevics he could see the lights on her vehicle as they approached her, according to an affidavit detailing Henderson’s arrest.

“[The caller] could see the female trooper shining a flashlight toward the ground,” the affidavit stated.

The driver in the pickup, later identified as the retired colonel Henderson, did not stop and the caller reported seeing the trooper’s flashlight fly through the air.

The caller was still on the phone with Jursevics and heard her scream as she was hit by the oncoming truck.

Henderson kept driving and was arrested a few miles away.

“I killed a cop,” Henderson later told detectives through tears, according to the affidavit. Prosecutors said he spent the day drinking at a Broncos game.

The lawsuit, which was filed by lawyers Oct. 25 in Douglas County District Court on behalf of Jursevics’ husband, Didzis, and daughter, Morgan, seeks both monetary and non-monetary damages, including lost future wages and “other contributions of pecuniary value” the trooper would have made to her husband and daughter.

The suit also implicates Brooklyn’s Bar, which it alleges served Henderson though he was “visibly intoxicated” and had difficulty standing. The suit says Brooklyn’s “may be held civilly liable for the death of Trooper Jursevics.”

Henderson retired from the Army in June 2013 after a 27-year career and was the chief of operations for the Space and Missile Defense Command in his final post.

The next hearing date on the suit has yet to be set. Read previous stories about the case here.