Officer Arrested for Stalking Last Year Hired by Sheridan Police Department
Multiple other Sheridan officers are currently under internal investigation
Sheridan Police Department swore in Officer Evan Goudy on Monday, who comes with a history of previous internal affairs investigations about following an ex-girlfriend and a now dismissed stalking and harassment case that involved the same woman. This is at a time when multiple other current Sheridan Police officers have their own ongoing internal investigations.
Two years ago, Goudy resigned while under investigation from Loveland Police Department after he “continuously tried to contact his girlfriend after she clearly told him she did not wish to communicate with him,” according to the internal affairs file. It describes Goudy abandoning his work shift and driving his department vehicle to the ex-girlfriend, repeatedly trying to speak with her against her wishes.
Most recently, he left Hudson Police Department where he was charged with domestic violence-related stalking and harassment against that same woman in a now dismissed and sealed case. That affidavit describes Goudy as having emailed her through “spoof” email addresses asking to talk, having shown up “uninvited at her residence multiple times in previous months, of which some of the time he was intoxicated,” and following her around town in his truck.
Sheridan Police Chief Jeff Martinez emphasized to Blue Surveillance that the agency does thorough background checks on all potential hires, and knew of Goudy’s past internal affairs investigations and his dismissed stalking and harassment case.
He called the case concerning, but that the victim’s impact statement for it eased his mind, besides the case also being dismissed.
“If you look at the victim’s [impact] statement once it went to court, he would have been completely exonerated and probably should not have been arrested at all according to her statement,” Martinez said. “She said those things didn’t happen.”
A victim’s impact statement is a written or oral statement relating to the harm that the victim sustained as a result of the crime. Goudy’s case is sealed, so the related files — including this statement — are inaccessible to the public. Martinez, who has the statement, did not release it as he said it was part of Goudy’s personnel file, so Blue Surveillance could not verify his characterization of the victim’s words.
“I did not believe that he did anything that should have rose to the level that it did,” Martinez said about the case. “And, with that victim’s [impact] statement, in my mind, it completely exonerated him from that. That is what I made my decision on.”
He also pointed to Fort Lupton Police Department — who swore Goudy in a week ago, though he then quickly left to accept Sheridan’s job offer — as an example of another agency that believes Goudy “deserves to be hired.”
“I am comfortable with him serving,” Martinez said. “He has a fantastic work history and he does a fantastic job with the community...he deserves to be a police officer.”
Goudy’s hiring by Sheridan comes two months after Sheridan Police Officer Rodrigo Basurto — previously terminated for cause from Denver Police Department for suggesting officers shoot migrants for target practice in a group chat with other officers — accidentally fired his on-duty weapon through a table in the department office.
And, not a month later in July, now former Sheridan Police commander Joseph Connelly — who internally investigated Basurto’s accidental firing of his weapon — retired while under investigation due to a formal complaint filed against him. The details of that complaint were denied to Blue Surveillance by Sheridan Police due to it being an ongoing investigation.
