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Law officer suspended after drinking, driving bust following party at sheriff's home

The sergeant attended a party at the home of Denver's sheriff before flipping his car in rural Adams County.

DENVER — A Denver Sheriff Department sergeant is set to begin serving a 14-day suspension on Sunday – the fallout from his conviction of drinking and driving after a birthday party at the home of a top city law enforcement official, 9Wants to Know has learned.

Sgt. Jerry Sherrod has been with the department since 2006 and had no prior discipline.

According to records obtained by 9Wants to Know, Sherrod attended a party at the home of Denver Sheriff Elias Diggins on April 9.

Daria Serna, a spokeswoman for the Sheriff Department, said that Diggins recused himself from the case and directed further questions to the Denver Department of Public Safety. A message left there Thursday afternoon was not immediately answered.

Sherrod told internal investigators that he went to the party at Diggins’ home and had three whiskeys but also ate food and drank water and thought that he “would be OK to drive.”

“I just really think that the drinks that I had just kind of snuck up on me,” Sherrod said, according to the documents.

After leaving Diggins’ home, Sherrod flipped his car in the area of East 26th Avenue and Watkins Road, north of Watkins in rural Adams County.

After he called the Colorado State Patrol, a trooper suspected he had been drinking and asked him to complete roadside tests.

“He did not complete them as a sober person would,” the trooper wrote, according to the records.

A test showed Sherrod had a blood-alcohol level of 0.134 – well above 0.08, the point at which a person is presumed intoxicated under Colorado law. He was originally charged with driving while under the influence of alcohol and pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of driving while ability impaired by alcohol.

Diggins told investigators that he saw Sherrod at the party, but “we had a lot of people there, so I wasn’t monitoring who was drinking and who wasn’t drinking.”

Contact 9Wants to Know investigator Kevin Vaughan with tips about this or any story: kevin.vaughan@9news.com or 303-871-1862.

Other stories by Kevin Vaughan:

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