WALNUT CREEK — A police officer who once won his department’s “Top Cop” award was nearly fired in 2017 for losing and misfiling evidence in 35 criminal cases and often lying about his actions, records released late Friday show.

In cases spanning 2015 and 2016, Walnut Creek Officer Curtis Borman made misleading or false statements in 31 police reports, lost a bag of Vicodin pills during an arrest but told a superior officer he threw the drugs away, and failed repeatedly to book photos and videos into evidence or turned them in weeks late, records show.

“In all there are 35 cases where evidence was either not booked at all, or was not booked until requested to do so by a records or property technician,” an investigator wrote in a report that was part of 800 pages police released late Friday.

Walnut Creek police had released a summary of the investigation into Borman last month after the officer’s union lost a court fight to keep the records secret despite the state’s new police transparency law, SB 1421. The summary did not include any information on the drugs or the number of cases involved.

It was not immediately clear how the problems Borman created impacted the arrests he was involved in. A spokesman for Contra Costa District Attorney Diana Becton said records could not be checked until Monday at the earliest. County Public Defender Robin Lipetzky did not respond to a message.

Neither Borman nor Walnut Creek Police Chief Thomas Chaplin could be reached for comment. In 2017, as Borman faced firing recommended by internal affairs investigators, Chaplin decided to instead place him on a “last chance” program to save his job. He was also suspended for a month without pay.

Chaplin, in a letter to Borman, wrote he made that decision because he didn’t think Borman was intentionally dishonest, had positive work evaluations and once won the department’s “Top Cop” award.

Walnut Creek’s detailed disclosure of its investigation into Borman came two days after Contra Costa Sheriff David Livingston told this news organization he refused to search what he called hundreds of internal affairs reports from 2014 to 2018 that could be releasable under SB 1421, which make previously secret dishonesty cases, such as Borman’s, public.

Livingston has taken the same position with others asking for five years of records, which until this year had been secret, claiming a search for records is unreasonable and would create too much work. No other law enforcement agency in Northern California, including ones with many more cops, has made a similar argument concerning the new law.

The new law also mandates release of sexual assault cases involving officers, as well as violence that results in great bodily injury or death, and any time an officer fires a weapon in the line of duty.

The investigation of Borman was released because he was dishonest in both written reports and answers to questions.

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Louisville, Ky., braces for Breonna Taylor announcement During one arrest, Borman found “several syringes, glass methamphetamine pipes, a small amount of suspected liquid heroin, and a bag of Vicodin pills.” His “initial police report did not mention the Vicodin,” an investigator wrote in a report.

A sergeant noticed that Borman omitted the Vicodin from his report. Borman then “amended the report, indicating that (he) had disposed of the narcotics.”

When the sergeant told him the pills needed to be booked into evidence and told him to recover them, Borman “eventually admitted that (he) never disposed of the narcotics, but instead left them at the scene of the arrest, perhaps with one of the vehicle passengers who was not arrested.”

Staff writer Nate Gartrell and Sukey Lewis of KQED News contributed to this report.

This story was produced as part of the California Reporting Project, a collaboration of more than 30 newsrooms across the state to obtain and report on police misconduct and serious use-of-force records unsealed in 2019.