The City of Aurora will pay a $110,000 settlement to a man who was unlawfully detained and tasered.
The ACLU obtained Aurora Police Department body camera footage showing the encounter in February 2016.
Officers were responding to an apartment complex at 1445 Dallas Street after a report of a man pointing a gun at a 6-year-old child.
Reports show Darsean Kelley was talking with his cousin Izear Brown when officers arrived.
A body-worn camera shows an officer responding and Kelley yelling at police asking why he was being detained before the tasing.
The officers arrested Kelley and charged him with disorderly conduct. Those charges were later dropped.
ACLU lawyers later filed a lawsuit on Kelley’s behalf, saying the officers violated his 4th Amendment rights.
Aurora’s city attorney sent CBS4 this statement on Friday: “We disagree with the ACLU’s characterization of the events. This case was settled for the reason many cases are settled to avoid the cost of prolonged litigation.”
What a classic example of what happens when you comply with the police, and what happens when you don’t…people need to stop this BS of demanding that the police comply with them during the time of the contact…the young man in the dark t-shirt did exactly what he was told to do and went home that night without having been tased…the other young man in the white t-shirt ended up crying while proned out on the sidewalk…so simple…
For anyone of you non-LEO’s, I agree these men have their Rights, but that doesn’t mean the Right to debate during a fluid scene when the cops reasonably believe there may be a weapon present (the reason for the officers to be there was that someone reported a male was pointing a gun at a six year old…I know it sounds goofy, but stranger things have happened and it is incumbent on the officers to at least investigate) …”officer safety” is not a curse word and we all have the Right to be safe and to protect ourselves, regardless of the career we choose…If you noticed, AFTER THE SCENE WAS SECURED, the officer DID advise the white shirt what was going on…all the other nonsense could’ve been avoided had the white shirted male just C-O-M-P-L-I-E-D…it ain’t that hard…
And $110,000? Chump change in today’s society where municipalities have accounts (and/or insurance companies) set up to pay off these kinds of claims, but the unfortunate thing here is that money SHOULD HAVE gone to something a lot more useful than paying this guy who took the issue to the point of him being tased…the other unfortunate aspect of this is that some will try to use that pay out as some sort of “proof” that the officers were wrong, negligent, bullies, or whatever other inappropriate adjective they can conjure up…let me tell you emphatically that these officers did what they were paid to do and it was unfortunate that white shirt decided to be non-compliant…
The officers had the duty and Right (Terry-v-Ohio, 1968) to do what they did and it’s unfortunate that it has become more financially prudent to pay out these kinds of claims instead of telling the person who refused to obey lawful orders by police officers to pound sand…politicians and lawyers have made you and me less safe with their decisions and actions and the rising crime rates, especially person crimes, is the proof of that…Rudy GIULIANI where are you when we need you?
Stay Safe!!
Our society is not a prison, and our front lawns are not an exercise yard. The citizens are not inmates. We do not have get on the ground, our faces planted into dogshit, at command of CO. All to often this compliance is demeaning and insulting. Obey, comply, or die rule is to be resisted with all reasonable measures.
You are wrong as a matter of law and sound practice. The correct expression is “comply or be forced”. It is not “comply or die”; the actual use of lethal force by LE in the US rare, and far less common than it should be. The settlement was stupid, bordering on malpractice, as it encourages more frivolous litigation. Dropping the criminal case was also dumb, as that took the Humphrey defense off the table – I’m not a fan of disorderly conduct charges for a lot of reasons, and this should have been whatever Colorado uses for obstructing LE in the course of their duties.
Legal: You’re wasting your time explaining anything to this poser…he says he works in the Provost Marshals Office, yet he continually calls for violent over throw of local government…hard to believe he works for any government agency…
It’s your time to waste, but this basement dweller has no interest in anything other than spouting hate and discontent…
For me I’d rather watch paint dry…
I stand behind my post supporting the on scene officers and expressing my disgust at the politicians and lawyers who are making this country less safe with every poor decision they make…
Stay Safe!!
You are largely correct, but one of the problems I have perceived, both directly and in research and conversations with friends and colleagues across the country is that LE has done a horrible job of communicating the truth of use of force, so the largest volume of (dis)information out there is from the crazies and other apologists for the criminally feral. We are really unlikely to get them to accept and speak the truth, but a large percentage of people who are uninformed might actually see that the issue is not what is presented to them.
100% agree on all counts…I, too, try whenever possible to educate the masses and 99.9% are receptive…there are always dissenters who just don’t get it, most of them don’t WANT to get it and just spew hate…as you mentioned previously, not much you can do about them…in this case, numerous attempts have been made by several posters (including the Lt. on several occasions) which is why I say you’re wasting your time…I won’t even engage in any communications with he/she/it any more because there’s no point to it…I have no time for extremists, regardless of their “cause”…
Stay Safe Legal, and keep fighting the good fight!
Obstruction is active resistance. Non-compliance is passive .
Forcing compliance , when faced with passive resistance , is what prison guards, and slave drivers do. Taser being the whip of 21 Century. If we don’t resist such enforcement, then we don’t have right to call ourselves free people.
You are wrong as a matter of law (both Constitutional and statutory) and ethics. SCOTUS: “The risk of harm to both the police and the occupants is minimized if the officers routinely exercise unquestioned command of the situation.” Michigan v. Summers, 452 U.S. 692, 702-703 (1981). This is true in any non-consensual encounter. Brendlin v. California, 551 U.S. 249, 258 (2007)(citations omitted). What constitutes “obstruction” will vary by the wording of the statutes of any given state. However, I am not aware of any statute that would require an “act” in order to constitute such a crime; certainly not in any state with which I am familiar.
You are also wrong as a matter of officer safety. See, for example, http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2017/politics/state/kyle-dinkheller-police-video/. Not just seconds, but portions of seconds, kill, and cops don’t have the luxury of dawdling. If yo resist, you won’t be free – you’ll be arrested. The law is clear that you must comply, then complain – the remedy is in the courtroom, not the street. (And before some lackwit refers to this as being a police state, in a police state one would not have the courtroom remedy.)
That kind of compliance, only makes since when LEO is trustworthy. In RW, as matter of course ,many are not, or marginal. NC State government study concluded that up to 20-25% of active officers are psychologically unfit for duty. So it is not surprising some of the atrocities coming to light. Roadside strip and body cavity searches , in public. Digital penetration of female genitalia, in searching for drugs, during stops. A rape, sexual assault at least conducted by LEO’s .They they plead innocence, and claim misunderstanding of policies. Questionable warrants use for trully appalling body violations with assistance of medical personell. Systematic abuse of civil asset forfeiture, tantamount to highway robbery. All committed by LEOs on duty. How can you demand compliance, a submittal to such treatment? What if your wife , your daughter, your mother, was violated by a cop in this matter? Screw justice, I would want blood. Sorry, but until trust and REAL accountability is restored and cops are slammed for such acts, unquestioned compliance is a betrayal of our oath as citizens.
One would have to cite to the actual study and show that it was valid before it was worthy of consideration, and also what criteria were used to call them unfit. The mere fact that successful LE personnel do not pass a psychological test that has not been validated for the conflict seeking nature of the profession (I am not aware of any such exam, and a friend with a graduate education in such who served as a CO for a while was horrified at the reliance on such tests, as she knew they were not valid for the purpose).
I am aware of the conduct of (FEMALE) Texas troopers such as you described; it was without a question criminal and they should have gone to prison. However, those are very rare incidents, and in any given population of people, you will find some percentage of the unacceptable – friends with military backgrounds in various branches have described such; I’ve seen them in my time as a truck driver, lawyer, and cop. I am not speaking of such things – and you are referring to things that are not lawful arrest or Terry stop practices.
Warrants are not judicial permission, but a judicial command to take action. The place to contest a warrant is not in the street, but in a courtroom in a suppression hearing. If the judge made a determination of probable cause based on LE misconduct, the sanctions for that officer can be and usually are staggering. Been involved in such. As for civil forfeiture, that is also a process subject to legal review, and with a LONG history in common law going back to well before colonial times, as a response to various criminal conduct in England. I have seen reports of such misconduct, and it is appalling, but like what you say about warrants for cavity searches, it is also not relevant to the issue here.
“he place to contest a warrant is not in the street, but in a courtroom in a suppression hearing.”. Now how does that work in the real world, in practice. Take your average DUI checkpoint on Saturday night. Cops standing by , with warrants in hand, or judges on standby. A citizen takes a stand, the warrant is issued, citizen is detained, arrested, his car confiscated, all without opportunity to have a suppression hearing. The suppression hearing would be after the fact, after the citizen is under arrest, in jail, after forced tissue samples taken, after his vehicle(his PROPERTY) is impounded. In short after the damage is done. Even if DUI blood test comes back negative.
The poor guy, even if he was known mule, who was probed, cavity searched, had multiple revolting body violations done to him, because of a defective warrant. In his case there was no discipline handed out to detectives. Only the doctor, who followed their ‘orders’, under false belief that he would face arrest , if he did not perform medical procedures on suspect, was disciplined (read that as fired). The detectives lied to the suspect, lied to the doctor to force compliance, and probably lied to judge. Even then erroneously enforced the warrant in wrong jurisdiction, after it ran out.
Police lie. They lie to suspects, lie to justice system officials, lie to citizens. Even , when caught, they (YOU) lie to each other. You are a cowardly profession, staffed by cowardly careerists.
The POS officer of Minneapolis PD, who shot a lady, who called the MPD about possible sexual assault, his thoughts, days after the shooting, was that he was being thrown under the bus, by MPD. Not a thought, not a single black band among MPD, for the dead victim. Yes , a portion of the population despises the police. In my opinion , fairly and squarely.
Look at the incident at Charlottesberg, VA. Look at the footage where the neo-nazi suspect rammed his car into protesters, then reversed and drove backwards. Not a single uniform in sight. No plainclothes officers attempted to neutralize the suspect, if they were even there. No units were in camera’s view, and it panned. Yet the chief later stated that officers were standing by. Somewhere. No doubt they practiced officer safety. I think we are better off with our LEOs staying home.
Warrants are issued only by judges, and require an affidavit or declaration (which is also a sworn statement)in support of the warrant. They are issued only on probable cause. Not cooperating with SFSTs and other street investigative techniques is not a basis for issuance of a warrant to draw blood. Any fabrication of the basis for such is a career ender, as a rule; I have been involved in cases of such nature. FWIW, the biggest turds in the LE punchbowl are at the top – look at Tulsa and the complete lack of moral courage there; I deal regularly with troopers of our state agency who are excellent, but they work for some of the most consistently disgusting and corrupt command and executive level officers I have seen. (And yes, I have made that clear to them – enough so that the Chief, a nice man with no qualifications at all for the job, called me at home to grouse.) BTW, a warrant is not judicial permission to make people unhappy – it is a judicial command – a court order.
You are working off of rumors, folklore, and a very few cases in which renegades do bad things. Cops are drawn from the same population as everyone else, and no matter how good the effort to weed out the turds, some will get by. The same is true of lawyers (and I have met and dealt with a lot more dirty lawyers by percentage and numbers than I have dirty cops; I have spent several hours of my spare time over the last few days helping a friend with an amicus brief for a man prosecuted and convicted as a result of substantial misconduct by federal prosecutors, who are overwhelmingly the most corrupt and incompetent, and I will be spending a few days out of town next month with a few others working on a case in which plaintiff’s counsel is lying and has continued to lie, KNOWING that his assertions are false and not even supported by his own witnesses); truck drivers (BTDT), plumbers, and all other groups.
Minneapolis: We simply do not know enough about the facts to come to a conclusion. There are things that don’t make sense to me; that bother me, whatever – but the rush to judgment in that case is similar to the same rush displayed in many other cases subsequently shown to be completely without merit.
Go read “Mich. Dep’t of State Police v. Sitz”, 496 U.S. 444 (1990) for a real discussion of the legal standard as to checkpoints. I admittedly don’t deal with the issue much, so it did not come to mind, even though I am familiar with the case.
http://m.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Corley-deputies-indicted-in-roadside-body-cavity-8335146.php
This is what compliance brings. False arrest, bodily violation, public degradation and humiliation. Now how can any citizen NOT view those deputies as anything other then an enemy and a threat.