By Judi Villa
Rocky Mountain News
DENVER — These are the stories that make headlines:
* A video shows a Denver police officer slamming the face of a handcuffed bicyclist into the pavement.
* A cell phone captures another Denver police officer shoving a woman backwards, breaking her wrist.
* Another officer is accused of jumping up and down on the back of a 16-year-old as he lay in an alley, begging for his life.
In the last year, two Denver police officers have been charged with assault, stemming from accusations of on-duty brutality.
Today, the city is expected to shell out $10,000 to Trudy Trout, who was shoved to the ground after celebrating a friend’s 50th birthday at a comedy club a year ago. Her attorney says officers lied about the incident in reports.
Although it’s easy to identify a handful of high-profile use-of-force incidents, determining whether that translates to widespread brutality is far more difficult. In fact, complaints of “unnecessary force” were down 13.6 percent in Denver last year.
Andrew Reid, a civil rights lawyer in Denver, said allegations of brutality are the result of failures in training and supervision and a culture that rewards police officers with medals of valor when they are involved in fatal shootings.
“They have, in my opinion, a number of felons on the police force. They know it, and they refuse to address it,” he said.
Chief Gerry Whitman said it’s important to remember that there are “a lot of details to these situations” that are not made public, either because of personnel issues or because of an active investigation.
“You have to take into consideration that we handle hundreds of thousands of calls and last year we made 72,000 arrests,” he said. “We get very few complaints about how much force we use and about the conduct of the officers. That doesn’t mean we don’t take seriously the complaints that we do get, but by and large, the conduct of our officers is exemplary.”
Denver officials say the system in place to deal with rogue officers is effective.
In fact, two officers are facing assault charges. Officer Michael Cordova, 32, was charged in December with two counts of second-degree assault stemming from the arrest of John Heaney outside Coors Field last April. A video shows Heaney face down on the pavement when it appears Cordova pulled his head up by the hair and slammed his face into the ground.
Officer Charles Porter, a 12- year veteran, was charged in May with first-degree assault, accused of jumping up and down on the back of Juan Guillermo Vasquez, then 16, in April. Vasquez received an $885,000 settlement from the city.
In 2008, citizens lodged 195 allegations of “unnecessary force” against Denver police, according to the Office of the Independent Monitor, which investigates police use-of-force incidents. Another eight allegations came from inside the Denver Police Department.
Numbers aren’t yet available on how many of those allegations were sustained, but it’s likely not many. In 2007, there were 235 allegations of “unnecessary force.” Only one was sustained.
Use-of-force allegations are “traditionally extraordinarily hard to prove,” particularly if there isn’t a video or statements from officers who object to a colleague’s conduct, said Richard Rosenthal, the city’s independent monitor.
“Officers are given an enormous amount of discretion in the amount of force that they use, which is really required,” Rosenthal said.
Geoff Alpert, a professor of criminology at the University of South Carolina and a nationally recognized expert on police use- of-force issues, said incidents like the one involving Heaney, who was handcuffed, are simply “bad policing.”
“There’s no excuse for using force on a controlled suspect,” Alpert said. “That’s excessive when that happens.”
Determining if a department has a serious use of force problem is much more murky. To do that, Alpert said, police departments need to ask themselves some tough questions.
Are officers responding to more violence? Is the abuse alleged against a particular suspect or group of suspects? Is it happening in a particular area? Does it involve a particular group of officers? Is there a reason for the force?
In Denver, Rosenthal said, police have one of the best early warning systems, which, among other things, tracks officer activity, complaints and commendations. The prosecutions of Cordova and Potter indicate the police department is taking appropriate action when cases come to light, he said.
“Things like this will happen in a large urban department. The issue then becomes how does the department deal with it and if they deal with it, well, you’re in good shape,” Rosenthal said.
Copyright 2009 Rocky Mountain News