Denver Protest Lawsuit Leaves Taxpayers With the Bill

The Denver Post, in a report by Katie Langford, says the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a ruling requiring Denver to pay $14 million to a group of George Floyd protesters injured during the 2020 demonstrations. The court agreed with the finding that Denver police and officers from other jurisdictions used unconstitutional force against 12 protesters between May 28 and June 2, 2020.

Langford reports that the injuries described in the case were serious. Protesters alleged harm ranging from tear gas inhalation and hearing loss from flash-bang grenades to being hit by rubber bullets and pepper balls. One protester, according to court records cited in the article, suffered a fractured skull and broken neck after being hit in the head with a lead-filled Kevlar bag. The appeals court also upheld a related ruling against a Denver officer for using excessive force against former state Rep. Elisabeth Epps, though the punitive damages there were reduced from $250,000 to $50,000.

The key legal point in the article is not just the injuries. It is that the appeals court upheld the jury’s conclusion that Denver inadequately trained its officers, and that failure helped cause the constitutional violations. The city argued there were errors in the trial and not enough evidence to support that theory. The court rejected those arguments and left the larger judgment intact.

The Bullet Point Brief

• The 10th Circuit upheld a $14 million judgment against Denver over police conduct during the 2020 George Floyd protests. That is not a slap on the wrist. That is taxpayers getting introduced to the invoice.
• The article says the court agreed officers used unconstitutional force against 12 protesters over several days in downtown Denver. Not subtle. Not isolated. Not the kind of thing judges tend to shrug off.
• Injuries in the case included tear gas exposure, hearing loss, impacts from rubber bullets and pepper balls, and in one instance a fractured skull and broken neck from a lead-filled Kevlar bag. This was not a dispute over hurt feelings and dramatic Instagram captions.
• Denver appealed, arguing trial errors and insufficient evidence, especially on the claim that poor training by the city caused the violations. The appeals court rejected that and specifically upheld the jury’s finding on inadequate training.
• The court also upheld liability against an individual Denver officer in the Elisabeth Epps case, though it cut punitive damages down to $50,000. So the city pays big, the officer pays some, and the public gets another reminder that bad policy and bad preparation are never cheap.

My Bottom Line

Is this not the most Colo-RAD-oh thing ever?

You can practically see the machine. Activist infrastructure mobilizes. Professional messaging appears on cue. Protest energy escalates. Law enforcement, already underpaid, undercut, and treated like a political chew toy by the same state that still expects order at the end of the night, gets thrown into the blender. Something goes sideways. Cameras roll. Then the legal cavalry arrives, often backed by the same nonprofit-industrial complex that somehow always finds both moral clarity and billable hours in the very same moment.

And who gets stuck with the cost? The taxpayer. Always the taxpayer. The city pays. The public pays. The narrative merchants collect another talking point. The activist class gets more fuel. The legal class gets fed. The legislature swoops in later with fresh “reforms,” usually written by or for the same ideological ecosystem that benefited from the last round. It is a lovely little Colorado carousel. Everybody on the inside gets a horse. The normie in the suburbs gets the tab.

That is the maddening part. Even when there is a legitimate wrong in the underlying case, Colorado’s political culture still manages to turn the aftermath into a self-licking ice cream cone of activism, litigation, taxpayer liability, and more anti-law-enforcement theater. Colo-RAD-oh at its finest. A place where the grift is polished, the outrage is branded, and the bill always finds its way to the public.

Source: The Denver Post