Jury Awards $14 Million To Anti-Police Brutality Protesters Who Were Brutalized By Colorado Police Officers

Cops who thought they could just be cops and that would be enough to let them get way with excessive force deployment and other misconduct have just received a rude awakening. The public — which includes very carefully selected jury members — is sick of law enforcement’s shit.

A federal jury Friday awarded $14 million in compensatory and punitive damages to 12 people who were injured by Denver police officers while protesting the death of George Floyd in 2020, according to court documents.

After deliberating for nearly five hours, the jury decided that Denver police response during protests in May and June 2020 violated these protesters’ constitutional rights, the documents show.

The City and County of Denver was a defendant in the lawsuit along with Jonathan Christian, a police officer during the 2020 protests.

Officer Christian may end up being indemnified by the city, but the message sent by the jury is clear: reacting violently to protesters reacting to police violence will not be considered acceptable behavior by members of the public asked to perform this civic duty.

The jury had no disagreement as to whether the city and its police department were responsible for the violent acts alleged in the lawsuit. The lawsuit’s allegations apparently made it clear the PD violated rights during its response to protests and that it had the city’s explicit blessing to do so. The only issue debated by the jury was how much each protester was owed.

After three weeks of trial, all eight jurors who awarded $14 million to protesters injured during the 2020 George Floyd protests in Denver agreed without debate that the city was at fault for its police officers’ actions, according to one of the jurors in the room.

“There was no disagreement that what Denver did was awful,” said the juror, who described the deliberations to The Denver Post on condition of anonymity because she feared being harassed by people unhappy about the verdict.

The five hours the jury spent Friday deliberating instead focused on exactly how much money to award each of the 12 plaintiffs and evaluating the actions of the sole officer named as a defendant in the case, she said.

The breakdown per litigant can be found in the jury decision [PDF]. At minimum, the jury awarded $750,000. Other protesters are due $3 million each.

The city and the named police officer will definitely appeal this decision, as well as the awarded damages. And it’s undoubtedly true some of these awards will be reduced, if not reversed. But the initial decision is a powerful rebuke of agencies and officers who greet mass criticism with violence, intimidation, and a refusal to accept the statement being made by protesters: unfettered law enforcement violence — especially violence that targets minorities — is no longer acceptable.