COLORADO
SPRINGS -- Seeking to block the release of records from an investigation into
charges of serious police misconduct, the city of Colorado Springs has filed a
lawsuit against the American Civil Liberties Union, announced the civil
liberties group today.
The ACLU believes the public is entitled to
know the results of the Colorado Springs Police Department’s internal
investigation of the brutal beating of an African American man, and what
discipline, if any, was imposed.
“People’s trust in the police is increased
when the police department can show they have conducted a thorough investigation
with integrity and held officers accountable,” said Mark Silverstein, Legal
Director of the ACLU of Colorado. “We live in a society that’s based on the
premise that the public has the right to look at government documents to see how
the government is conducting public business.”
The ACLU filed a routine
request for public records in the case of 26-year-old Delvikio Faulkner.
According to a police report, officers K.D. Hardy and Jackson Andrews stopped a
vehicle, in which Faulkner was a passenger, for not having a front license
plate. In the report, Andrews said that Hardy repeatedly used his metal
flashlight to brutally beat Faulkner, including three blows to his head. Andrews
said that Faulkner did not try to flee or fight the officers.
“This is not
only a case about alleged police brutality and grossly excessive and unjustified
force; it may also be an example of the most vicious kind of racial profiling,”
Silverstein said.
The Colorado Springs Police Department initially responded
to the ACLU request by saying that as a matter of policy it did not release
Internal Affairs Bureau documents under the open records laws. In an effort to
persuade officials to change their view, ACLU staff attorney Taylor Pendergrass
supplied a copy of an order issued in an ACLU case by Denver District Court
Judge Catherine Lemon in December.
Judge Lemon found that a similar policy of
the Denver Police Department violated Colorado’s open records laws. Similar
rulings in three cases in recent years held that the Denver Police Department
must release Internal Affairs Bureau files to the ACLU under the open records
laws.
Last January, Denver officials abandoned earlier intentions to appeal
and instead announced that they would revise their disclosure policies to
conform with Judge Lemon’s ruling.