A Denver jury awarded six people collectively $20 million after a Denver Police officer accidentally shot them during a confrontation with a suspect in 2022 — it is among the biggest jury awards in the state’s history for police misconduct.
But the victims may never see a penny of it from the city of Denver.
It’s one of the first tests of a George Floyd-era state police reform law that attempted to hold cities and law enforcement officers financially accountable for egregious mistakes on the job — and lawyers are trying to outsmart it.
Reporting by Denverite and CPR News shows that the city of Denver paid $1 million for an attorney to represent Ramos. That attorney convinced the judge to excuse the city from any financial responsibility in the case.
The result is that, for now, only Ramos himself will be responsible for paying the settlement, making it much less likely that the plaintiffs will get the full sum.
City officials defended the move, saying they were just following the allowances of the law. But some of the plaintiffs and their attorneys say the city of Denver is defying the intent of police accountability laws.
