Court Cases

This case raises the question of when, if ever, a victim of domestic violence who obtains a court order of protection can sue for damages caused by the failure of police officers who ignore repeated pleas to enforce that order.

The City of Colorado Springs had a long history of conducting “sweeps” of public parks and other public areas where the City’s homeless commonly slept, ostensibly for cleaning up the parks and discarding trash. In response to public reports that homeless persons’ private property was commonly seized and destroyed during these “sweeps,” the ACLU interviewed dozens of homeless individuals affected by the City’s policy.

This case, which names the Weld County sheriff and district attorney as defendants, challenges the validity of the search warrant and the subsequent search of tax records and asserts that Weld County officials violated the right of privacy of thousands of innocent taxpayers who were not suspected of any wrongdoing.

This lawsuit, filed against Denver Manager of Safety Al LaCabe and the City and County of Denver, seeks disclosure of the policy and procedure manual for the downtown city jail, known as the Pre-Arraignment Detention Facility or PADF. The Manager of Safety refused to produce the manual under Colorado open records laws based on the ground that disclosure would be “contrary to the public interest.”