Court Cases

Today the ACLU of Colorado asked the Denver Police Department's Internal Affairs Bureau to re-open its investigation into two African-American citizens’ complaints of racial profiling arising from a traffic stop on February 13, 2009.

In this case, the ACLU asserts that the Denver Police Department (DPD) violated the Colorado Criminal Justice Records Act when it refused to disclose any documents from the file of its investigation of the African American clients’ complaints of racial profiling arising from a traffic stop in February 2009.

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 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.”

This lawsuit, filed under Colorado’s open records laws, seeks an order that Denver disclose records related to budgeting for and purchase of police equipment such as “less lethal” weapons dating back to January 2007, when Denver was selected as the host city for the 2008 Democratic National Convention.