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Police bomb turns Colorado Springs neighborhood…
Police bomb turns Colorado Springs neighborhood feud over broken tree branch into federal legal battle
Appeals court says government immunity protects cops from liability in the case
Ronald Dwayne Brown, supplied
This photo shows damage done to the Colorado Springs home of Ronald Dwayne Brown by the Colorado Springs Police Department's bomb squad on May 30, 2012.
This photo shows injuries to Ronald Dwayne Brown by the Colorado Springs Police Department's bomb squad on May 30, 2012.
By Kirk Mitchell | kmitchell@denverpost.com | The Denver Post
PUBLISHED: October 11, 2017 at 1:13 p.m. | UPDATED: November 17, 2017 at 1:33 p.m.
A fierce neighborhood conflict that exploded after a 13-year-old boy swung on a tree branch outside a Colorado Springs townhome until the limb snapped shows no sign of ending five years later.
Neighbors menaced each other with baseball bats. The aggrieved tree owner, Ronald Dwayne Brown, fired a gun. Colorado Springs police deployed a robot to breach Brown's front door. Police blew a hole into the floor of Brown's home and inadvertently broke his leg.
It's unclear how long the fight that began on May 27, 2012, will last.
But on Tuesday, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that former Colorado Springs Police Chief Peter Careyand 15 other sergeants, lieutenants, officers, SWAT team members, bomb technicians and emergency negotiators could not be sued as individuals because of qualified immunity.
The appeals court reversed a district court decision that had denied summary judgment on individual-liability claims filed against the 10 police defendants, but remanded the case back to district court for further proceedings on certain "official-capacity" claims.
Brown's attorneys could not be reached for comment.
According to appeals court documents released Tuesday, this what happened:
At around 6:30 p.m. on that fateful spring evening, boy was swinging from a tree limb outside 4854 Rusty Nail Point when it broke. Brown came out of his townhome wielding a baseball bat, chased the teen and threatened to kill him. The boy ran into his neighboring townhome and told his mother and her boyfriend. The adults confronted Brown with their own bats.
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After an argument that lasted a few minutes, Brown, a 20-year Army veteran, pulled out a revolver and fired it into the ground. He threatened to shoot the mother and her boyfriend. They retreated and someone called police. Brown denies he threatened to kill anyone.
Fifteen minutes later, police arrived and spent 30 minutes yelling at Brown to come out of his home. No one answered the door. Police left several messages on Brown's cellular phone. Brown eventually replied in a text message that "they let their destructive brats run unsupervised. When you call them on it, you're a racist, white devil. I'm not getting ripped off…I feared for my life."
Police became increasingly wary of Brown when a neighbor said Brown suffers Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, was heavily armed and would occasionally go into "war mode" and predicted that if police broke into his home there would be a "bloodbath."
The next day on May 28, police had Brown's mother communicate with her son, and learned he had begun drinking heavily. She texted her son later that day, asking him to surrender. He replied that he could not live with his neighbors intimidating him.
Brown's friend Brian Sheridan told police that Brown was a recluse who lived in the basement. Brown had gas masks, survival food and supplies and guns. Brown sent him a message, that said "SOUTO," which means "see you on the other side."
Police sent two negotiators around 6 p.m. after deploying SWAT team members. Police evacuated surrounding townhomes. About an hour later, police fired tear gas into the main level of the home and used a car in an attempt to break a metal grate and break a window. The attempt failed.
At 7:38 p.m. they breached the front door with a robot and using the robot's speaker to order Brown to surrender. The robot — armed with a claw — broke into the garage.
Later that night, Fort Carson Army officers sent another robot to Brown's home. At 11:55 p.m. police detonated an explosive on the main-level floor hoping to lower a camera into the basement. Although police believed Brown would be in a back basement room, away from the blast, he was directly below the robot.
The debris from the blast landed on Brown, broke his leg and caused shrapnel wounds. Brown was wearing a helmet, a gas mask, a Kevlar vest and ear plugs. Brown spent 12 to 14 days in the hospital's intensive-care unit.
Brown entered a guilty plea to felony menacing and misdemeanor failure or refusal to leave his property. He then sued the city and the officers accusing officers of excessive force.
"There was no lawful reason to use this level of force because there was no imminent threat to the health or safety of anyone," the lawsuit filed in May 2014 by Colorado Springs attorneys Shimon Kohn, Ann Kaufman and Phil Winegar.
But the 10th Circuit ruled Tuesday that Colorado Springs officials were protected from individual claims.
"Brown cannot show any Supreme Court or Tenth Circuit decision on point or that the clearly established weight of authority from other circuits prohibited the officers' conduct in this case," the 10th Circuit Court ruled on Tuesday.
10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
Kirk Mitchell | Breaking News
Kirk Mitchell is a general assignment reporter at The Denver Post who focuses on criminal justice stories. He began working at the newspaper in 1998, after writing for newspapers in Mesa, Ariz., and Twin Falls, Idaho, and The Associated Press in Salt Lake City. Mitchell first started writing the Cold Case blog in Fall 2007, in part because Colorado has more than 1,400 unsolved homicides.
kmitchell@denverpost.com
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