The jury of two men and six women, mostly white and from Colorado, returned its verdict after about four hours of consultation. The verdict followed three weeks of testimony and evidence that included videos of episodes by police and protesters. The participating lawyers believed it was the first trial in a lawsuit that challenged officers’s tactics during the 2020 protests that erupted across the nation over the murder of Floyd and other blacks by police. Protesters were shot or beaten by everything from pepper spray to a bag full of lead shot from a shotgun. Zach Packard, who was hit in the head by a shotgun and ended up in the intensive care unit, received the largest amount of damage – $ 3 million. One of the protesters’s lawyers, Timothy Macdonald, had urged jurors to send a message to police in Denver and elsewhere, holding the city accountable during the final hearings. “Let’s hope that what the police departments will get from this is a regular citizens jury to take these rights very seriously,” he said after the verdict. Elisabeth Epps, a lawyer and activist who was one of the protesters who sued, said that the lawyers of the city she loves hit the protesters during the trial, disputing their explanation for what happened. At one point, a Denver lawyer called her a “professional protester” after she testified that she had been involved in demonstrations since she was a child and had been trained on how to react in the face of tear gas. It was moving to talk about what it meant to be on the jury side with the protesters. “I feel like they see me,” Eps said. Protesters said that police actions violated the rights of freedom of speech and their rights of protection against irrational violence. The jury found violations of both rights for 11 of the protesters and only violations of freedom of speech for the others. The protesters claimed that Denver was responsible for the actions of the police through its policies, including giving officers wide discretion in using what police call “less lethal” devices, failing to train police officers in them and not demanded that they use their worn-out cameras during the protests to prevent indiscriminate use of force. During the trial, Denver admitted that mistakes were made in the demonstrations, which he said were unprecedented in the magnitude, duration and magnitude of the violence and destruction. More than 80 police were injured when protesters hurled stones, water bottles and canned food at them and the state Capitol, the center of the protests, suffered $ 1.1 million in damage, according to the city. The lawyers of the protesters who filed a lawsuit stressed that they were not accused of violence. One of Denver’s lawyers, Lindsay Jordan, told jurors that the city had scheduled a large crowd control training in the spring of 2020 due to the upcoming presidential election, but was canceled due to COVID-19. He emphasized that the mistakes made by officers during the protests were not automatically tantamount to constitutional violations, noting that thousands of people had returned to exercise their freedom of speech despite the use of force by police during the five days of protests. “The violence and destruction that took place around the community required intervention,” he said. Five Denver police officers have been disciplined for their actions during the protests, according to the department. Another officer, who was young and still under probation, was fired during the protests after he posted a photo of himself and others regularly dressed on social media with the comment “Let’s start a riot”. Officers’ aggressive responses to people protesting police violence nationwide have led to financial settlements, the departure of police chiefs and criminal prosecutions. In Austin, Texas, officials agreed to pay more than $ 13 million to people injured in protests in May 2020, and 19 police officers have been charged with actions against protesters. Last month, two Dallas police officers accused of injuring protesters after firing fewer deadly ammunitions were charged. However, in 2021, a federal judge dismissed most of allegations made by activists and civil liberties groups about the violent removal of protesters by police before then-President Donald Trump walked into a church near the White House for a photo.
