AURORA, CO — Seeking a bank robbery suspect with no description of the culprit, police barricaded an intersection, ordered dozens of people out of their cars at gunpoint, handcuffed every adult, and performed a warrantless search of all vehicles in the perimeter.
The incident occurred on June 2nd, 2012. New details are being revealed nearly 2 years later in joint federal lawsuit being filed on behalf of 14 people.
After a bank robber sped off with loot from the Wells Fargo Bank, police used a GPS tracking beacon, hidden inside the bag of stolen cash, to track down the location of the suspect to the nearest intersection. However, the police had no idea who they were looking for. There had been no description of the suspect or the vehicle.
“We didn’t have a description, didn’t know race or gender or anything, so a split-second decision was made to stop all the cars at that intersection, and search for the armed robber,” Aurora police officer Frank Fania said.
Police decided to treat everyone like a criminal. The intersection of E. Iliff Avenue and S. Buckley Road was shut down by a flurry of police cars swarming in at once.
The lawsuit alleges that police “immediately surrounded and barricaded all nineteen vehicles stopped at the red light at that intersection,” noting that officers “had no description of the vehicle in which the robber fled” and “could not even pinpoint from which vehicle the transmitter’s signal was emitted.”
“Cops came in from every direction and just threw their car in front of my car,” said Sonya Romero, one of those trapped by police, to KMGH-TV in Denver. “We didn’t know what the heck was going on. We didn’t know if were were in the line of fire, or what the hell was happening.”
“Nonetheless, the officers demanded that all vehicle occupants hold their arms up and outside of their vehicle windows,” the lawsuit states, adding that motorists were not even permitted to “shut off their vehicle’s ignition, put their vehicle in park, or lift their parking brakes.”
Those caught up in the dragnet were “detained, removed, searched, restrained — and terrified,” according to the lawsuit.
“They got behind shields. They had M-4′s, shotguns out; taser guns, everything,” said witness Ben Barker to ABC-7 News.
“They brandished shields and pointed assault rifles directly at innocent citizens, including children under ten years old. Officers with police dogs were at the ready. No one was free to leave,” the lawsuit says.
“Officers, weapons still drawn, proceeded to each vehicle,” the lawsuit states. Cops paid particular attention to those who appeared “overly nervous or anxious.”
The meticulous vehicle-to-vehicle search lasted 2 hours, “despite having no probable cause or reasonable suspicion that any particular individual had committed any offense.” All the while, people were left shackled and corralled helplessly on the sidewalk.
Tim Olson, a Denver mechanic, was one of those drivers trapped in the police dragnet. He told FOX-31, “Suddenly there was a police officer straight ahead, takes a shotgun or rifle and aims my direction. You know never having been in that situation before it was extremely confusing, extremely intimidating.”
During the long detainment, Mr. Olson had difficulty kneeling on the hard sidewalk, and fell “face forward onto the pavement,” according to the lawsuit, as an officer “continued to scream at Mr. Olson to [kneel] while waving his shotgun near Mr. Olson’s face.”
“I was telling the officer ‘you’re hurting me. Let go,”" Olson remembered. “They said ‘quit resisting.’”
The “more-than-two-hour mass roundup of innocent men, women and children at a traffic section” left a total of 28 adults handcuffed, and 19 vehicles searched.
“This is the sort of thing that, if litigated correctly, it could go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court because it is an open question,” said University of Denver law professor, Justin Merceau to Fox 31.
Those named as defendants in the lawsuit are the City of Aurora, Colorado; Police Chief Daniel J. Oates; Christen Lertch; Kristopher McDowell; Luke J. Barker; Richard Ray; Brandt A. Smith; Michael David Prince; and A. Todd Chanos.
The suspect was eventually found — but at what cost? The rights of dozens of innocent citizens rights were seemingly nullified in order to recover some green paper.
“Exigent circumstances” remains a dangerous loophole in which police may callously ignore citizens’ rights. Throughout the incident, officers would not have been able point to any articulable suspicion on any of the individuals that they were searching. Based on a blip on a GPS monitor, dozens of people’s 4th amendment rights were discarded — not to mention the fact that their lives were threatened by shotgun-wielding cops riding an adrenaline buzz.
Police State USA covered a similar situation recently in Maryland, in which police shut down a 12-lane highway and performed car-to-car searches to find a robbery suspect. Indeed, manhunts are a favorite opportunity for police to stretch the limits of their power.
This situation sorely needs to be addressed by the courts, in order to reign in the boundless powers of police during so-called exigent circumstances.
http://www.policestateusa.com/2014/aurora-colorado-manhunt/--Steve
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