Global Courant 2023-04-26 04:15:36
DENVER — A former Colorado police officer has been found guilty of failing to intervene when another officer pistol-whipped and strangled an unarmed man.
Francine Martinez, who worked for the Aurora Police Department, became the first officer in the state to be convicted by a police-supervised jury accountability requiring officers to intervene if they see colleagues using excessive force.
The law existed adopted in 2020 after the death of George Floyd, a black man killed by a Minneapolis police officer outside a corner store as three other officers watched.
A jury in Arapahoe County District Court determined last week that Martinez watched as former officer John Haubert hit Kyle Vinson more than a dozen times with his pistol and threatened to kill him in July 2021.
Haubert also aimed his gun at Vinson’s head, bodycam video shows. Vinson suffered a cut on his head and one eye was swollen shut.
Kyle Vinson in Denver in 2021.David Zalubowski/AP
Martinez was fired and Haubert resigned.
“This should be a wake-up call to all law enforcement officials that the thin blue line of silence will not be tolerated in Colorado,” Vinson’s attorney, Siddhartha Rathod, said Tuesday. “Officers have a moral, ethical and legal duty to step in and speak up when their colleagues commit acts of violence, crimes or other misdeeds.”
The former officers were responding to a report of burglary in the 3100 block of South Parker Road when they encountered three people who had outstanding felony warrants and attempted to arrest them.
Two of the people ran, but the third, Vinson, did not, police said.
Video showed Haubert with his hands around Vinson’s throat for 39 seconds as Vinson appeared to lose consciousness.
In an affidavit, a witness, Jamie Bourknight, (not sure if this is an officer or not) claims that Vinson kicked one of them; the video doesn’t seem to show it.
“We are disgusted. Were angry. This is not police work,” then-Police Chief Vanessa Wilson said at the time. “We don’t train this. It is not acceptable.”
Phone calls to Martinez and his attorney, David Goddard, went unanswered Tuesday.
Former Officer John Haubert held a gun to Kyle Vinson’s head in 2021 in Aurora, Colo., in a frame of police bodycam video.Aurora police
Colorado’s “failure to intervene” law also requires all officers to use body cameras by July, prohibits chokeholds, limits potentially lethal use of force, and removes qualified immunity from police, potentially exposing officers to lawsuits for their actions in cases of use of force.
“I’ve watched most of it (the body camera video) — not all at once, but it’s kind of hard to take in,” Vinson shared. NBC affiliate KUSA from Denver. “I just think I’m thankful I’m still here because I thought I was going to die or be another Elijah McClain or George Floyd.”
Martinez is the first officer convicted by a jury under the law. Former Loveland officer Daria Jalali pleaded guilty last year failed to intervene in the arrest of a 73-year-old woman with dementia. Jalali, who no longer works for the Loveland Police Department, was sentenced to 45 days in jail.
Martinez, who was convicted of a felony for failing to intervene for her role in Vinson’s arrest, faces up to a year in prison when she is sentenced on June 2.
Haubert is accused first-degree assault including causing serious bodily harm with a deadly weapon, second-degree assault/strangulation, and menacing felony. His trial is scheduled for November.
