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Denver Cop Cody Lane Flattens Vet in Video That’s Spurred a Lawsuit

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Today, January 17, a lawsuit is expected to be filed over a 2022 incident during which a Denver Police Department officer shoved a 62-year-old veteran to the ground, allegedly exacerbating a physical injury and triggering post-traumatic stress disorder.

According to attorney Milo Schwab of Denver-based Ascend Counsel, who represents the vet, Ron Jensen, the incident represents a pattern of excessive force by the target of the complaint, Officer Cody Lane. He notes that “there have been four investigations into this officer in the last three years” on top of the probe into Jensen’s complaint, which is still ongoing, “and in one of them, he was found to have violated policy and was suspended for thirty days.”

The DPD and the Denver Department of Public Safety didn’t comment about the Jensen matter or the lawsuit in response to an inquiry from Westword. But the latter agency provided two documents that confirm Schwab’s account of Lane’s internal-affairs history since he became a Denver police officer in 2018: a 2020 discipline letter that formalized his suspension and a summary of Jensen’s complaint and three others pressed against him by citizens since 2021.

Further action was declined in the latter trio of cases against Lane after internal-affairs investigators concluded that no misconduct had occurred. But the lack of specifics about what went down and Lane’s rationale for his behavior “raise important questions,” in Schwab’s view. “Why was he on the streets? What was the nature of the other complaints? And did the DPD provide him with additional training after his suspension? Because we can’t have violent or hot-headed cops out there, and if they suspected he was one — and they certainly should have had some idea — and didn’t provide any training afterwards, that’s a serious issue.”

The most recent episode took place on the evening of June 24, 2022, outside the ViewHouse Ballpark, 2015 Market Street, shortly after the Colorado Avalanche defeated the Tampa Bay Lightning to take a 3-2 lead in the Stanley Cup finals.

“A lot of people were out, and a lot of police were out,” Schwab notes, “and Mr. Jensen was filming on a public sidewalk.” According to him, Jensen identifies as a “First Amendment auditor” who shoots video of interactions with police to ensure individuals’ constitutional rights are protected.

Shortly thereafter, Schwab continues, an off-duty officer providing security for the ViewHouse “comes up to Mr. Jensen and tells him he is trespassing even though he’s on the sidewalk, which is public land. Mr. Jensen tells her that he’s not trespassing, that he’s allowed to film, that the Constitution protects that. So she calls for backup, which includes Officer Lane — and when Mr. Jensen says ‘Fuck you,’ [Lane] loses his cool and pushes Mr. Jensen to the ground.”

Video of the interaction shows Jensen struggling to stand afterward because, Schwab explains, “he has an injury to his knee. I believe there are some bone fragments that were broken off and are moving around. And because he’s a veteran, this caused a serious recurrence of PTSD that he’s been working through. He’s really been struggling with it.”

In an interview following the incident, Lane described Jensen as being “dangerously close” to him and “in my face,” while another witness, Officer Mike May, said, “Mr. Jensen stepped back and appeared to throw himself to the ground.” But Schwab maintains that “the video shows he didn’t do any of that. They said, ‘Step back,’ but there was three or four feet between them, and Mr. Jensen wasn’t doing anything threatening. He was just holding a camera, and when he said, ‘Fuck you,’ he was thrown down.”

Continue to see footage of the incident assembled by Ascend Counsel:
Jensen was initially charged with trespassing and obstruction, but the allegations were soon dropped. Meanwhile, Schwab filed a public-records request for all internal-affairs files related to Lane, and while he was given the aforementioned summary of complaints, he was told other details couldn’t be offered because the episode outside the ViewHouse remains under investigation — an explanation he finds baffling. “I don’t know why this would take seven months to investigate,” he says.

However, Lane’s thirty-day suspension was publicly reported. A September 2020 Denver Post article revealed that Lane received this punishment as the result of the way he handled a domestic-violence call the previous February. At that time, Lane used a Taser on a man already in handcuffs and punched him in the face. Lane contended that the man had been pushing back against him, but in her disciplinary letter, Deputy Director of Public Safety Mary Dulacki wrote, “There was no threat or overt act of an imminent assault which would have justified the use of physical strikes to the subject.”

Schwab, who’s filed multiple civil-rights lawsuits related to the 2020 George Floyd protests in downtown Denver, acknowledges that what happened to Jensen “isn’t as bad as it could have been, because no one’s dead or crippled. This isn’t life-and-death stuff. But it’s just one of many instances of smaller violations that need to be called out, because they speak to a broader and deeper mentality, at least for this officer, that make him unsuitable for police work.”

Click to read the 2020 discipline letter against Officer Cody Lane and the summary of his internal affairs report.

This post has been updated with information from documents related to past complaints against Denver Police Officer Cody Lane.





Today, January 17, a lawsuit is expected to be filed over a 2022 incident during which a Denver Police Department officer shoved a 62-year-old veteran to the ground, allegedly exacerbating a physical injury and triggering post-traumatic stress disorder.

According to attorney Milo Schwab of Denver-based Ascend Counsel, who represents the vet, Ron Jensen, the incident represents a pattern of excessive force by the target of the complaint, Officer Cody Lane. He notes that “there have been four investigations into this officer in the last three years” on top of the probe into Jensen’s complaint, which is still ongoing, “and in one of them, he was found to have violated policy and was suspended for thirty days.”

The DPD and the Denver Department of Public Safety didn’t comment about the Jensen matter or the lawsuit in response to an inquiry from Westword. But the latter agency provided two documents that confirm Schwab’s account of Lane’s internal-affairs history since he became a Denver police officer in 2018: a 2020 discipline letter that formalized his suspension and a summary of Jensen’s complaint and three others pressed against him by citizens since 2021.

Further action was declined in the latter trio of cases against Lane after internal-affairs investigators concluded that no misconduct had occurred. But the lack of specifics about what went down and Lane’s rationale for his behavior “raise important questions,” in Schwab’s view. “Why was he on the streets? What was the nature of the other complaints? And did the DPD provide him with additional training after his suspension? Because we can’t have violent or hot-headed cops out there, and if they suspected he was one — and they certainly should have had some idea — and didn’t provide any training afterwards, that’s a serious issue.”

The most recent episode took place on the evening of June 24, 2022, outside the ViewHouse Ballpark, 2015 Market Street, shortly after the Colorado Avalanche defeated the Tampa Bay Lightning to take a 3-2 lead in the Stanley Cup finals.

“A lot of people were out, and a lot of police were out,” Schwab notes, “and Mr. Jensen was filming on a public sidewalk.” According to him, Jensen identifies as a “First Amendment auditor” who shoots video of interactions with police to ensure individuals’ constitutional rights are protected.

Shortly thereafter, Schwab continues, an off-duty officer providing security for the ViewHouse “comes up to Mr. Jensen and tells him he is trespassing even though he’s on the sidewalk, which is public land. Mr. Jensen tells her that he’s not trespassing, that he’s allowed to film, that the Constitution protects that. So she calls for backup, which includes Officer Lane — and when Mr. Jensen says ‘Fuck you,’ [Lane] loses his cool and pushes Mr. Jensen to the ground.”

Video of the interaction shows Jensen struggling to stand afterward because, Schwab explains, “he has an injury to his knee. I believe there are some bone fragments that were broken off and are moving around. And because he’s a veteran, this caused a serious recurrence of PTSD that he’s been working through. He’s really been struggling with it.”

In an interview following the incident, Lane described Jensen as being “dangerously close” to him and “in my face,” while another witness, Officer Mike May, said, “Mr. Jensen stepped back and appeared to throw himself to the ground.” But Schwab maintains that “the video shows he didn’t do any of that. They said, ‘Step back,’ but there was three or four feet between them, and Mr. Jensen wasn’t doing anything threatening. He was just holding a camera, and when he said, ‘Fuck you,’ he was thrown down.”

Continue to see footage of the incident assembled by Ascend Counsel:
Jensen was initially charged with trespassing and obstruction, but the allegations were soon dropped. Meanwhile, Schwab filed a public-records request for all internal-affairs files related to Lane, and while he was given the aforementioned summary of complaints, he was told other details couldn’t be offered because the episode outside the ViewHouse remains under investigation — an explanation he finds baffling. “I don’t know why this would take seven months to investigate,” he says.

However, Lane’s thirty-day suspension was publicly reported. A September 2020 Denver Post article revealed that Lane received this punishment as the result of the way he handled a domestic-violence call the previous February. At that time, Lane used a Taser on a man already in handcuffs and punched him in the face. Lane contended that the man had been pushing back against him, but in her disciplinary letter, Deputy Director of Public Safety Mary Dulacki wrote, “There was no threat or overt act of an imminent assault which would have justified the use of physical strikes to the subject.”

Schwab, who’s filed multiple civil-rights lawsuits related to the 2020 George Floyd protests in downtown Denver, acknowledges that what happened to Jensen “isn’t as bad as it could have been, because no one’s dead or crippled. This isn’t life-and-death stuff. But it’s just one of many instances of smaller violations that need to be called out, because they speak to a broader and deeper mentality, at least for this officer, that make him unsuitable for police work.”

Click to read the 2020 discipline letter against Officer Cody Lane and the summary of his internal affairs report.

This post has been updated with information from documents related to past complaints against Denver Police Officer Cody Lane.

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