KUSA — The American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado has filed a federal lawsuit against the City of Aurora alleging officers illegally ordered a Latino man out of his home and then beat him during a November 2016 incident that stemmed from a noise complaint.
The lawsuit filed on Tuesday also complains of a dozen other instances where officers with the Aurora Police Department are accused of racially biased policing.
Jaime Alberto Torres Soto was fixing a car in his garage with two friends on Nov. 21, 2016, when an officer with the Aurora Police Department approached him and illegally told him to step out of his home, according to the lawsuit.
After pausing briefly to call his wife and ask her to come out of the house to help translate, Soto obeyed commands from officers in both English and Spanish to leave his garage, the suit says.
As Soto started walking from the garage area, officers immediately “wrenched his arm behind his back, picked him up, and slammed him to the ground,” according to the lawsuit. Soto screamed out in pain, the lawsuit says, and was left bloodied and bruised from the confrontation.
In the police report from APD, one of the officers described several times where he said he struggled to take Soto into custody.
“I told Jaime something to the effect of 'quit it' at least two times as he was resisting my efforts to place the other handcuff on his wrist," the report detailed.
The same officer wrote: “Jaime then tucked in his leg, twisted his body, and pushed back. This action caused me to start losing my balance.”
The lawsuit further alleges that Aurora police then tried to cover up the incident by charging Soto with resisting arrest and failure to follow a lawful order – both of which he was later acquitted of by a jury.
“Mr. Torres complied with the officer’s illegal command only to be met with brute force,” ACLU Cooperating Attorney Mari Newman said. “Aurora then assigned the supervisor on the scene — who participated in the beating — to review the use of force. With the fox guarding the hen house, it is unsurprising the City of Aurora found no wrongdoing,”
Soto was found guilty of a noise complaint.
“I was just fixing a car in my garage,” Soto said in a Tuesday new release. “I wasn’t hurting anybody. But the Aurora police beat me up. They didn’t care that I was screaming in pain. Now I am afraid of the police."
The ACLU complaint goes on to describe 13 separate incidents where officers with the Aurora Police Department are accused of using unnecessary aggression and violence toward people of color.
In a Facebook post, the Aurora Police Department said that it is aware of the lawsuit and takes allegations of misconduct very seriously.
According to lawyer Mark Silverstein, they waited to file a lawsuit until after Soto’s criminal charges were resolved.
He also said, "Sometimes lawyers don't get the documents filed until just before the deadline.”
The two-year statute of limitations was Wednesday.