Weird Dispute Over Whether a Denver Cop Pepper-Sprayed Terrance Roberts

The complaint includes accounts of other reports about excessive force meted out against protesters during 2020 demonstrations that followed the murder of Minneapolis’s George Floyd. The references are intended to bolster the contention that what happened to Roberts fits within the pattern and practices of the Denver Police Department.

According to the Denver Department of Public Safety, “It would be inappropriate to comment specifically on the lawsuit.” However, the department did provide a statement to Westword and other news agencies: “The Denver Police Department Internal Affairs Bureau received a complaint regarding an alleged inappropriate use of force against Mr. Roberts. The IAB reviewed available video based upon the date, location and time provided. Mr. Roberts is not seen in the video when the officer deploys pepper spray.”

The response incenses Roberts. “I feel like it just goes to show the character of the Denver Police Department, telling the media that, almost like I’m lying,” he says. “I was sprayed in the face, and there are witnesses to what happened to me. Obviously, that camera footage either doesn’t exist or they’re withholding it.”

Attorney Mari Newman of Denver-based Killmer, Lane & Newman LLP, sees the city’s reaction as particularly curious given an additional sequence of events. Weeks ago, her firm specifically requested video of the incident, after which city representatives reported that no footage of Roberts being pepper-sprayed could be found. As a followup, Newman’s reps asked for the clips the police had examined in order to reach this conclusion, and paid for them. But that video hadn’t been provided when the Department of Public Safety made its assertion — and Newman still hasn’t seen it.

“I can’t imagine what they’re doing,” she says. “At first they claimed that no video of the incident had been located. And now they’re saying they located a video in which they are pepper-spraying a civilian but claim it’s not Terrance. But the fact that they haven’t provided the video to any news outlet, or to us, certainly leaves us wondering.”

Here’s how Newman describes what took place on July 19, 2020:

“Terrance was one of the leaders to a counter-protest to a pro-police/reelect Trump rally that was going on in downtown Denver,” she says. “He was leading a series of chants. Then, after the counter-protest was wrapping up and Terrance and others were getting ready to leave, he was approached by a Denver police officer, who looked right at him and sprayed him in the face with pepper spray.”

In April, Newman’s office sent a request to the DPD “demanding video of the incident,” she recalls. “The Denver records department sent us a couple of emails asking for some additional details: approximately what time it happened, a description of Terrance, that sort of thing. We immediately provided all of that information, and on June 16, they emailed a response that said, ‘No recordings of the referenced incident were located.’

“We then requested that they provide all of the video that they had reviewed in coming to that conclusion,” Newman continues. “They sent us an invoice for $363, which we paid on June 28. We also sent an email on July 15 reminding them about the request and asking for an update on the status of our request for the video. So you can imagine my surprise when they came out with this public statement that, in fact, they had located video of them pepper-spraying somebody, which is a direct contradiction to their earlier response to us. But, of course, they’ve still not provided that video, although we’ve already paid for it.”

According to Newman, “None of the protesters that I’m aware of were videoing at the time, because the counter-protest was largely wrapped up. But somebody did video the immediate aftermath, when people were trying to flush the pepper spray out of Terrance’s eyes.” That scene is shown in this screen capture:

click to enlarge

A screen capture from citizen video of Terrance Roberts having his eyes flushed after the July 2020 protest.

Says Newman: “This is yet another example of the Denver Police Department specifically targeting a community leader with the apparent goal of trying to not just silence that particular individual, but to silence protest more generally — and it’s not going to work.”

Roberts agrees. “I’ve been going through this with the Denver Police Department for over a decade now. It started when an African-American police officer by the name of Celena Hollis was murdered” in June 2012, he says. “I did a candlelight vigil for her that made it into the New York Times, but the Bloods called me a snitch — the same Bloods who later admitted to working with the DPD. This caused me to shoot a man,” he notes, referring to Hasan Jones, who was paralyzed. And even though Roberts was later found not guilty of attempted second-degree murder, he stresses that “it derailed my life and my career.”

The story of the shooting and Roberts’s acquittal is told in author Julian Rubinstein’s book The Holly and a documentary film of the same name.