Excessive force against Black man claimed in lawsuit filed against Colorado Springs police

Dalvin Gadson and his attorneys filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday against three members of the Colorado Springs Police Department who are accused of using excessive force against Gadson during a traffic stop in October.

At a news conference in front of the Colorado Springs Police Department Wednesday morning, civil rights attorney Harry Daniels said the lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court of Colorado calls out the three officers’ alleged use of excessive force when pulling Gadson out of his car and beating him after finding his car didn’t have a license plate properly displayed.

The three officers are Colby Hickman, Matthew Anderson and Christopher Hummel.

Body camera footage from Gadson’s Oct. 9 arrest shows an officer telling Gadson to get out of the vehicle so the officer can detain him. Gadson, a 29-year-old Black veteran, stayed in the car despite officers’ instructions. After an officer says Gadson’s going to be “detained in handcuffs,” on suspicion of a DUI, Gadson responds, “No, I’m not.” At that moment officers descended on him and started beating him as they pulled him out of the vehicle. A second officer after removing the passenger entered the car from the passenger side and punched Gadson. Officers continued striking him once he was on the ground.

Colorado Springs police also said Gadson physically fought back against officers as they tried to pull him from the car and “on more than one instance re-entered the vehicle in the area of” a pocketknife that an officer observed in the center console of the car. Daniels said if Gadson actually tried to fight back and grab the knife, the district attorney wouldn’t have dropped assault charges.

At the news conference, Gadson said he is hurting and that he wants to see all three officers fired and arrested. He said he’s scared of all the officers in the department right now, and that until the three officers who hurt him are suspended, he “will not feel safe in Colorado Springs.”

“They obviously do not understand how badly I was hurt or the position that my mind sits in,” Gadson said. “So we definitely need justice in Colorado Springs and we’re not going to stop until we get justice.”

Gadson said that during the encounter with police he was simply trying to survive.

Daniels also cited a CSPD policy that states officers must issue a verbal warning before using excessive force, which he said the officers in this situation did not. The suit doesn’t seek a specific monetary amount, Daniels said, leaving this decision up to the courts. The lawsuit requests a trial by jury.

The attorneys discussed additional instances when they said Colorado Springs police used excessive force, such as when officers detained a 17-year-old girl and pepper sprayed her in the back of a police car. Bakari Sellers, another one of Gadson’s attorneys, said until the root of police brutality is addressed and officers learn to “treat everybody with the kind of dignity and respect they deserve,” it won’t end and more instances of excessive force will occur.

“I don’t think this lawsuit and everything else is about a few bad apples,” Sellers said. “I actually think Colorado Springs has a bad orchard.”

Sellers said that if someone treated a dog the way officers treated Gadson, they would have been charged in any part of the U.S. He wants to see the officers held accountable with a transparent internal review and court process.

“This is a community that loves and serves and upholds its veterans, or at least we thought they did,” Sellers said. “But to see a veteran with your own eyes be pummeled 20 times, be kicked in the head … What got me was the officer … there was a smirk on his face that said ‘I just beat somebody,’” he added, referring to a photo of Anderson’s bleeding knuckles at the scene.

“It’s hard being Black in America,” Sellers continued. “I never would have thought I would say it’s hard being a Black veteran in America.”

Colorado Springs police previously said an internal affairs investigation relating to the incident is ongoing. The department also said it is standard practice to review officers’ use of force following an incident like the encounter with Gadson. Superiors found the use of force in Gadson’s case “to be within policy.”

Colorado Newsline is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Colorado Newsline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Quentin Young for questions: info@coloradonewsline.com. Follow Colorado Newsline on Facebook and Twitter.