A man who walked outside his home during a riot in Boulder and got shot in the eye with a pepper ball fired by a policeman can continue his lawsuit against the city in federal court, a judge has ruled.
In a second complaint of police abuse in federal court, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit Monday against a former Colorado Springs police officer on behalf of an Army veteran who says a cop beat him with a flashlight during a traffic stop.
In the pepper-ball case, Jonathan Lemery, 24, who now lives in New Jersey, says he suffered irreparable damage to his right eye after he was hit with the plastic pellet.
“I don’t have any depth perception, I’m sensitive to light, and driving or being in the sun or doing anything is just tough on me,” Lemery said Monday in a phone interview.
On Friday, U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn ruled that a portion of Lemery’s lawsuit against the city of Boulder, police Officer Richard French and Chief Mark Beckner could go forward.
Blackburn wrote that a reasonable person could believe that French intentionally targeted Lemery with a pepper ball while Lemery posed no threat.
A portion of the lawsuit, claiming the shooting violated Lemery’s Fourth Amendment protection from unreasonable seizure, was dismissed.
“Our position is that we are delighted that we won half the lawsuit, and we will seek appellate review in the other half,” said Boulder City Attorney Jerry Gordon.
French received a letter in his personnel file after the October 2004 incident that said he did not follow proper police procedure, Gordon said.
The day of the incident, Lemery said, he walked toward three officers standing on the street to ask them for help getting strangers out of his house who were seeking shelter from tear gas.
When he reached the end of his driveway, French shot him.
Lemery, a University of Colorado student at the time, said a videotape shows he was not a threat and did not participate in the riot.
In the Colorado Springs case, Delvikio Faulkner, 27, was a passenger in a car that was missing the front license plate when Officers Kenneth Hardy and Jackson Andrews pulled the car over.
Faulkner gave the officers a false name. As Hardy began to arrest Faulkner, the lawsuit says, the officer decided Faulkner was going to run and struck him repeatedly in the head with a metal flashlight.
The lawsuit says Andrews told police internal affairs investigators that Faulkner did not provoke the beating.
Hardy was disciplined for the incident and later dismissed from the Police Department for unrelated misconduct, the lawsuit says.
He could not be reached for comment.
Staff writer Felisa Cardona can be reached at 303-954-1219 or fcardona@denverpost.com.
