The city of Denver is on the verge of settling for $76,000 a claim filed by two law school students who said they were improperly arrested during a Halloween party at Club Vinyl and then subjected to ridicule and mistreatment at the Denver jail.
The notice of claim had sought $150,000 originally. It said that between Oct. 27 through Oct. 28 the two women suffered physical and emotional injuries and felt that jail personnel implied they were prostitutes.
The Denver City Council is scheduled to consider the settlement on Monday. The council agenda states the settlement would satisfy a claim involving the Denver Sheriff’s Department.
Affidavits filed in April in connection with the notice of claim identified the two women as Janny Barizonte, then 24 and a student at the University of Denver; and Dayren Suarez, no age given, then a student at St. Thomas University School of Law in Miami, Fla. Suarez said she now works as a legal intern in the Miami-Dade County State Attorney’s Office, the largest prosecutor’s office in Florida.
The two women, who were born in Cuba but moved to the United States in the 1990s, said their problems started when the security force at Club Vinyl overreacted to an incident. They claimed that they thought police would help them when they arrived at the scene, but instead the police hauled them off to jail, treating them to a slew of epithets and rough physical treatment.
“While I was face down on the floor, I was picked up and slammed back down several times,” Suarez said in her affidavit. “I had them hold me down and push my face against the sidewalk. I literally remember tasting dirt.”
Barizonte said that at the jail she tried to explain the two had done nothing wrong, but an unidentified female told her to shut up, pulled a fistful of hair on the back of her head and bashed her face several times into a plexiglass window. She was handcuffed at the time.
She said another uniformed female told her “she would have made a lot of money as a whore that day if I had not gotten arrested, thereby implying that I was a prostitute.”
The two women said they were tried and acquitted of charges of criminal charges of destruction of private property, disturbing the peace, assault, and disorderly intoxication.
“I am still haunted by the effect this incident might have in my career as a lawyer,” states the affidavit of Suarez.
She added that she asked for a breathalyzer test at the jail to prove that she was not intoxicated, but they refused to let her do so.
The city attorney’s office also will ask the city council Monday to settle for $27,000 a lawsuit filed on behalf of Deborah Carson in Denver District Court alleging a police officer pulled out in front of her without his emergency lights. She said she slammed on her brakes to avoid the officer and another driver collided into the rear of her car.
Christopher N. Osher: 303-954-1747 or cosher@denverpost.com
