For 22 years, Anthony DeHerrera has worn his law enforcement uniform with pride.
The last thing the Pueblo sheriff’s deputy ever thought he would have to do is spend a year and a half seeking justice on behalf of his son who was beaten by Denver police officers.
He wants them to pay for their actions, which are seen on videotape. “If they were Joe Q. Citizens, they would be in jail,” he says.
He says what drives him are the memories of the sounds that came over the cellphone his son held that early morning.
The thuds. The sirens. The words he heard in the background: “They’re recording us. We’ve got to get rid of the phone.”
And then the silence as the line connecting father to son went dead.
In an interview Tuesday, DeHerrera, a 45-year-old decorated veteran deputy, talked about his memories of that early morning on April 4, 2009, when son Michael, then 23, called him in a panic.
DeHerrera woke from a deep sleep to answer the telephone. He heard his son crying out: “Dad, they’re beating Shawn. They’re beating Shawn.”
Officers had taken Michael’s friend, Shawn Johnson, then 24, into custody after he was ejected from a Lower Downtown nightclub for using a women’s restroom.
The police officers have declined to comment, but the police union is backing the decision by Safety Manager Ron Perea, who oversees the Police Department, to keep Officer Devin Sparks and Cpl. Randy Murr on the force but dock them three days’ pay each.
Union officials say Mayor John Hickenlooper’s Monday decision to have the FBI review the actions of the officers is politically motivated. They are fighting the push for the firing of the officers by Independent Monitor Richard Rosenthal, who reviews investigations into alleged police misconduct.
“This is a case where elected officials are using the media for political grandstanding,” said Vince Gravito, vice president of the Police Protective Association.
A videotape taken on the Police Department’s High Activity Location Observation surveillance system, released publicly last week, captures Michael as he made a telephone call to his father at 12:14 a.m. that morning.
The video shows Sparks approaching Michael, tackling him to the ground and then repeatedly beating him with a department-issued sap, a piece of metal wrapped in leather. The officer then picks him up roughly and puts him in the back of a squad car, slamming the door on his shin before getting it shut.
But in the early hours of the telephone call, the father knew none of this. He didn’t even know where to go to check on his son.
He had only his law enforcement instincts and the knowledge that his son was in deep trouble.
His mind locked on the sound of the sirens he had heard during the phone call. DeHerrera knew the sirens meant some agency, from somewhere, was on the scene.
He and his wife got in their car and headed from Pueblo to Denver in a snowstorm. “I won’t tell you how fast we drove,” he says.
He called Denver police dispatch and asked whether they had a record for a Michael DeHerrera. The answer was no.
From the cellphone provider for his son, he got the intersection where Michael had last used his phone. DeHerrera sent relatives living in Denver that way.
He started calling every police agency in the surrounding suburbs. Still nothing.
Then, he called the dispatch office for the Pueblo County Sheriff’s Office, where he works. Finally, a hit. The dispatcher was able to find the name of the Denver officer who had run a criminal background check on his son, a check that showed a clean past.
The father called that Denver officer and learned his son had been taken in for resisting arrest and had been sent to Denver Health Medical Center. The charge was later dropped.
“Your son got a little road rash on his nose,” DeHerrera recalls the officer telling him.
The “little road rash” was actually deep bruises, chipped teeth, black eyes and a head left swollen and lopsided.
DeHerrera said he can’t believe Perea decided to keep the officers on the force.
“How would he feel if his child went to Pueblo and I beat him?” DeHerrera asks. “Would he still feel it was OK?”
The family hired lawyers and received a $17,500 settlement. They got the city of Denver to drop the charges for the ambulance ride to the hospital. They pushed for an internal-affairs investigation.
DeHerrera has e-mailed Gov. Bill Ritter’s office and the mayor’s office and sent the video of the incident to the FBI and contacted FBI officials in Pueblo, Denver and Washington.
He says the only ones who listened until now were the media and Rosenthal.
Today, DeHerrera will fly to New York for a second time to talk on national broadcasts. Anything to get the word out.
He can’t understand why it happened to his son, who grew up respecting law enforcement, who as a toddler attended a 1990 ceremony at which his father received the medal of valor for saving a teenager who fell into a frozen pond.
“It’s just ripping my guts out,” DeHerrera said.
Michael’s 4-year-old niece still doesn’t understand. Police officers are the good guys, she says, as she searches for an explanation from her grandfather.
“How,” DeHerrera asks, “do I tell her there are good police and bad police?”
Christopher N. Osher: 303-954-1747 or cosher@denverpost.com
