A new lawsuit filed last week against the city of Aurora alleges systemic failures in training and discipline led to the fatal shooting of Kilyn Lewis in 2024, according to federal court records.
The federal complaint comes after Lewis’ family filed a state lawsuit in Arapahoe County last year against both the city of Aurora and SWAT officer Michael Dieck, who fatally shot 37-year-old Lewis. Aurora was later removed from the state complaint, but the claims against Dieck will proceed to trial in March 2027, court records show.
That lawsuit alleges that Dieck’s use of force against Lewis was unconstitutional, and that his “willing and wanton” conduct counts as assault and battery causing wrongful death.
The two lawsuits are like parallel train tracks, said Lisi Owen, one of four attorneys representing Lewis’ estate. They were both sparked by the same police shooting, but one is seeking justice for the individual incident and the other aims to create systemic change, she said.
“The problem is, itap not just a couple of bad apples causing police violence in this country,” Owen said. “The barrel is rotten.”
That doesn’t mean all police officers are corrupt, Owen said, but that the system in place is flawed and being propped up by cities and their police departments.
“The city needs to do something about this,” she said. “They absolutely cannot let this go on. … We plan to hold them accountable just as much as Michael Dieck.”
Owen is joined on the lawsuit by Brad Irwin with Irwin Fraley LLP, and by Dale Galipo and Benjamin Levine with The Law Offices of Dale K. Galipo in Los Angeles.
The city of Aurora did not respond to requests for comment over the weekend, and Aurora Police Department spokesperson Gabby Easterwood said the department does not normally comment on pending litigation.
Lewis was shot and killed by Dieck on May 23, 2024, during an attempted arrest. He was a suspect in a separate Denver shooting and wanted on investigation of attempted murder, police said.
Aurora law enforcement surveilled Lewis for roughly two days before the shooting, according to the federal lawsuit. The officers knew where he was, knew what he was doing and knew he was unarmed, the lawsuit alleges.
SWAT officers swarmed Lewis in the parking lot near his apartment, weapons drawn and shouting overlapping commands to get on the ground and show his hands, according to body-worn camera video released by the police department. Lewis attempted to comply, turning toward Dieck and beginning to lower himself to the ground when he was shot, according to the lawsuit.
“He was only holding a cell phone and snack food,” the lawsuit stated. “He was not armed. He was not taking a shooting stance. He was not fleeing. He was not charging. He did not threaten anyone. He did not pose an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury to Officer Dieck or anyone else.”
Dieck shot Lewis in the abdomen less than 10 seconds after exiting his police vehicle and “did not issue any warning that he would shoot if Mr. Lewis did not comply,” the document stated. The officer did not give Lewis time to understand and comply with the overlapping orders and did not use readily available “less-lethal force” options, such as a baton launcher, the lawsuit alleges.
Arapahoe County District Attorney John Kellner ruled that Dieck’s use of force was justified in an . Dieck “reasonably believed there was an imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury,” Kellner wrote.
An internal review conducted by the Aurora Police Department, which included Aurora’s independent consent decree monitor, determined that Dieck had not violated department policy.
The lawsuit claims the city of Aurora failed to properly train, supervise and discipline officers, and alleges the departmentap policies and customs were the “moving force behind the violation” of Lewis’ Fourth Amendment rights.
Aurora city officials knew about the police departmentap “systemic problems” — including excessive force and training issues — before the deadly shooting, the lawsuit stated.
At the time of the shooting, the Aurora Police Department was already under a , which was enacted after an investigation by the Colorado Attorney General’s Office revealed a pattern of racially biased policing and routine use of excessive force in Aurora. The department will remain under that decree until approximately February 2027.
“The Lewis shooting is precisely the kind of predictable constitutional injury that adequate policies, training, supervision, discipline, and force-review systems are supposed to prevent,” the lawsuit stated.
Officers rushed the process, issued conflicting demands, failed to de-escalate and treated Lewis’ non-threatening movement toward compliance as justification for deadly force — all actions contrary to the reform that was supposed to be underway in the department, the lawsuit alleges.
Extensive changes were made to the police departmentap SWAT procedures after the fatal shooting, including “a more rigorous approval process” for warrants, a new risk-assessment matrix, weapons concerns and training enhancements, according to the lawsuit.
“The scope of those changes demonstrates that, at the time of the Lewis shooting, APD’s existing SWAT policies … were inadequate,” the lawsuit against the city of Aurora stated.
The lawsuit alleges that Aurora’s “official policies, longstanding customs, practices, decisions, and omissions” led to Dieck violating Lewis’ Fourth Amendment rights. That includes allowing Aurora police officers to escalate encounters through “sudden shows of overwhelming force,” failing to ensure the consent monitor reforms were implemented in practice instead of only on paper, allowing officers to use deadly force without reasonable warning and failing to require meaningful investigation into and discipline for excessive or deadly force, according to the lawsuit.
Aurora officials also failed to properly train officers on threat assessments, de-escalation, warnings and the constitutional limits on deadly force, the lawsuit alleges. The complaint claims that city officials were “deliberately indifferent” to the “known and obvious” consequences of its allegedly subpar training, supervision and discipline.
The Aurora Police Department then justified Dieck’s actions by clearing him in the internal investigation, according to the lawsuit.
As of Sunday evening, no hearings had been scheduled for the federal case.
