outside the Mansion Nightclub in downtown Colorado Springs. Denver attorneys Andy McNulty and Mari Newman filed the lawsuit Tuesday in U.S. District Court.

Martinez-Sarmiento “was a father, a son, a brother, and a friend,” the attorneys said in a statement.

The lawsuit claims the shooting is part of a pattern of excessive force by the Colorado Springs Police Department. A spokesman said the department can’t comment on pending or active litigation.

Martinez-Sarmiento was shot after police responded to the report of a disturbance downtown, according to the , which investigated the shooting.

When officers approached, Martinez-Sarmiento turned and ran and reached toward his waistband. Officer Connor Wallick shot Martinez-Sarmiento, who died at the scene.

in El Paso County ruled the shooting was justified because Wallick believed the young man was going for a gun and that a Taser or a less-lethal response would be inadequate.

The lawsuit says Martinez-Sarmiento posed no imminent threat to Wallick or anybody else and that the officer’s “use of deadly force was grossly excessive.” The shooting is one of a series of excessive-force incidents by Colorado Springs police, the lawsuit claims.

The complaint lists 13 incidents in which the attorneys say people were killed or injured by Colorado Springs police officers who used excessive force. In several of the cases, the city of Colorado Springs paid substantial sums to settle misconduct claims, attorneys said.

However, the Martinez-Sarmiento case makes it clear the police department “has yet to adequately train and supervise its officers regarding the appropriate and legal use of force, or to otherwise ensure that the clear ongoing custom and practice of police misconduct ceased,” the attorneys contend.

“Something is profoundly wrong when a young man of color cannot walk the streets of Colorado Springs without being gunned down by the police,” Newman said in a statement. “Alex Martinez-Sarmiento cooperated with every command issued by Officer Wallick and raised his hands when ordered, showing that he was holding nothing but a cigarette.”

In its decision not to pursue charges in Martinez-Sarmiento’s death, the district attorney’s office said Colorado Springs officers responded to a report on July 5, 2025, of a man yelling and brandishing a firearm near a nightclub. Police went to the 100 block of Pikes Peak Avenue.

One group of people said they hadn’t seen anyone with a gun. Wallick checked a report of an altercation between other groups of people. He received surveillance photos of a person later identified as Martinez-Sarmiento with a gun, according to the district attorney’s report.

Wallick believed Martinez-Sarmiento had retrieved a weapon from a car and was going to menace others outside the nightclub, the district attorney’s office said. Wallick then approached him on foot, drew his gun and told Martinez-Sarmiento to raise his hands.

After starting to comply, Martinez-Sarmiento turned around and ran. Wallick told him to stop running. The officer fired his gun three times when it looked like Martinez-Sarmiento was reaching into his waistband for a weapon, according to the district attorney’s report.

A semi-automatic firearm loaded with an extended magazine was recovered from the suspect¶¶Òõap pant leg by another officer, the report said.

The lawsuit disputes the officer’s version of events. The attorneys wrote that the description by a 911 caller of a man screaming at people and carrying a weapon didn’t match Martinez-Sarmiento. The caller described a Black man with a rifle.

Wallick gave no warning that he was about to use deadly force, the attorneys said in a statement. Martinez-Sarmiento didn’t point or fire a gun, they said. Other officers chasing the young man didn’t fire “because none of them perceived him as a threat,” according to the attorneys.

The attorneys are seeking an undisclosed amount of compensation and a jury trial.

The crash happened at 10 a.m. at the intersection of Tejon and Bijou streets in downtown Colorado Springs as the truck was responding to a medical call, the fire department said on social media.

Four firefighters were taken to the hospital with injuries, and five of the seven people on the Bustang bus were taken to the hospital “for evaluation and treatment of injuries,” according to the agency.

At approximately 10 a.m. on Saturday, June 13, Engine 3 was responding to a medical call when crews reported they had been involved in a collision with a bus at the intersection of Tejon Street and Bijou Street in downtown Colorado Springs.

Four Colorado Springs firefighters…

— Colorado Springs Fire Department (@CSFDPIO)

“Our firefighters respond to emergencies every day knowing there are risks associated with serving this community,” the fire department said in a statement. “Today, our focus is on our injured firefighters and everyone else affected by this incident. We are grateful for the immediate response of our crews, our public safety partners, and the medical teams caring for those involved.”

The Colorado Springs Police Department is investigating the crash, according to the fire department.

This is a developing story. 

The former public defender, Thomas Cushing, will also serve 20 years to life on parole for the felony, should the state parole board release him at some point after he serves 10 years. He is required to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.

The abuse, which police said involved a 14-year-old, happened between July and November 2024.

Prosecutors pursued the case after the victim’s father “was alerted to the crimes committed” and reported the case to the Colorado Springs Police Department, according to the news release. Cushing, who was 26 at the time, then turned himself in after a judge issued a warrant for his arrest.

“This case centered on the minor victim and the lasting impact these events have had on their life,” said Michael Allen, the district attorney for the 4th Judicial District, according to the news release. “Today’s sentence reflects the seriousness of the defendant’s heinous crimes and sends a clear message: if you commit a crime like this in our community, you will be held accountable and you should expect to be sent to prison for a very long time.”

to represent people in court who have been accused of a crime and who cannot afford to hire their own counsel.

The Colorado Springs Police Department said officers responded to the 2800 block of North Powers Boulevard at 12:31 a.m. Officers said each of the three victims found in the Stetson Hills neighborhood had at least one gunshot wound.

An adult male and a juvenile female were taken to a hospital and were reported to be in stable condition. The third victim, an adult male, was treated at the scene scene but died.

Police officials said there is no information on a suspect. They said anyone with information can call the Colorado Springs Police Department at 719-444-7000 or the Crime Stoppers Tip Line at 719-634-STOP (7867) or 1-800-222-8477.

The officers were working as part of a Metro Task Force in the 1200 block of North Academy Boulevard in East Colorado Springs at about 11 p.m. Saturday when they spotted a “suspicious vehicle,”

The officers, who were conducting “proactive enforcement” at the time, saw a man and a woman in the vehicle who they were “previously aware of.” The statement doesn’t say how the officers knew the people in the car.

“After initiating contact with the vehicle and identifying themselves as police, the adult male, who was the vehicle’s driver, attempted to flee from officers,” according to the statement.

The car got stuck trying to drive away and officers commanded the people to exit the vehicle, telling the man he was under arrest and that they may use deadly force. The woman got out of the car but the man, who police haven’t identified, stayed in. He then fired at least one shot toward officers, according to the statement.

Three Colorado Springs officers then shot the man. They then pulled him from the car and administered aid until medical personnel arrived. He died at the hospital.

Police interviewed the woman and said her involvement is “still under investigation.”

the police department to release all body-worn camera footage and audio within the next 21 days.

One deputy from the El Paso Sheriff’s Office was present for the shooting but didn’t fire their weapon. The El Paso Sheriff’s Office will be the lead investigative agency for the killing.

This is a developing story that will be updated. 

The jury found Thomas Cushing guilty of sexual assault on a child involving a pattern of abuse, a felony, court records show. The abuse happened over several months between July and November 2024.

Cushing turned himself in to the Colorado Springs Police Department in November 2024, after the unidentified victim’s father learned of the assaults and a warrant was issued for Cushing’s arrest.

“We are grateful to the jury for their time, attention, and commitment to this case,” District Attorney Michael Allen . “Cases that involve charges like this can be extremely difficult to hear. And we’re thankful for their work in helping us all keep this community safe.”

Cushing will next appear in court for a sentencing hearing on May 28, court records show.

The first posted about the shooting in the 2600 block of East Bijou Street in East Colorado Springs at 2:48 p.m. Monday.

About 1:30 p.m. Monday, the police’s tactical enforcement unit and the Colorado Parole Fugitive Apprehension Unit were in the area of East Bijou Street and Balfour Avenue conducting a “fugitive apprehension operation,” police said. After the operation, officers contacted a suspicious man in the same area, police said. The man ran away, took out a handgun and a shot an officer, police said. Two officers then returned fire, shooting the suspect.

The suspect and the officer were taken to a hospital. The officer sustained serious gunshot wound that was not life-threatening, police said. The suspect was in critical condition.

The identity of the wounded officer and the suspect were not being released, police said. The El Paso County sheriff’s office is  investigating.

It was the second Colorado Springs police shooting in three days.

A woman was shot and injured Saturday night by Colorado Springs officers near Delaware and Marion drives after she ran from police, was able to get into a police cruiser and reached for a shotgun, police said.

Paramedics took the woman to a hospital, and she was expected to survive, police said.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

A woman shot and injured Saturday night by a Colorado Springs officer is believed to have been reaching for a gun inside a police vehicle, according to the department.

Colorado Springs officers responded to a disturbance call about a man chasing a woman at 10 p.m. Saturday, . Callers told dispatchers that one of the two had a gun.

When officers arrived, they found a woman who matched the description of the woman involved in the disturbance, police said. The woman, who officers said had a knife, ran from the police and ignored commands to stop.

The unidentified woman dropped the knife as she ran, leading officers on a chase to a Colorado Springs Police Department vehicle parked near Delaware and Marion drives, .

She then got into the cruiser and refused officers’ commands to exit, according to the department.

Police said the woman reached for a shotgun in the car as officers were trying to remove her. That’s when one officer fired one shot, striking the woman.

Paramedics took the woman to the hospital, where she is expected to survive, police said.

The El Paso County Sheriff’s Office will lead the investigation into the shooting and the officer’s use of force.

The boy was kidnapped from the King Street Apartments in the 2700 block of King Street just before 3 p.m., when someone stole the vehicle he was in, the Colorado Springs Police Department said on social media.

State officials issued an Amber Alert for the missing toddler at 4:50 p.m., and he was safely located minutes later, according to the police department.

This is a developing story and may be updated.

Several floors above, the drone launched from the roof and flew itself — essentially on autopilot — to the site of the call, reported as a man breaking into a car with a crowbar near the Santa Fe Arts District.

The drone whizzed along, 200 feet up, in a straight line across blocks, buildings and streets during the roughly mile-long flight from police headquarters at 1331 Cherokee St. Velarde didn’t pick up the Xbox video-game controller that manually pilots the drone until it reached the area of the call. Then he took control and trolled the block for the supposed break-in, watching live video footage transmitted from the drone on his computer monitor as he flew.

After a few moments, Velarde spotted two people jiggering the passenger-side window of a vehicle. He zoomed in on the pair, and on the car’s license plate. He ran the plate to see whether the vehicle was stolen; it was not. The people on the street didn’t look up. They didn’t seem to know a police drone was hovering above them, that they were being recorded and watched a mile away by officers and a reporter.

Two more people joined the pair at the vehicle’s window and Velarde made the call — this didn’t look like a vehicle break-in. More likely, someone had just locked their keys in their car. He cleared the call with 911 dispatchers and told them there was no need to send an officer to the scene. Then he sent the drone back to headquarters; it flew itself to the rooftop dock, landing autonomously on a platform stamped with bright blue-and-yellow QR codes.

The began testing drones as first responders — that is, sending them out on 911 calls — in mid-October after signing up for two free pilot programs from rival drone companies and . The effort has raised concerns among privacy advocates, Denver politicians and the city’s police oversight group, particularly regarding the department’s contract with Flock, the company behind the city’s controversial network of automated license-plate readers.

Police see the drones as a way to speed up call-response times and provide more information to officers as they arrive on scene, improving, they say, both public safety and officer safety. If a drone arrives at a scene before officers, and the drone pilot can tell police on the ground that the man with the knife actually put down the weapon before the officers arrived, that helps everyone, police said.

“The more knowledge, information and intelligence that we can provide our officers on the ground, the better methods that they can use to respond to certain situations, which may cause them to not escalate unnecessarily,” said Cmdr. Clifford Barnes, who heads the department’s Cyber Bureau.

Critics say the eyes in the sky raise serious privacy concerns both with how the drones and the data they collect are used now, and with how they might be used in the future as the technology rapidly changes. They worry that the drones could create a citywide surveillance network with few legal guardrails, that the footage they collect will be used to train private companies’ AI algorithms or that police will misuse emerging AI capabilities, like facial recognition.

“When it comes to the decision of, are we going to use this thing that could potentially increase public safety, that will erode privacy rights — no one should get to decide the public is willing to give away our constitutional rights, except the people,” said Anaya Robinson, public policy director at the .  “And when law enforcement makes that decision for us, it becomes extremely problematic.”

Almost 300 drone flights in 55 days

So far, only Skydio drones have flown as first responders over Denver.

Denver police signed a — without public announcement — in August for a year-long pilot of drones as first responders, but the company has yet to set up its autonomous aircraft. Skydio, on the other hand, moved quickly to get drones in the air after Denver police in October to test up to four of the company’s drones during a free six-month pilot.

Skydio’s drones can reach about a 2-mile radius around the Denver police headquarters. The company advertises a top speed of 45 mph with 40 minutes of flight time; Denver pilots have found the drones average around 28 mph and around 25 minutes of battery life per flight.

From the first flight on Oct. 15 through Tuesday, two Skydio drones flew 297 times, according to data provided by Denver police in response to an open records request. Most of those flights — 199 — were to answer calls for service; another 82 were training flights, according to the data.

Skydio drones also surveilled events — a function police call “event overwatch” — seven times, the police data shows. Overwatch might include flying over a protest to track where the demonstrators are headed and alert officers on the ground for traffic control, Barnes said. (The police data showed that all seven overwatch flights occurred on Oct. 18, the day of Denver’s “No Kings” rally.)

The drones flew to 29 calls about a person with a weapon, 21 disturbances, 20 assaults in progress, a dozen suspicious occurrences and 11 hold-up alarms, according to data from Denver’s 911 dispatch records.  The drones also flew to 39 other types of calls, including reports of prowlers, fights, burglaries, domestic violence and suicidal people.

The most common outcome for a call was that the officers were unable to locate an incident or the suspect was gone by the time the drone or police officers arrived, the records show. Across about 200 calls for service that included drone responses, police made 22 arrests and issued one citation, the dispatch data shows.

When responding to calls for service, the drones reached the scene before patrol officers 88% of the time, the police data shows. A drone was the sole police response in 80 of 199 calls for service, or about 40% of the time.

Barnes said answering calls with solely a drone improves police efficiency.

“If an officer on the ground doesn’t need to respond, and the drone pilot is comfortable with cancelling the other officers coming, we can assign those officers to more important, more pressing matters, so call-response times come down,” he said.

That approach raises questions about what the drones (which are equipped with three different cameras and a ) can and can’t see, and how officers are making decisions about call responses without actually speaking to anyone at the scene, the ACLU’s Robinson said.

“Humans have bias,” he said. Drone pilots might be more inclined to send officers to a potential car break-in in a low-income neighborhood and more likely not to in a higher-income neighborhood, he said. Or they might miss something from above that they could have seen at street level.

But minimizing in-person police interactions with residents, particularly in over-policed neighborhoods, can also be a positive, said Julia Richman, chair of , which provides civilian oversight of the police department.

“Where my head goes is the other outcome, where they roll up on those people who are trying to get keys out of the car and then they shoot them,” she said. “Actually, (the drone-only response) seems like a really good outcome.”

The oversight group has talked with Denver police over the last two years about developing its drone program, she said. The department created a to guide their use; the policy aims to ensure “civil rights and reasonable expectations of privacy are a key component of any decision made to deploy” a drone.

But Richman said she was surprised by aspects of the police department’s pilot programs despite the ongoing conversations with department leadership.

“What was never discussed, not once, was the idea of a third party running those drones or those drones being autonomous,” she said, referring to the drone companies. “What has changed with this latest pilot is the key features and key aspects that would create public concern had never been discussed with us.”

Both Flock and Skydio advertise autonomous features powered by artificial intelligence. Skydio uses AI for its autonomous flight paths, obstacle avoidance and tracking people and cars.

Flock, which also offers autonomous flight, advertises its drones as integrating with its automated license-plate readers. The license-plate readers — there are more than 100 around Denver — automatically photograph every car that passes by them. If a license plate is stolen or involved in a crime, the license-plate readers alert police within seconds.

Police Chief Ron Thomas and Mayor Mike Johnston defended the surveillance network as an invaluable crime-solving tool this year against mounting public discontent around how much data the machines collected and how that data was used — particularly around sharing information with the federal government for the purposes of immigration enforcement.

That privacy debate around Flock’s license plate readers unfolded in communities across Colorado and nationwide this year. In Loveland, the police department for a time to access its Flock cameras before . In Longmont, councilmembers to look for alternatives to replace the 20 Flock license plate readers in that city.

Flock in August announced it was over the widespread concerns.

When Denver City Council members, some driven by privacy concerns, voted against continuing Flock’s license-plate readers in May, Johnston extended the surveillance anyway through a free five-month contract extension with Flock in October that did not require approval from the council. Against that backdrop, Denver police quietly signed on for Flock’s drone pilot in August.

Barnes said the police department will not use any license-plate reader capabilities available on Flock drones. Such a feature would constitute “random surveillance,” which is prohibited under the department’s drone policy. The drones never fly without an officer’s direct involvement, he added.

The policy also prohibits drones from filming anywhere a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy unless police have a warrant, and says officers should take “reasonable precautions … to avoid inadvertently recording or transmitting images of areas where there is a reasonable expectation of privacy.”

Denver police do receive search warrants to fly drones for particular operations outside of the drones-as-first-responder program. In October, a Denver police detective sought and received a warrant to fly a drone over a shooting suspect’s home in Cherry Hills Village to check whether a truck involved in the shooting was parked at the wooded property.

The warrant noted that when driving home from anywhere outside Cherry Hills Village, the suspect could not reach his house without passing by Flock license-plate readers, and that photos from those license-plate readers suggested the truck was at the property.

Denver Councilwoman Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez and Councilman Kevin Flynn both told The Post they were not aware of the police department’s Skydio drone pilot before hearing about it from the newspaper, even though they are both on the city’s Surveillance Technology Task Force. The new group began meeting in August largely to consider Flock license-plate readers, as well as other types of surveillance technology, Gonzales-Gutierrez said.

“We haven’t talked about it in the task force, and the charge of our work in the task force is to come up with those guardrails that need to be put in place for these types of technology being utilized by law enforcement,” she said. “I feel like they just keep moving on without us being able to complete our work.”

Police don’t need permission from the City Council to carry out the pilot programs, Gonzales-Gutierrez said, but she was disappointed by the lack of communication and collaboration from the department.

Flynn sees the potential of police drones, particularly in speeding up officer response times, which can sometimes be dismal in the far-flung areas of his southwestern district.

“If a drone can get there to a 911 call and it can help an officer at headquarters assess the scene before a staffed car could get there, I would love that,” he said.

But he wants to be sure they are used in a way that respects residents’ rights. He would not support using the drones for general patrolling or surveillance, he said.

“This pilot is an excellent opportunity to test all of those boundaries and see if there are ways to operate a system that can be very useful for public safety without crossing boundaries,” he said.”…And maybe we don’t keep using them. That is the point of a pilot.”

‘These are flying cops’

The Skydio drones film from the moment they are launched until they drop in to land.

When the drone is on its way to a call — flying at the 200-foot altitude limit set by the — its cameras remain pointed at the horizon. In Denver’s denser neighborhoods, the Skydio drones at that height , sometimes at eye-level with balconies, offices and apartment windows, according to video of four flights obtained by The Post through an open records request.

“What if someone is in their apartment unit in one of these giant buildings and they’re changing, and they have their window open because they’re way up high and they don’t think anyone is watching them?” Gonzales-Gutierrez said. “That is crazy.”

The drones buzzed over rooftop decks, balconies and elevated apartment complex pools, the videos show. On one trip, a drone flew past the Colorado State Capitol Building, recording three people on a balcony on the tower under the building’s golden dome. Another time, the drone pilot zoomed in on a license plate so tightly that the car’s small, decorative “LOVE” decal was clearly visible.

Flynn noted that a 200-foot altitude would put the drones well above most of the homes in his less-dense district, and that people on their porches or balconies aren’t somewhere private.

“If someone is out on a balcony, sitting there reading a book… generally speaking, if you are out in public there’s no expectation of privacy,” he said.

The Skydio drones recorded about 54 hours of footage in the first eight weeks of their operation, according to data provided by the police department. Police leadership opted to have the drones’ cameras on and recording whenever the drone is in flight to boost transparency about how the drones are being used, Barnes said.

“It makes sense to keep the camera rolling,” Barnes said. “Then, if there’s an allegation, we just make sure that footage is recorded and treated like digital evidence, uploaded to the evidence management platform so it could be reviewed as necessary. We’re just trying to make sure we establish that balance, being as transparent as possible.”

Drone footage unrelated to criminal investigations is automatically deleted after 60 days, he said. While it’s retained, it’s stored in an evidence system that keeps a record of anyone who looks at it. The drone unit’s sergeant, Brent Kohls, also audits the flight reports monthly. (Footage used in criminal investigations will be on the same retention schedule as body-worn camera footage, police said.)

Kohls noted it would be unusual for the drone footage to be viewed only by the pilot. The feed is often displayed on the wall of the police department’s Real-Time Crime Center as it comes in.

ACLU attorney Nathan Freed Wessler, deputy director of the organization’s speech, privacy and technology project, would rather see police keep the recording off while flying a drone to a call, even if the camera is still livestreaming to police headquarters. In that scenario, a drone pilot might still see a woman tanning topless on her rooftop pool deck, he said, but the government wouldn’t then keep a recording of that privacy violation, amplifying it further.

“The thing we are really worried about is police start deploying drones as first responders for the majority of their calls for service and suddenly you have this crisscrossing network of surveillance all over the city,” Freed Wessler said. “You have the potential for a pervasive record of what everyone is doing all the time.”

Kohls said an officer flying a drone who spotted a different crime occurring while en route to another call would stop to report and respond to that secondary crime, just like an officer would on the ground.

“Absolutely, if an officer sees a crime happening, they’re going to get on the radio, alert dispatch to what they’re observing,” Kohls said. “Hopefully, if they have a few minutes of battery time left still, they can extend their time and circle or overwatch on that scene to provide hopefully life-saving radio traffic, whatever information they need to relay to dispatch to get other officers heading, or the fire department heading that way.”

State and federal laws have not yet caught up to how police are using drones, Freed Wessler said. The Fourth Amendment has what’s known as the plain-view exception, which allows police officers who are lawfully in a place to take action if they see evidence of a crime happening in plain sight.

“The problem here is we are not talking about police doing a thing we would normally expect them to do,” Freed Wessler said. “We are talking about police taking advantage of a new technology that gives them a totally new power to fly at virtually no expense over any part of the city at any time of day and see a whole bunch of stuff happening.”

The Colorado Supreme Court drew a distinction between what a human police officer can see and what technology can do for surveillance in 2021, when the justices found that Colorado Springs police officers violated a man’s constitutional rights when they installed a raised video camera on a utility pole near his home to spy over his fence 24/7 for three months without obtaining a warrant.

Police have broad leeway to watch suspects without first getting a search warrant — like by peering through a fence or climbing the steps of a nearby building to look into a yard. But that¶¶Òõap different from using a subtle video camera to record a person 24/7 for months, the justices concluded.

So far, that’s the closest ruling in Colorado on the issue of drone surveillance, Freed Wessler said. Robinson, the policy director at the ACLU of Colorado, said lawmakers should act to regulate police drone use — either at the state or local level.

“These are flying cops,” said Beryl Lipton, senior investigative researcher at the , a nonprofit focused on digital privacy. “That is another one of those slippery slopes.”

Aside from the legality of surveillance, another question is how the drone footage and flight data is used by the drone companies, Lipton said.

“We live in a time where all these AI-fueled companies have a real drive to integrate AI into everything, and they’re really hungry for new data,” she said. “And we have law enforcement helping to feed these companies in a way they don’t really understand.”

Under its current agreement with Denver police, Skydio doesn’t use drone footage to train its algorithm or improve its product. Flock spells out in its contract that the company can “collect, analyze and anonymize” drone footage, then use that anonymized footage to train its “machine learning algorithms,” and enhance its services.

Lipton added that technology is moving fast — , a company that powers many police departments’ body-worn cameras — this month started to automatically alert a police officer if a person they’re encountering has a warrant out for their arrest.

Prisons are experimenting with “movement analysis” to automatically flag a person’s movements as potentially aggressive before the person perpetrates violence, she said.

“We are technologically at a place where it would not be hard for a drone to fly over an area and basically serve as a license-plate reader for humans,” Lipton said. “… Some of this analysis is just not being done because it is not publicly palatable yet. But it is not like it is technologically difficult for some of these companies.”