Fort Collins will pay $397,000 to settle an excessive force lawsuit filed by a man who police held down and sprayed in the face with pepper spray during a confrontation in Old Town in 2021, causing permanent vision damage.
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Andru Kulas sued the city of Fort Collins and two Fort Collins Police Services officers, Kevin Park and Avery Hanzlicek, after the Aug. 28, 2021, incident caused lasting injury and psychological trauma, his attorney Sarah Schielke with the Loveland firm The Life & Liberty Law Office said in a news release.
According to his attorneys and police body camera footage of the encounter, Kulas was out drinking with friends when he encountered Park and Hanzlicek, who were responding to a call about someone on the roof of a nearby bar.
Kulas began to argue with the officers and refused to take a trespassing summons from Hanzlicek. As the confrontation escalated, the officers threw him to the ground, held him down and sprayed pepper spray into his eyes at a distance of 2 inches, according to his attorney.
“Kulas was left functionally blind, jailed for 36 hours – where video shows him collapsing off a bench and saying he could not breathe – and charged with obstruction and resisting arrest, charges that were both later dismissed,” Kulas’ attorneys wrote in the release.
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Schielke also alleged that police department leaders interfered in an internal affairs investigation to clear Park.
A redacted copy of the internal affairs report shared by Kulas’ attorneys shows that while the document describes Park as exonerated, investigators said Park could have found other ways to issue the trespassing summons.
“The citation was for a low-level offense and there was no harm in allowing Mr. (Kulas) to leave the area. By using physical force when it was not necessary, it shines a negative light on police interactions with the public,” the investigator wrote. “The public trusts officers to make good decisions and (judgment) as to when to use physical force and to know when it is necessary and when it can be avoided.”
Fort Collins police officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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