Denver police officers conducted an unconstitutional traffic stop last year when they claimed a driver rolled through stop signs even though there were no stop signs along his route, a federal judge found.
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The officers, Emmett Hurd and Matthew Mullen, also cited broken taillights as a reason for the stop, during which they discovered an illegal gun. But the driver’s BMW did have one working taillight, which is all that is required under state law. The officers did not have a legitimate reason to pull the driver over, U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado Judge Nina Wang found in a January ruling.
Wang threw out all evidence connected to the traffic stop — including the gun that officers found under a seat during a protective sweep of the vehicle — which forced federal prosecutors to dismiss the entire criminal case against the driver, Azhaunte Forrest. He had faced a charge of illegally possessing a firearm.
“To the extent the officers mistakenly suspected that Mr. Forrest failed to properly stop at a stop sign, such a mistake of fact is unreasonable,” the judge wrote in a January order. “As Mr. Forrest succinctly puts it, ‘(n)o objectively reasonable and credible law enforcement officer would have believed that Mr. Forrest failed to stop at stop signs that do not exist.’”
Forrest sued the two officers Monday for unlawful search and seizure.
“The Denver Police Department stopped a young, African American man driving a nice car while Black,” said David Lane, Forrest’s attorney. “…They couldn’t even come up with a good pretext for stopping him. And you know law enforcement is all about accountability. Now it is time for these officers to be held accountable for violating your constitutional rights.”
The officers spotted Forrest as he drove on Colfax Avenue on May 13, 2025. The police officers pulled a U-turn to follow Forrest after the officers noticed two of his taillights were emitting white light, not red as required by law. Forrest then made a series of turns that the officers described as “quick” and “sudden,” and that they believed were an attempt to “evade” them, although they had not yet turned on their lights or siren to stop him, according to Wang’s ruling. Forrest then pulled over and stopped, and the officers suspected he did so in order to hide a weapon.
The officers turned on their lights and siren and conducted the traffic stop. Hurd told Forrest that the reason for the stop was that he was “not coming to complete stops at stop signs” and because his brake lights were showing white light, not red. The officers apparently did not realize that the sole still-working red brake light on Forrest’s BMW meant he was fully in compliance with traffic regulations, Wang wrote.
During the traffic stop, the officers discovered that Forrest was wanted on a shoplifting charge and was driving on a license that had been suspended for failing to pay child support. The officers opted not to arrest Forrest but decided he could return to his vehicle only after they conducted a “protective sweep” to be sure there were no weapons inside, according to Wang’s order. Forrest asked that someone pick him up instead, but the officers refused, instead insisting they needed to check his BMW for weapons.
The officers found a gun under Forrest’s driver’s seat. As a convicted felon, Forrest was prohibited from having a gun, and officers arrested him. He was later indicted on a federal charge of illegally possessing a firearm.
“Absent reasonable suspicion that Mr. Forrest violated a traffic or equipment regulation, the officers violated Mr. Forrest’s Fourth Amendment rights by initiating a traffic stop,” Wang concluded.
Both officers remain at the Denver Police Department, state certification records show, and neither has been disciplined, Lane said.
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A spokesman for the Denver Police Department declined to comment on the case Tuesday.
State records show no credibility reports for the officers’ professional certifications through the Peace Officer Standards and Training Board. Since 2019, state law has required law enforcement agencies that employ POST certificate holders to notify the board if a certificate holder knowingly made an untruthful statement in a criminal justice record, among other circumstances. POST is then required to begin a process to revoke the officer’s certification.
Wang noted in her ruling that the officers did not mention stop signs in their written reports as a basis for the traffic stop, and instead included only the BMW’s taillights and Forrest’s evasive driving.
“The credibility of Officer Hurd’s verbal statement to Mr. Forrest about the stop sign violations is substantially undermined by the fact that the officers elected not to address stop signs in their reports as a basis for the traffic stop,” Wang wrote.
Federal prosecutors later focused their legal arguments on the alleged stop sign violations and careless driving while minimizing the brake lights as a reason for the stop, apparently conceding that the two broken taillights were not a violation of law, the court records show.
The Denver Police Department in 2024 prohibited officers from pulling drivers over for minor traffic infractions — like broken taillights — unless the officer also had a second reason for the stop, like suspecting the driver is connected to a more serious crime or as a response to a specific, ongoing crime trend.
It was not immediately clear Tuesday whether the officers acted within that policy during Forrest’s traffic stop, though court records note that the officers knew the area around Colfax Avenue to be a “high-crime area.”
Lane noted that Forrest has been pulled over multiple additional times since the May 2025 stop.
“He has been stopped a couple of times since then, for nothing,” Lane said. “I think Denver is patrolling Colfax looking for young Black men driving nice cars.”
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