The Denver City Council is poised to pay $40,000 to settle a federal lawsuit that contends police brutalized a man after mistaking him for someone who had caused a disturbance at a LoDo nightclub.
Eric Winfield, 29, of Denver said the late-night incident on Oct. 27, 2007, began with him going to a downtown bar to watch a World Series game between the Colorado Rockies and the Boston Red Sox.
The graphic designer and artist said the night ended hours later, about 1:45 a.m., when police unnecessarily attacked him, leaving him with a broken nose, lacerations to his face, chipped teeth, two black eyes, a broken blood vessel in one eye and bruised ribs.
“People need to realize it can happen to them,” Winfield said in an interview. “These police officers are just horrible at their jobs. If they would have done two and a half minutes of police work, nothing would have happened, and I would have just gone home that night, and I would have two and a half years of my life back.”
The city lawyers, in court filings, agreed that Winfield was passing through the crowd outside Le Rouge nightclub at Market and 14th streets and had not been a patron. The Denver City Council on Monday will vote on the recommendation from the city attorney’s office that it settle the lawsuit for $40,000. The city’s lawyers were not immediately available for comment.
To draw attention to what happened, Winfield’s sisters established a Facebook page called “Justice for Eric Winfield.”
His lawsuit stated that after the baseball game, he went to a friend’s apartment and then to his sister’s downtown apartment for a party.
Later, when he was planning to leave downtown, Winfield ended up following a friend through a crowd gathered outside Le Rouge, the lawsuit said.
He was walking through the crowd when a bouncer pointed at him and yelled, “That’s him; he’s the one,” prompting the three officers to beat him, according to the lawsuit filed on his behalf by Englewood lawyers Alan Molk and Thomas Helms.
The lawsuit said Officer Antonio Milow punched Winfield in the face. It said two other officers, Glenn Martin and Thomas Johnston, then joined in, kneeing him in the groin and repeatedly punching him.
Milow, who weighs about 300 pounds, said in a deposition that he acted after Winfield, who weighs 160 pounds, took a swing at him and kneed him in the groin. Court documents state that one of the other officers, Johnston, did cage fighting as a hobby during his off-duty hours.
Winfield, who denies any aggression, initially was arrested on suspicion of resisting arrest and assaulting an officer. The charges later were dismissed. The lawsuit said he suffered nerve damage in his wrists because officers repeatedly refused to loosen the handcuffs.
It also states that he was taken by ambulance to Denver Health Medical Center, where he was handcuffed to a gurney for several hours before he received 10 stitches in his head.
Christopher N. Osher: 303-954-1747 or cosher@denverpost.com
