In September of 2020, JaLonte Jones, 18, died of injuries from a shooting in southeast Denver. An internal investigation from the Office of the Independent Monitor found that the Denver Police Department (DPD) officers dispatched to the scene of the shooting did not give Jones first aid. Now, the city is paying Jones' estate $450,000, after City Council approved the liability claim Monday.
Jones can be heard saying "I'm dying" in camera footage from the night published by the Denver Post. The officer responds to Jones by saying "I've got an ambulance coming for you, are you going to answer any questions or no?"
Ciara Anderson, an attorney for Jones' family, said that for a police officer to respond to an incident "knowing that there's a gunshot victim, to sit there and interrogate him rather than do anything at all falls well below the standard that any police officer should employ and it falls well below any of the most basic levels of humanity.
"Just minimal levels of humanity and care could have saved JaLonte Jones, could have meant that his daughter would be born into a world and know her father."
In the video, the officer does not give first aid to Jones, who is seen bleeding on the ground.
For more than 10 minutes, Jones laid on the ground while one of the officers involved asked Jones, who rarely responds, questions about what happened. At one point, one officer instructs another officer to check if Jones is still breathing. A letter detailing the incident says that after about ten minutes, a third officer arrived and struggled to find the wound in an attempt to apply a tourniquet, during which paramedics arrived. By then, Jones had stopped breathing.
One of the officers involved, David Clough, resigned before the end of the investigation. The other, Dewayne Rodgers, was fired as a result of the shooting.
In a letter detailing Rodgers' dismissal, Chief Deputy Executive Director Mary Dulacki wrote that Rodgers had undergone CPR and first aid training, including a tourniquet class. Rodgers said he usually carried a tourniquet while on duty but did not have one the night of the shooting. The letter said Rodgers told investigators he tried to keep Jones alert rather than give aid, out of fear of harming Jones since he could not find the gunshot wound. Dulacki wrote that the area of the wound was clearly visible given the blood on Jones' leg, and that Rodgers could have applied pressure even without a tourniquet.
"At no time did Officer Rodgers crouch down near the victim," Dulacki wrote. "At no time did Officer Rodgers touch the victim. At no time did Officer Rodgers offer words of comfort."
When asked for comment, DPD did not comment on the settlement directly but confirmed that Clough and Rodgers were no longer with Denver Police.
"DPD proactively initiated an Internal Affairs investigation when, in the early stages of the investigation into the murder of JaLonte' Jones, the Department had concerns about a failure by the first responding officers to render aid to Mr. Jones," wrote DPD's media relations unit. "The result of that thorough internal investigation resulted in the termination of former officer Dewayne Rodgers, and a second officer who was under investigation resigned prior to the conclusion of the internal investigation process."
The settlement is just one of many costly claims involving DPD in recent years, many related to misconduct claims dating back to the 2020 George Floyd protests. So far in 2023, Denver has paid more than $3 million in liability claims involving police.
