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One night in May 2020, Nicholas Orlin and Shawn Murphy attended one of the George Floyd protests in Denver.
According to their lawyers, police launched gas canisters into what was a peaceful protest. Orlin put a traffic cone over one of the canisters and Murphy kicked another one away from the crowd in an attempt to protect fellow protesters.
Orlin and Murphy were a few blocks apart that night. But their experiences ended up the same: Police fired at them with kinetic impact projectiles, or what are called “less lethal” projectiles often made of rubber, plastic or bean bag rounds full of pellets.
A projectile hit Orlin, breaking a bone near his eye and causing him to suffer a traumatic brain injury and lose about 20 percent of his eyesight, according to Birk Baumgartner, his attorney.
Murphy also broke a bone near his eye. One of his retinas detached and he now has a blank spot in his vision.
“They could very easily kill a person,” Baumgartner said about the “less lethal” projectiles. “Especially if they're shot in the head.”
Like dozens of protesters injured at the hands of Denver Police in 2020, Orlin and Murphy are settling with the city, in this case for $465,000. City Council approved the payments Monday.
The Denver Police Department declined Denverite's request for comment.
In 2022, a jury ruled that Denver and Aurora Police’s use of ‘less lethal’ weapons in 2020 violated protesters’ constitutional rights.
A dozen protesters involved in that case won $14 million in damages. At the time, legal defense for the city said Denver Police was operating in the best interest of the public safety staff and that the protests brought a level of destruction the city was not prepared for.
A 2020 investigation by the city’s independent police watchdog found that Denver police used weapons recklessly against peaceful protesters. In the years since then, the police department has amended its policies around use of force and crowd control.
Baumgartner said that his clients had a similar experience to claimants in the earlier case, who were hit with “less lethal” ammunition despite protesting peacefully.
“The police had deployed these gas canisters despite there being no violence by the protesters at the time,” he said.
The settlement adds to the millions paid out by the city of Denver in both jury trials and settlements involving people injured during the protests.
“Any time a case is settled, it generally represents a compromise,” said Clifford Beem, another attorney who worked on the case, about the settlement outcome.
But he hopes the millions in payouts also send a bigger message to Denver Police.
“We take on these cases because in addition to helping our clients, we want to try to correct what we see as abusive and illegal behavior on the part of the police that are just willy-nilly injuring people, going out and shooting them in the face with these deadly munitions for no reason, for no good reason,” Beem said.
So far this year, Denver has paid more than $1.6 million in settlements involving the Denver Police Department.
