On Monday night, Denver City Council approved another settlement for a police killing. This time: $800,000 for the shooting death of Duane Manzanares.
The killing took place in the early evening outside of Tacos Acapulco, near East Colfax Avenue. The police were responding to a 911 caller who reported seeing a man fire a gun into a white Mercedes sedan. Officers found the car, shell casings and bullets.
When they saw Manzanares walking down East Colfax, he matched the description from the caller. They saw a large gun in his waistband, according to the District Attorney’s investigation into the shooting.
The officers approached him, and he asked why they were stopping him. One officer said it was because he had a gun — a fact Manzanares did not argue, according to the lawsuit.
“Why are you pointing a gun at me?” Manzanares asked the officers. “I ain’t pointing no guns at you.”
The officers repeated it was because he had a gun and warned him not to reach for it. He lifted his arms up away from his waist.
“Did I reach for it?” he asked.
The officers yelled, “no,” the lawsuit stated.
The shooting
Manzanares casually tossed a small plastic bottle of alcohol he was holding casually, away from the police, according to District Attorney Beth McCann’s investigation. Then he reached to his waist, where the officers had seen the gun.
HALO camera footage shows his hand was down when shots were fired, touching the bottom of his shirt but still visible.
Before the bottle hit the ground, three of the four officers — Samuel Bailey, Steven Whiteman and Ryan Nelson — opened fire, shooting 11 times. Officer Christine Abrams did not shoot.
“At the moment they discharged their firearms, the officers reasonably believed that they were in
danger of being killed or receiving serious bodily injury,” McCann wrote in her investigation. “It was also reasonable for them to fear for the safety of citizens who were present at this busy intersection in the early evening.”
The shots were fired 33 seconds after the encounter began. Manzanares died of multiple gunshot wounds.
Two views of the killing
A lawyer for Manzanares' family argued he was not a threat to the officers.
“At no point in time did Mr. Manzanares reach for the suspected firearm, and his hands and arms were in full view of the officers throughout the encounter,” the lawsuit, filed by the Civil Rights Litigation Group, stated. “Nor did Mr. Manzanares attempt to flee or do anything aggressive that posed a threat of danger to anyone.”
The officers gave conflicting accounts of why they fired, with some saying his arm went behind his back and others saying it dropped.
The police killing, the attorneys argued, was “unjustified and unconstitutional.”
The case will not go before a jury because of McCann’s decision not to prosecute the officers criminally. Instead, it will end with the settlement in the civil case.
The lawsuit claimed that because the officers had “significant experience” patrolling East Colfax Avenue, they had “routinely encountered persons armed with weapons.”
The money from the settlement will be split between the attorneys and Manzanares’ family.
This is the latest in a string of police misconduct settlements the city has paid out, preventing cases like this from going before a jury. The city has spent more than $30 million on settlements since 2020.
