Protester awarded $350,000 settlement from Denver says he hopes for change

DENVER (KDVR) — Michael Jacobs says he is happy with the $350,000 settlement approved by the Denver City Council. Jacobs claimed he was beaten by police and violated with a baton during an arrest at a protest in 2020. The charges against him were dropped.

“I’m happy that a chapter in my life is closed and I can look to new horizons, but it’s hard,” Jacobs said.

Body camera video from that night shows the incident. Jacobs claims he was taken to the ground by a group of officers with no warning.

He can be heard in the video yelling, “They punched me in the face! He punched me in my butthole! He tried to sodomize me!”

A bystander also took a video of the incident.

“I was not only knocked around, beaten and battered, I had a baton shoved up my anus, and I had my rotator cuff torn in half that resulted in a surgery that had me in recovery for a full year, and the emotional trauma, unfortunately, is not something that ever goes away,” Jacobs said Tuesday.

He and his attorney, Felipe Bohnet-Gomez, hope this settlement sends a message.

Denver Police declined to comment on the settlement but released a statement that said:

“The Denver Police Department will respectfully decline commenting specifically on the settlement. The Denver Police Department Internal Affairs Bureau investigated this incident and the officer who used his baton was not found to have violated the Department’s Use of Force policy, though through the investigation it was determined that same officer failed to make, file or complete official reports in violation of DPD Rules and Regulations 607. Additional violations discovered during this IA investigation include:

• Three supervisors were found to have violated the policy regarding Complaint and Discipline for Sworn Officers (Policy 503.01 in DPD Operations Manual) resulting in written reprimands.
• One of the supervisors also received an oral reprimand related to violation of body-worn camera policies

FOX31 is working on learning the sum of settlements made and potentially breaking down the average payout.

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