'Don't hurt us!' Denver police 'terrorized' family when they raided wrong apartment: Lawsuit

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A family suing Denver police officers is accusing a SWAT team that raided the wrong apartment of "terrorizing" them and violating their constitutional rights as they hunted for an attempted murder suspect who lived next door, according to the lawsuit filed in Denver County District Court on Tuesday.

Body-cam video obtained by Paste BN shows the heavily armed SWAT team demanding that a mother and grandmother leave the apartment. While the team sweeps the apartment with weapons at the ready, two young girls begin screaming and the officers try to calm them.

"We are still recovering from the trauma of this experience and have required extensive counseling," their mother, Kirsty Shelton, told Paste BN in a statement.

The lawsuit also alleges that the Denver Police Department have covered up the officer's actions, characterizing the raid as an "evacuation for their safety."

"They continue to pretend that this terrifying raid never happened," Shelton said. "Someone must stand up against this injustice, or it will continue to be swept under the rug."

The lawsuit names 10 named Denver police officers but does not name the department itself.

The Denver Police Department has not responded to Paste BN's requests for comment. The Denver Police Protective Association, the union representing Denver police officers, declined to comment, citing the lawsuit and an internal investigation.

Lawsuit says officers knew they were at wrong apartment

Kirsty Shelton was preparing lunch on June 6, 2023, when she said she heard loud banging at her door and saw assault rifles pointed at her windows.

Officers were at her apartment building to arrest Danny Gene Garcia on suspicion of attempted murder, according to police records included in the complaint.

"It was a legitimate police activity," John Holland, a lawyer for the family, told Paste BN. "It was just mounted against the wrong people with actual knowledge that they were not in the right place."

The complaint shows multiple sworn statements showing that officers involved in the action knew Garcia lived in apartment 307, while the Sheltons live in apartment 306.

"With objective unreasonableness, defendants did not bother to read the plainly visible apartment number on the door they were ramming," the complaint says.

Bodycam footage reviewed by Paste BN shows the officers demanding that Shelton and Shelton-Knight exit their apartment with their hands up. Shelton's mother, Sharon Shelton-Knight, emerges and tells officers where Garcia's apartment is, later adding in a distressed voice: "My grandchildren are in there."

Shelton then leaves the apartment, and both reiterate that the suspect is in the neighboring apartment.

Bodycam footage shows terrified girls

Shelton and Shelton-Knight asked officers to be allowed to return to the apartment to calm the girls but the officers denied the request, the lawsuit says. The officers then proceeded to enter apartment 306 unconstitutionally, the lawsuit alleges.

The children are heard crying and screaming on the bodycam footage and are seen cowering in their room. One child screams, "Don't hurt us!" as an officer enters.

That's when the officers start to try to calm the girls down, the footage shows.

The officers then allowed Shelton to return to the apartment to calm and remove her daughters, though the lawsuit alleges that she was still being treated as a suspect.

The lawsuit says that Shelton was made to carry her youngest daughter down the stairs, though she cannot carry more than 10 pounds or take the stairs without "experiencing excruciating pain." She nearly collapsed from the pain after reaching the second floor, according to the complaint.

Officers placed the family in a police car for one to two hours, during which Shelton had an anxiety attack, according to the complaint.

The complaint says that the raid caused physical injuries, personal physical sickness and post-traumatic stress disorder to the Shelton family.

Law professor says case is 'troubling'

Stanley Goldman, a law professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, told Paste BN that the case is "troubling."

"If (the police) were given the right information and carelessly treating these innocent civilians, knowing they're innocent, just because it's more convenient for them to do so to the point of terrorizing them ... that's pretty much an example ... of conduct that you can sue over," Goldman said.

He said that officers needed to act within reason when securing the scene.

"If they know the dangerous criminal, or they're told the dangerous criminal's in 307, and they're just trying to clear 306, well, that may be a reasonable goal, but you still got to go about it in a reasonable fashion," Goldman said.

Coverup alleged

The lawsuit alleges that officers either deliberately failed to describe their actions or fabricated a sanitized version of the events.

In an after-action report included in the complaint, incident commander Lt. Kyle Smith wrote: "Occupants of 306 were contacted, advised of the situation and evacuated for their safety."

"It is indisputable that they did not invite them out," Holland, the family's attorney, said. "They rammed their door, they pointed guns at them, they pulled them out, and then they wouldn't listen to them."

Other reports included in the complaint use similar language, painting the actions in 306 as an evacuation.

The police department has not disclosed interviews from internal investigations of the officers involved, the lawsuit says. "The city is actively closing ranks behind their SWAT team and refusing to disclose information," said Dan Weiss, an attorney for the family.

The lawsuit seeks undisclosed damages.

Lawsuit echoes 2024 case

It is not the first time the department has been sued for raiding the wrong home.  

Last year, a jury awarded 78-year-old Ruby Johnson $3.76 million in damages, finding that found two Denver police officers acted with willful and wanton disregard of Johnson’s constitutional right to be free from an unreasonable search and seizure in 2022, Paste BN previously reported.

The SWAT team was hunting for a stolen pickup truck that investigators believed had four semi-automatic handguns, a rifle, a revolver, two drones, $4,000 cash and an iPhone inside of it, according to The Associated Press.

The owner of the truck shared the "Find My" location with police, who tracked it to Johnson's home in Denver's Montbello neighborhood, according to the lawsuit.

Johnson, a retired U.S. Postal Service worker and grandmother, had just gotten out of the shower and was still in her robe and slippers when a SWAT officer on a bullhorn commanded her to come out with her hands raised.

When she opened her front door, Johnson was greeted by an armored military personnel carrier on her front lawn, marked police vehicles along her street and SWAT officers in full military gear armed with tactical rifles with a K9 German Shepherd in tow, the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit was one of the first resolved under a provision of a police reform bill passed in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd. State lawmakers created the right under the bill for Colorado residents to sue individual police officers for state constitutional violations in state court rather than federal court.

The lawsuit brought by the Shelton family uses the same provision.

Contributing: Eric Lagatta