Police Brutality In Spotlight

Rocky Mountain News

These are the stories that make headlines:

* A video shows a Denver police officer slamming the face of a handcuffed bicyclist into the pavement.

* A cell phone captures another Denver police officer shoving a woman backwards, breaking her wrist.

* Another officer is accused of jumping up and down on the back of a 16-year-old as he lay in an alley, begging for his life.

In the last year, two Denver police officers have been charged with assault, stemming from accusations of on-duty brutality.

Today, the city is expected to shell out $10,000 to Trudy Trout, who was shoved to the ground after celebrating a friend's 50th birthday at a comedy club a year ago. Her attorney says officers lied about the incident in reports.

Although it's easy to identify a handful of high-profile use-of-force incidents, determining whether that translates to widespread brutality is far more difficult. In fact, complaints of "unnecessary force" were down 13.6 percent in Denver last year.

Andrew Reid, a civil rights lawyer in Denver, said allegations of brutality are the result of failures in training and supervision and a culture that rewards police officers with medals of valor when they are involved in fatal shootings.

"They have, in my opinion, a number of felons on the police force. They know it, and they refuse to address it," he said.

Chief Gerry Whitman said it's important to remember that there are "a lot of details to these situations" that are not made public, either because of personnel issues or because of an active investigation.