Two Broomfield police officers manhandled a disabled 15-year-old girl during a 2017 arrest, ignored warnings about her fragile physical condition and caused lasting injuries, a federal lawsuit filed Monday alleges.
“This really captures the problem of overuse of the criminal legal system,” said attorney Zach Warren, who is representing the anonymous family who filed the lawsuit. “You have a child who is injured, who needs medical care, and instead we get a police officer handcuffing her and hobbling her and taking her to a juvenile detention facility.”
Broomfield police and Broomfield city and county officials did not immediately return requests for comment Tuesday.
The Dec. 10, 2017, incident began when a 15-year-old girl, identified only by her initials in the complaint, got into a disagreement with a friend that resulted in both girls suffering minor injuries, according to the lawsuit.
The 15-year-old girl, now 17, suffers from a rare disorder that causes her muscles, tendons, and other soft tissue to gradually turn into bone. The disorder severely limits the girl’s movements and means even minor, superficial injuries can cause serious harm. Any injury to the muscles of someone with the disorder can rapidly speed up the process of tissue changing into bone, according to the National Institute of Health.
After the disagreement between the two girls, who were home alone, the friend called 911 and asked for medical assistance for the 15-year-old, because, according to the lawsuit, the friend was aware that minor scrapes — a red mark, in this case — could cause significant problems because of the disorder, according to the lawsuit.
When police arrived, Officer Nicholas Weiman questioned both girls about what happened. The friend had a red mark on her ear, and the 15-year-old girl had a red mark on her arm, according to the lawsuit, which alleges that Weiman misinterpreted the 15-year-old girl’s disability as disrespect and evasion.
In a report, Weiman wrote that the 15-year-old girl “continued to look straight down and didn’t appear to be engaged with what was happening around her,” according to the lawsuit.
The girl physically cannot raise her head because of her disability, Warren said Tuesday.
Weiman arrested the 15-year-old girl and restrained her with handcuffs, despite learning about the disorder from the girl’s father, who returned home while police were still there and told officers the handcuffs would cause his daughter excruciating pain.
The handcuffed girl was then taken to St. Anthony’s North Health Campus in Westminster to be medically cleared before she was booked into a juvenile detention facility. At the hospital, the handcuffs were removed and the girl was examined by an unidentified medical provider who lifted her arm in a painful manner in an attempt to examine the red mark.
“A.N. informed her, clearly and unequivocally, that physically raising her arm in that matter was painful — that her arm could not reach upwards because of her disability,” according to the lawsuit. “The medical provider exclaimed that A.N. did not have a say in the matter — that she was required to submit to an examination because she had been arrested.”
The next time the provider reached for her arm, the 15-year-old girl recoiled and pulled away, according to the lawsuit. This prompted Weiman and a second officer, Richard Norton, to put the girl’s handcuffs back on, according to the lawsuit. Weiman then pinned the girl to the exam table while Norton applied a “leg hobble” to the girl, binding her legs together, according to the lawsuit.
The officers then connected the hobble to the girl’s handcuffs, forcing her into a sitting position, according to the lawsuit. The girl screamed in pain, according to the lawsuit.
After the exam, the officers lifted the girl by her arms into a wheelchair, and then lifted her again into the back of a police car. The lawsuit alleges they put the girl into the police car with such force that she fell against the far wall of the car and could not right herself because of her limited range of motion.
After the arrest, the girl’s regular medical providers noted increased calcification and bone growth around the girl’s right shoulder, wrists, and chest, according to the lawsuit.
“You can see on the imaging there are new bones, new calcifications that correspond exactly with my client’s description of how she was handled and mistreated,” Warren said.
The lawsuit seeks unspecified actual and compensatory damages, and asks that Broomfield police be ordered to change their policies to prohibit the use of metal handcuffs and leg hobbles on disabled, non-combative children.
“They want to ensure that this same thing does not happen again,” Warren said.
