Brian HoweyBrandon Washington ran a red light in April 2017 and smashed into another car in an Aurora intersection. Aurora Police Department Sgt. Jeffery Longnecker, who witnessed the accident, approached the scene to check on him.
When a dazed Washington tried to get out of the car against Longnecker’s orders, Longecker grabbed his arm, and a struggle ensued. Officer Benjamin Petering arrived and, at Longnecker’s direction, tased Washington repeatedly. Officers yanked Washington from the car and kneeled on his back as he struggled.
“I can’t breathe,” Washington, an asthmatic Black man, said repeatedly as officers handcuffed him.
“You can breathe,” an officer can be heard saying in body-worn police camera footage.
Police found cocaine in Washington’s clenched hands and a stolen pistol inside the car, which Washington had recently rented. Washington, who claimed the gun wasn’t his, had a previous felony conviction that barred him from possessing a gun, and he risked decades in prison for gun and drug charges the federal government filed after the car crash.
What might have been a slam-dunk criminal case for the feds instead became a federal civil rights victory for Washington.
During Washington’s criminal proceedings, a judge ruled that Longnecker breached Washington’s Fourth Amendment rights when he searched Washington without probable cause. The judge suppressed the gun and drug evidence, scuttling the federal criminal case and allowing Washington to walk free. Washington then leveraged that judge’s constitutional ruling to sue the police department for the unlawful search and excessive force – a case that ended in the city paying Washington a $125,000 settlement.
Despite the officers’ missteps, the police department conducted no internal affairs investigation of the Washington case, and Longnecker and Petering were never disciplined, according to police records, court documents and statements by department officials.
“That means nobody was communicating about it. Nobody was pulling each other’s coat or holding nobody accountable,” Washington said about his case.
Longnecker is one of at least two officers each named in two separate lawsuits that have been settled by the city since 2018.
The Sentinel’s review of those cases revealed that neither officer was investigated nor disciplined by the department for their roles in those incidents, even after they seem to have violated department policies and the constitutional rights of those they arrested. Those cases, just a fraction of the 27 police-involved lawsuits recently settled by the city, highlight a pattern of problematic officer behavior that went overlooked by the department even after it cost the city $19.8 million in settlement payouts and helped land Aurora in a long and costly consent decree.
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