The Denver Post
City's truth depends on venue
Wednesday, May 26, 2004 -
I love lawyer's truth. Only a lawyer could look you in the eye - as City Attorney Cole Finegan did Tuesday - and say Denver will pay $1.325 million to the family of a disabled teen shot by police without admitting the police did anything wrong.
What incredible largesse. You know, I always give away millions to people I haven't hurt. Of course, Finegan had to play it this way to limit the city's legal liability. Finegan said it made financial sense to settle with Helen Childs before she actually filed suit in the shooting death of her mentally retarded son, Paul. Even if the city won the lawsuit in a trial and at every level of appeal, the city attorney knew it would cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of bucks just to go to court. What Finegan doesn't say is that his role in court would've been to defend officer James Turney for opening fire on Paul Childs because Childs wouldn't obey an order to drop a knife. Finegan doesn't say that Turney shot Childs within five or six seconds of encountering him. Finegan doesn't say Turney shot Childs even though Childs never made a move to attack him with the knife. The city attorney painstakingly avoided certain facts Tuesday. He didn't want to talk about right or wrong; he wanted to talk about dollars and cents. Helen Childs had told the city she intended to sue for more than $5 million. "The factors we looked at," said Finegan, "were: What are the costs to litigate? What is our possible exposure?" Finegan and his lieutenants examined best case/worst case scenarios. "The worst case was some pretty enormous bucks," the city attorney said. Actually, the worst case is the one Finegan conspicuously refused to mention. Denver's manager of safety suspended Turney for 10 months for tactical mistakes made before he shot Childs, as well as threats Turney made to his ex-mother-in-law in an unrelated case. The settlement doesn't talk about that. Nor does it discuss the fact that Finegan's office will face off against Turney when the officer appeals his suspension to the city's civil service board at a hearing scheduled to begin Sept. 27. In that hearing, Finegan will have to argue that Turney did something wrong. On Tuesday, lawyer's truth wouldn't allow it. Instead, Finegan danced gingerly around what happened in the north Park Hill neighborhood on July 5, 2003. He also waltzed past the obvious outrage that the settlement will cause Denver police. "The police will look at this and come to their own conclusions," he said. The cops concluded the settlement stank. They said they wanted the case to go to trial. That's because the cops still refuse to admit Turney did anything wrong. When the city announced Turney's suspension a few weeks back, 500 angry police officers and their families gathered on the steps of city hall to object. Some of them chanted "Chickenlooper" when Mayor John Hickenlooper wasn't around to accept their letter of protest. Hickenlooper was similarly absent from Tuesday's settlement announcement. Hickenlooper's chief of staff, Michael Bennet, was on hand. "The settlement felt reasonable, given the facts and circumstances of the case," he said. But are those the facts and circumstances of Finegan's financial calculations or the facts and figures of police shooting civilians? The distinction is still critical. Childs' mom collected the largest settlement in any police shooting in the city's history. Could that possibly be only because she threatened to sue? When they talk about Paul Childs' death at city hall these days, they talk a lot about closure. They talk about moving on. Tuesday's settlement ends another chapter in the sad tale. But no one will be shutting the book on this tragedy until changing police behavior becomes as important as saving money. Jim Spencer's column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Contact him at jspencer@denverpost.com or call 303-820-1771. |