Update: Protester Who Demonstrated Against Homeless Sweep Acquitted

The trial of Brandon Coleman, who'd been arrested while protesting a homeless encampment sweep, started at 8:30 a.m. on October 12. The city called three of the officers involved in the arrest; Coleman testified as well. And after deliberating for less than fifteen minutes, the jury found Coleman not guilty.

“Police brutality is when eight officers violently arrested these community members, endangering their lives. As happens often in Denver, city prosecutors tried to protect that behavior,” says Coleman’s attorney, Tyrone Glover. “The expedient decisiveness of the verdict speaks volumes. Mr. Coleman believes the sweeps, arrests, charges, and past fourteen months of punishment by process should never have happened in the first place. His co-defendant goes to trial on November 9.”

Read our original story published the morning of October 12 below:

In August 2021, the City of Denver swept an encampment outside of the Four Winds American Indian Council community center at West Fifth Avenue and Bannock Street, which had developed a reputation as a safe space for Native Americans.

By the time the sweep began early on August 31, dozens of protesters had gathered. Many lobbed verbal critiques at the Denver cops, city employees and contractors who'd come out to conduct and oversee the action. Two of the protesters were arrested. One of them, 29-year-old Brandon Coleman, goes on trial today, October 12, on charges of interference with a police officer and failure to obey a police order.

"It just seems really unreasonable and not in the interest of justice," says Tyrone Glover, a civil rights attorney representing Coleman. While the Denver City Attorney's Office agreed to dismiss a third charge of resistance to police authority, Glover thinks that the city should be willing to dismiss the other two charges, too. "It never, in my view, got heated or violent with the officers," he notes.

Coleman, who had no prior criminal record, lived near the center and just wanted to protest the sweep, his attorney says: "He's someone who is not shy about his passions for social justice and community activism, and so when there were folks in his community asking for help, he and others ended up showing up with their voices, showing up with their bodies and airing their grievances on behalf of the community."

Coleman went with a friend, AJ Gordon; the two got separated at the site.
As city contractors were setting up a fence around the encampment, Gordon wound up alone in a group of police officers. Then, without warning or provocation, Glover says, police grabbed and arrested him. Coleman tried to step in to save his friend and wound up arrested, too.

"In that moment, his friend was being subjected to essentially an assault, an excessive use of police force," Glover says. "Similar to if you’re being assaulted by a fellow citizen or someone else is, you don’t have to sit back and let that happen. You can help out if you want to. It’s maybe not the safest thing, but he saw his friend being piled on and reached out and tried to help."

According to Glover, the City Attorney's Office has "essentially conceded that everything up until the point he tried to help his friend out was protected speech."

And Glover thinks that what came after should also not have resulted in charges. "Who knows? Maybe his just reaching out and ultimately being confronted by other officers and arrested kept any additional excessive force from occurring," Glover says.

The City Attorney's Office declined to comment because the cases are set for trial.

The facts of the case aren't really in dispute, according to Glover. And at trial, he says, the question will come down to whether the jury believes that Coleman acted in a reasonable and lawful manner while the police overstepped.

"You have all these cases where juries are coming back and saying, 'Y'all are excessive.' It’s symptomatic of the greater disconnect in all of this," Glover says.

Gordon, who is facing charges of failure to obey a police order and resistance to police authority, will go on trial November 9.

"The Denver police have a history of brutality against protestors. When they were arrested, we believe that AJ Gordon was standing alongside their unhoused neighbors and in the interest of Indigenous sovereignty. In the interest of justice, we are hoping the City of Denver will do the right thing and dismiss the charges," says Amelia Power, an attorney representing Gordon.

In response to the sweep, leadership at the Four Winds American Indian Council demanded that the City of Denver set up a safe-camping site for Native American individuals. The Colorado Village Collaborative eventually set up an Indigenous peoples-inclusive site in the La Alma/Lincoln Park neighborhood; that safe-camping site is now in the process of moving to a new location in the Montbello neighborhood.

In the meantime, its former residents are staying at other safe-camping sites run by the CVC.

This story has been updated to reflect the results of the trial.