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In a lawsuit filed in federal court March 28, attorneys for the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado alleged that the Denver Police Department engaged in racial profiling and biased policing when it targeted Denver resident Jose Sanchez, detained him without reasonable suspicion, and falsely accused him of being an “illegal immigrant.” Officers for the DPD then illegally arrested Sanchez for supposedly providing “false identification,” and illegally entered and searched the home of his girlfriend, Joshinna Carreras, without a warrant.

The supposedly “false” identification was a current and valid photo ID card issued by the Department of Homeland Security, which confirmed Mr. Sanchez’s legal presence and authorization to work in the United States.

Sanchez was jailed for five days, causing him to lose his job.

“This case highlights two issues that the Citizens Oversight Board and the Independent Monitor have repeatedly identified as subjects of multiple complaints about Denver police: Racial profiling and illegal entries into the homes of Denver residents,” said Mark Silverstein, ACLU of Colorado Legal Director. “Denver police need to base their policing on evidence, not biased stereotypes and they need to respect the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches and seizures.”

These are the facts asserted in the lawsuit:

Mr. Sanchez visited his girlfriend’s home on the evening of July 29, 2010 and stepped outside to smoke a cigarette while his girlfriend, Ms. Carreras, took a shower. While outside, Mr. Sanchez conversed in Spanish with an acquaintance; another Hispanic man. Police officers approached and demanded that Mr. Sanchez identify himself. When he provided his name, police immediately handcuffed him and demanded he produce an ID. He said the ID was in the apartment, and He offered to go inside to retrieve it. Instead, police officers went inside –declaring that they had the “right” to do so, even without asking the consent of Ms. Carreras, who was still in the shower.

They rummaged through Joshinna Carreras’ home and belongings, while she was still in the shower unaware that anyone was in her home. When she came out of her bathroom, startled at hearing strange voices in her apartment, one of the officers told her that Mr. Sanchez had given them consent to search her apartment. That was a lie.

Ms. Carreras finally located Mr. Sanchez’ photo identification in a backpack. The officers seized the valid Employment Authorization card and immediately declared that it was “fake.” They accused Mr. Sanchez of having multiple pieces of fake identification (though no others were found) arrested him without probable cause and took him to jail. Although the officers could have quickly checked the validity of the card with Homeland Security, they did not bother to do so.

Later, the City Attorney dropped the unjustified charge.

Silverstein said the unlawful treatment of the plaintiffs in the case is indicative of the Denver Police Department custom of closing ranks and not objecting to the actions of each other even when those actions are blatantly unconstitutional.

“None of the defendants objected to the hand-cuffing of Mr. Sanchez or to his arrest without probable cause,” the suit reads. “None of the defendants made any effort to stop their fellow officers from carrying out the illegal search of Ms. Carreras’s home and belongings. ... None of the individual defendants reported the misconduct of any of the officers to the Denver Police Department’s Internal Affairs Bureau.”

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court, names the City and County of Denver; Denver Police Department Sgt. Peri Beaulieu and DPD officers Dan Giles, Kevin Ujcich, Jeffery Heinis, Andre Strode and Glen S. Riggs as co-defendants. It requests a jury trial and seeks compensatory and punitive damages from each of the individual defendants, compensatory damages from the City and County of Denver, and reasonable attorney’s fees.

“The Denver Police Department has authorized its officers to enforce an ordinance that prohibits the carrying of false identification. But the department has failed to train its officers to recognize valid government-issued photo ID cards,” Silverstein said. “That’s a set-up for more false arrests and illegal detentions like this one and a recipe for the continuing deterioration of police-community relations.”

In addition to Silverstein, attorneys representing Sanchez and Carreras are ACLU Staff Attorney Rebecca Teitlebaum Wallace and ACLU Cooperating Attorneys Elisa Moran and John Mosby.

More on this case

Student journalists from Overland High School’s decades-old student newspaper, The Scout, spoke out Thursday at the ACLU of Colorado, voicing complaints that the school principal has prematurely ended production of the paper for this year and fired their adviser in a student-administrator debate over “prior review” of newspaper content.

Retaliation against public school students for publishing lawful editorial content is specifically prohibited by Colorado law, and is also contrary to the First Amendment, Mark Silverstein, Legal Director of the ACLU of Colorado said during the press conference. “The Colorado Legislature has expressly declared in statue that students of the public schools shall have the right to exercise the right of freedom of speech and of the press.”

But student journalists Lori Schafer and Jaclyn Gutierrez, both editors at The Scout, told members of the media that there First Amendment rights had been abridged by the school principal.

The censorship started March 8, when students, complying with Principal Leon Lundie’s new “prior review” policy, showed Principal Lundie their news-page story about an Overland student who died after sustaining an injury at a wrestling meet. Principal Lundie said the student reporters had incorrectly listed the student’s cause of death.

On March 10, students brought Principal Lundie a copy of the death certificate, confirming that the cause of death was correctly stated in the original article. Principal Lundie then complained that the article lacked “balance.”

On March 11, Principal Lundie removed teacher Laura Sudik as newspaper adviser and informed students that, after this current issue had gone to press, the newspaper class would turn into a journalism class and stop publication.. Sudik had advised the newspaper for 14 years; in that time, no principal had imposed prior review until this year.

Last Friday, Principal Lundie told student editors that, after this issue, The Scout would not be allowed to publish another full issue. Seniors will be permitted to participate in a “senior issue” at the end of the year, which contains first-person anecdotes from graduating newspaper staff members, but no news.

There will be no newspaper in the future, Principal Lundie said Friday, because he does not like the “direction” in which the newspaper is going.

According to student editors Schafer and Gutierrez, the staff has tried to keep communication open with the administration, but repeated meetings with Principal Lundie have proven unproductive.

“The newspaper has been a part of the school for decades,” Schafer said. “Principal Lundie thinks he can just come and shut down the paper during his first year of oversight of the school because it does not help in his goal of creating the ‘perfect image.’”

Gutierrez said, “He refuses to compromise with us and refuses to accept the fact that the goal of a student publication is to report not only the good stories, but also the bad. We are not PR agents, we are reporters. Our job is to enlighten the student body and the community of the goings on inside of our school whether good or bad.”

In January, when the semester’s second issue was published, Principal Lundie imposed what he calls “seeing before we print,” a practice known everywhere else as prior review.

Adam Goldstein, attorney advocate for the Student Press Law Center – a nonprofit group near Washington D.C.,that provides legal help to student media – said the administration’s reasoning for shutting down the newspaper is not legal.

“Colorado law specifically prohibits censorship of student media except in the rarest of circumstances, “Goldstein said. “Showing your principal that he’s confused about how a student athlete died isn’t one of the things that justify censorship.”

Goldstein also cautioned that permitting students to run the article about the death of their classmate does not make cancelling future publications any less retaliatory or illegal.

“That’s like arguing that it’s not a civil rights violation for Gaddafi to put a protester in jail, provided he lets the protestor finish his march to the palace first,” Goldstein said. “You don’t measure it by when the axe falls, you measure it by the motivation for swinging the axe in the first place. I think the motivation is pretty transparent.”

Schafer and Gutierrez believe that this type of censorship is Principal Lundie’s attempt to protect the school’s image as well as his own.Schafer and Gutierrez are working with lawyers at the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado and the Student Press Law Center to determine their next step and have been encouraged by other students and community members to find a way to keep publishing the newspaper.

“Everything we put into the newspaper has affected the reporter or students who attend Overland, and we all have the right to say how we feel. Not everyone needs to agree with it, but the fact that people have different views should be accepted and what they have to say should be respected. However, that is what Principal Lundie has just shut down,” Gutierrez said.

The students seek to have all of the unlawful consequences of Principal Lundie’s decisions reversed: the newspaper reinstated to regular publication with its adviser restored to her position, and an end to future censorship or mandatory prior review by administrators.

“Each story comes from the voice of a student: a voice needing to be heard. Principal Lundie had no right to do what he has done. He took away our freedom of speech and freedom of press and it is illegal. He needs to know that what he did and is doing is wrong. I’m going to do what I can and need to in order to stick up for the rights of my newspaper staff and get back what was taken from us,” Schafer said