Boulder settles for $1M over mishandled case
Boulder City Council approved a $1 million settlement with Benjamin Cronin, a Boulder resident who was accused of sexual assault when he was a minor and says the city violated his civil rights during the criminal case.
According to a city memo, Cronin “threatened to sue the city and two police officers” for failing to secure and disclose evidence that could have exonerated him. Cronin’s criminal case was dismissed by Twentieth Judicial District Chief Judge Bakke for lack of probable cause at a 2023 preliminary hearing.
“We are pleased to see the City of Boulder take responsibility for two of its detectives’ wrongful behavior,” Cronin’s attorneys, Christian Griffin and Gwyneth Whalen, said in a written statement. The statement said Cronin’s “high school and college years were irreparably damaged by the detectives’ violations of his constitutional rights.”
The attorneys’ statement also said “the misconduct is part and parcel of the Boulder Police Department’s ongoing, systemic failure to train and supervise its detectives.”
An internal investigation in 2022 found that a number of cases between 2019 and 2022 were not investigated or fully investigated. Those findings resulted in disciplinary action against five officers, including Detective Kwame Williams, who was on Cronin’s case and resigned in 2023, according to city spokesperson Sarah Huntley. In a written statement, she said the settlement doesn’t reflect any findings “about the merits of the underlying allegations against Mr. Cronin.”
“The fact that this case was not investigated as it should have been in the months after it was first opened, however, is deeply regrettable,” she said in the statement. “The mishandling of the case does not reflect the standards that we expect of ourselves as an organization, nor what our community expects of us, and the city recognizes the lasting and devastating impact this has had on everyone involved in the original case.”
Cronin initially requested $4 million in damages, according to the city memo. The memo stated that “the city attorney believes that it is unlikely that the city will be in a significantly better economic position by litigating the case as compared to approving the proposed settlement agreement.”
City council is required to approve all settlements over $50,000. Last month, council approved a $75,000 settlement with Joslynn Montoya, a deaf mother who claimed the city violated her civil rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act when police officers didn’t provide an American Sign Language interpreter during an interaction at a domestic violence shelter.
Buffs graduate Thursday
More than 9,400 degrees will be awarded at CU Boulder’s spring commencement Thursday, May 9.
That includes 6,882 undergraduate degrees, 1,789 masters degrees, 464 doctoral degrees, 141 MBA degrees and 194 law degrees as of May 3, including fall 2023 and spring and summer 2024 grads. Graduates this year range in age from 20 to 63, according to a CU spokesperson.
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, who attended CU Boulder in the late ’60s, will deliver the commencement address.
The ceremony begins at 8:30 a.m. at Folsom Field and is scheduled to last about 90 minutes. Tickets are not required for spectators.
In other news…
• Employees of Boulder’s Mental Health Partners (MHP) facility will soon vote on whether to unionize, the Daily Camera reported. If employees decide to unionize, MHP will be the first unionized mental health and substance use facility in the city. Voting results will be shared by May 21, according to Daily Camera reporting.
• Boulder Weekly took home six awards in the Society of Professional Journalists’ Top of the Rockies Excellence in Journalism competition. The regional contest included 80 newsrooms from Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico. Award-winning reporting from BW included stories on a controversial church, prison agriculture programs, Colorado’s struggling child welfare system and the state’s new poet laureate.