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The town of Basalt faces allegations that its failure to properly train and supervise three police officers is to blame for multiple unlawful arrests of a man over nonviolent crimes, despite knowing he had a diagnosed mental health disorder.
The civil rights lawsuit against the town and Basalt Police Department Lt. Aaron Munch, Sgt. Nino Santiago and Officer Valeria Morales alleges he was wrongfully arrested three times within two years “and the continuing pattern of arrests evidence an unconstitutional practice that must be stopped.” The Aspen Daily News is not identifying the plaintiff — described in the suit as a “resident, attorney, business owner, and father of two” — because the arrests are associated with alleged domestic incidents involving his wife and children, who share his last name.
The suit was filed Nov. 25 in the United States District Court of Denver.
Responding to the accusations, the town said in a legal filing Friday it will assert a “comparative negligence,” which means the plaintiff, a Basalt resident, will not receive judgment in his favor after it is determined the arrests were due to his criminal behavior more than any negligence by the BPD.
The town’s response also said its officers are entitled to qualified immunity as government officials, and common law immunity shields them from liability concerning legal matters. When contacted Monday about the lawsuit, Basalt Police Chief Greg Knott declined comment.
The suit came more than two months after Basalt police arrested the man at his apartment on Sept. 3 over a July 27 incident involving his wife. It was the third time police arrested the man since he agreed to live apart from his family starting Dec. 1, 2022, the suit says.
Two of the three of the arrests cited in the lawsuit were made without probable cause and all of the charges were dropped, according to the suit. The arrests also happened after the husband separated from the family due to his OCD symptoms, though he retained access to the house he owns and they inhabit.
“They’re asserting domestic violence when there is none,” said Raymond Bryant, a lawyer with Civil Rights Litigation Group, during an interview with the Aspen Daily News in January. The Denver law firm represents the Basalt man in his lawsuit. “That’s the biggest problem here: they are charging him and arresting him on domestic violence when there is obviously no indica of domestic violence at all.”
The husband thrice was arrested for domestic violence and trespassing in his own home and there were no protection orders banning him from having contact with family members, according to the suit.
“The husband decided to stay at another apartment in order to provide he and his family some space and some relief from his OCD triggers at home,” the suit says. “Some nights he would stay at the apartment, and other nights he would stay at the home. At this time, (the plaintiff) and his wife were not divorced or legally separated. It was a voluntary decision by (the plaintiff) to accommodate his disability and help reduce anxiety and tension in the home.”
Once he began living away from his family, the husband’s OCD behavior included washing his children’s Christmas gifts before they were unwrapped, for example, or micromanaging how the household’s garbage was handled and laundry was cleaned.
He “has been diagnosed with a severe form of obsessive-compulsive disorder, which is triggered when he is confronted with perceived contamination in his home and motivated by a strong instinct to protect his family from harm,” the suit says.
The first arrest cited by the suit, on Dec. 30, 2022, came after Lt. Munch responded to a call from the wife, who was complaining about her husband’s behavior. The wife told Munch their husband had visited the house without her permission — while she was out on an errand — to find a key she said was missing. Upon returning, the wife told her husband — who moments earlier sent her a picture of the key in the home’s kitchen drawer — to leave the house and pushed him away, the suit says.
After seeing text messages sent from the husband to the wife about housekeeping protocols, Munch determined that they were “way over the top” and contributed to the wife’s emotional suffering, according to both the suit and response.
Police arrested the man and he spent two nights in jail, including New Year’s Eve. The domestic violence and trespass charges were later dismissed.
The second arrest, on Nov. 10, 2023, involved Munch responding to a complaint that the wife was being harassed by the husband through a series of text messages about their family.
“Defendant Munch told (the husband) that he was being charged with harassment because of the way his texts made (the wife) feel. Defendant Munch could not identify anything about the messages that made them criminal,” the suit says. “(The man) was released from jail the next day and a district court judge subsequently dismissed the case after finding it lacked probable cause.
The third arrest came after defendant Officer Morales responded to the wife’s home in July on a trespassing complaint. Though the wife was out of town, she told police she and her husband had a private agreement that precluded him from visiting the family household.
Morales, after consulting with Sgt. Nino Santiago, completed an affidavit for a warrant to arrest the husband for felony trespassing and harassment on Sept. 3. A judge signed the warrant on the same date, and police arrested at his home. Those charges also were dropped.
“Defendants’ only basis for asserting the trespassing charge was (the wife’s) subjective assertion that she did not want (the husband) at the home, and the assertion of a private agreement between (the husband and wife) that allowed her and the children to live at the home while (the husband) stayed at a nearby apartment,” the suit says.
The town’s reply argued that any harm the man suffered from the arrests “may have been caused in whole or in part by (his) own acts and conduct, not by reason of any tortious or unconstitutional conduct of these Defendants.”
As well, the town has contended that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, which includes Colorado, maintains that individuals with mental disabilities are not immune from criminal prosecution.
According to U.S. Magistrate Judge Cyrus Y. Chung’s summary of the town and the police officers’ defense in a Jan. 27-dated scheduling order for the lawsuit, “(The plaintiff) was arrested as a result of his criminal conduct. While (the plaintiff) may have been diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, it is not at all clear that his criminal behavior was driven by his OCD. Even if (the plaintiff's) unlawful behavior was driven by his OCD, the Tenth Circuit has never held that a disability immunizes an individual from prosecution for criminal behavior. In fact, the Tenth Circuit has held that individuals may be prosecuted, even if their criminal acts are a manifestation of a disability.”
In the meantime, reform at the BPD is one outcome Bryant said he hopes the lawsuit achieves.
“We want the Basalt Police Department to be properly trained on what the law permits and does not permit in terms of arresting its citizens,” he said. “We want better training, we want some recovery for this guy being arrested multiple times, but I think what’s most important is we want to stop them from being able to arrest the poor guy.”
He added, “I think this case is about officers who don’t have a lot to do with their time. And so when they get a call from a woman saying she feels harassed, it appears they take kind of that at face value, even though there is a massive difference between the use of the word ‘harassment’ in a legal sense and use of ‘harassment’ in a more colloquial sense. And so, officers have an obligation to assess whether there are elements necessary for the legal harassment at issue.”