Neighborhood feud turns into a federal legal battle

A fierce neighborhood conflict that exploded after a 13-year-old boy swung on a tree branch outside a Colorado Springs townhome until the limb snapped shows no sign of ending five years later.

Neighbors menaced each other with baseball bats. The aggrieved tree owner, Ronald Dwayne Brown, fired a gun. Colorado Springs police deployed a robot to breach Brown’s front door. Police blew a hole into the floor of Brown’s home and inadvertently broke his leg.

It’s unclear how long the fight — which began May 27, 2012 — will last.

But on Tuesday, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that former Colorado Springs Police Chief Peter Carey and 15 other sergeants, lieutenants, officers, SWAT team members, bomb technicians and emergency negotiators could not be sued as individuals because of qualified immunity.

The appeals court reversed a district court decision that had denied summary judgment on individual liability claims filed against the 10 police defendants, but remanded the case back to district court for further proceedings on certain “official-capacity” claims.

Brown’s attorneys could not be reached for comment.

According to appeals court documents released Tuesday, this is what happened:

At around 6:30 p.m. on that spring evening, a boy was swinging from a tree limb outside 4854 Rusty Nail Point when it broke. Brown came out of his townhome wielding a baseball bat, chased the teen and threatened to kill him. The boy ran into his neighboring townhome and told his mother and her boyfriend. The adults confronted Brown with their own bats.

After an argument, Brown, a 20-year Army veteran, pulled out a revolver and fired it into the ground. The mother and boyfriend said he threatened to shoot them. Brown denies he threatened to kill anyone.

Police arrived and demanded that Brown come out of his house. No one answered the door. Police left several messages on Brown’s cellphone.

Brown eventually replied in a text message that “they let their destructive brats run unsupervised. When you call them on it, you’re a racist, white devil.”

Police became increasingly wary of Brown when a neighbors aid Brown suffers posttraumatic stress disorder, was heavily armed and would occasionally go into “war mode” and predicted that if police broke into his home, there would bea“blood bath .”

Brown’s friend Brian Sheridan told police that Brown was a recluse who lived in the basement.

SWAT team members were deployed that evening. After several unsuccessful attempts to enter the home, Fort Carson Army officers sent in a robot. Officers detonated an explosive on the main-level floor hoping to lower a camera into the basement. Although police believed Brown would be in a back basement room, away from the blast, he was directly below the robot.

The debris from the blast landed on Brown, broke his leg and caused shrapnel wounds. Brown was wearing a helmet, a gas mask, a Kevlar vest and ear plugs. He spent 12 to 14 days in the hospital’s intensive-care unit.

Brown entered a guilty plea to felony menacing and misdemeanor failure or refusal to leave his property. He then sued the city and the officers accusing officers of excessive force.

“There was no lawful reason to use this level of force because there was no imminent threat to the health or safety of anyone,” argued the lawsuit filed in May 2014 by Colorado Springs attorneys Shimon Kohn, Ann Kaufman and Phil Winegar.

But the 10th Circuit ruled Tuesday that Colorado Springs officials were protected from individual claims.

“Brown cannot show any Supreme Court or 10th Circuit decision on point or that the clearly established weight of authority from other circuits prohibited the officers’ conduct in this case,” the 10th Circuit Court ruled Tuesday.