Denver police sergeant resigns before being fired

Two other officers suspended for excessive force

A Denver police sergeant resigned last month before the city could fire him for beating an unarmed teenager with a baton, breaking the 17-year-old’s nose and causing his leg to snap during an arrest.

Sgt. Joseph Rodarte resigned June 3 after a months-long internal affairs investigation, Deputy Director of the Denver Department of Public Safety Mary Dulacki said Monday. Rodarte was charged with assault in connection to the beating, but a jury acquitted him of the two charges in October.

Two other officers, Douglas Watson and James Martinez, each will serve 10 days of unpaid suspension for using Tasers on the teen as he rolled on the ground, according to disciplinary records obtained by The Denver Post through a records request.

“It is neither reasonable nor necessary to use a Taser on an unarmed suspect on the ground who was under another officer’s partial control,” Dulacki wrote in Watson’s and Martinez’s disciplinary letters.

The resignation and suspensions stem from an Aug. 22, 2018, arrest of a 17-yearold, who had been reported by 911 callers for running and shouting profanities in Ruby Hill Park.

The teen later told police that he had tried LSD for the first time that day and was high.

Rodarte and Martinez contacted the teenager, who fled but was eventually chased down by officers. The teen fell as he neared the officers and Rodarte struck the teen in the head, back and legs with his baton six times in a 24-second span, body camera footage shows.

During the beating, the teenager started to bleed from a cut above his eye and his leg bone snapped.

Martinez used his Taser while the teen was on the ground, after getting permission from Rodarte, the ranking officer on scene.

Watson also used his Taser on the teen while the 17-year-old was on the ground.

Martinez and Watson told internal affairs investigators that they resorted to their Tasers because they didn’t have gloves and worried about getting blood on them.

They admitted the teen had not tried to assault anybody and it appeared the boy was simply trying to flee.

Rodarte told investigators that he gave Martinez permission to use the Taser to stop the teen from rolling and “possibly accessing a weapon and to get him into custody.”

Dulacki, the deputy public safety director, explained in her disciplinary decision that the use of Tasers violated the police department’s use of force policy because the teenager was acting defensively, not aggressively toward officers.

“He was trying to flee, not trying to fight,” Dulacki wrote in the letter.

Watson and Martinez are scheduled to begin their suspensions on Sunday.

Rodarte is the second Denver police officer in the past year to resign after facing accusations of excessive force but before facing discipline. Cpl. Michael Oestmann resigned July 24 after pleading guilty to menacing for beating a handcuffed man unconscious.

Another Denver police officer was fired in June after “an extraordinary series of bad decisions,” made in an attempt to cover up an unauthorized car chase.

Officer Nicholas Mauro, who started an unauthorized car chase, failed to turn on his body camera during the chase, failed to notify the department that the other car crashed into a innocent person’s garage, tried to conceal damage to his patrol car with white out and lying in his reports in an attempt to cover up the entire incident.

Mauro “so significantly violated the public trust that the only appropriate penalty for this rule violation is termination,” Dulacki wrote in Mauro’s discipline letter.

Another officer, Aldo Salayandia, will serve a 22-day unpaid suspension for participating in the November chase, failing to intervene in Mauro’s misconduct and failing to report the misconduct to a supervisor.

In an interview with internal affairs, Salayandia said he should have taken the lead on the situation, even though he had one less year on the force than Mauro. Salayandia joined the department in 2016 and Mauro joined in 2015.

Mauro, in his interview with internal affairs, acknowledged that he made bad decisions and that he lied to avoid consequences.

“Officer Mauro said he started to panic and that he was scared because he knew the repercussions of what had happened,” the letter states.

Dulacki found that Mauro violated the department’s policy by chasing a vehicle for a traffic violation, failing to file required reports and lying about the entire situation in the reports he did file.

“The totality of these actions and decisions is appalling,” Dulacki wrote in Mauro’s discipline letter.