United States Court of Appeals dismisses use of force lawsuit against CSPD officer

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) -- The United States Court of Appeals overturned a previous court ruling and found Colorado Springs Police Officer Vito DelCore used reasonable force when he tased a veteran twice inside a hospital room.

In 2019, Carl Anderson Jr. rushed his 19-month-old daughter to a hospital after she was accidentally hit by a car driven by his fiance. His daughter was life-flighted to UCHealth Memorial Hospital in Colorado Springs with serious injuries.

According to court documents, the family wouldn’t tell hospital staff what happened, so forensic nurses called the Colorado Springs Police Department, suspecting child abuse. When officers arrived, the family remained unhelpful, according to court documents.

Law enforcement at the hospital, which included three CSPD officers, and one Teller County Sheriff’s Office deputy suspected there was information on the fiance's phone about the daughter’s injuries and what happened.

“These actions in combination made the officers reasonably suspicious that the phone contained messages incriminating the plaintiff, and that the plaintiff, who knew law enforcement suspected foul play, would delete the texts if possible,” a court document in the lawsuit states.

Anderson had his fiance’s phone and refused to give it to officers, saying they didn’t have the right to seize the phone. The verbal altercation, shown on the officer’s body-worn cameras, is happening inside the hospital room where Anderson’s daughter is being treated.

At one point, CSPD officer Vito DelCore moved past Andersen and said, "I'm going to go behind you because I don't want anyone behind you getting hurt." Within seconds, officers grabbed Andersen's wrist and started restraining his arms. The lawsuit says DelCore then shot Andersen in the back with a Taser stun gun. As Andersen was on the floor being pinned down by the officers, DelCore says, "Put your hands behind your back," while firing his stun gun a second time into Andersen's leg.

Anderson was arrested and charged with obstructing and resisting arrest, but those charges were later dropped by the 4th Judicial District Attorney’s Office.

“I believe they responded emotionally to a situation where they should have responded logically,” Anderson said.

In 2020, Anderson filed a federal lawsuit, accusing the officers of using excessive force and violating his First and Fourth Amendment rights.

“They should have done their due process, done their due diligence to get the answers before they went and decided to attack somebody and try and remove a child from parents,” he said.

In March 2022, a Colorado Federal District Judge ruled DelCore’s force was excessive but dismissed all other claims against DelCore and the other officers. A month later, DelCore appealed the excessive force ruling.

“Once you understand that the amount of resistance and the battle that Mr. Anderson was putting up was such that it almost overpowered one of the officers, it makes it pretty clear that escalating force to the use of a non-lethal taser was appropriate,” said Gordon Vaughan, the attorney representing DelCore.

On Friday, the United States Court of Appeals sided with DelCore and dismissed the lawsuit, saying he “had a lawful basis to demand that Mr. Andersen turn over the cell phone to prevent the destruction of evidence and was entitled to use some force when he refused to comply. Therefore, no constitutional violation occurred at that point of the arrest.”

“When this case was first reported, I'm sure that a lot of people who saw the video thought that the officers had done something wrong, but now that the process has moved forward, the facts have been discovered and the courts have determined that if you had that first impression, it was wrong,” Vaughan said.

Anderson can ask the United States Supreme Court to take the case, but he said the last four years of court hearings and litigation have taken a toll on his family.

“It's been a very stressful process from the beginning since it happened,” he said. “It has taken, in my opinion, way too long for any decisions to be made, anything to be done.”