When an Aurora woman spotted a man handcuffed outside wearing just his boxer shorts, she snapped a photo and posted it online.
“This is so cruel,” the photo’s caption said. “It’s cold as hell outside…”
In the picture, where snow is seen on the ground, the man is nearly naked, leaning against an Aurora police squad car with his head down on its hood, his arms restrained behind his back, and his bare feet on the ground.
Inside the squad car, an Aurora police officer is seen radioing in a call in the photo.
According to Aurora Police Cmdr. Paul Nelson, who was acting as interim police chief when the Jan. 4 photo was taken, the officer had reason to keep the man standing in the cold for just over 10 minutes while a transport van arrived in the 1600 block of Plum Street. Police believed the man was violent and at risk to potentially damage the inside of the squad car or harm the officer, Nelson said.
“While it is not desirable to bring an arrestee into public view in a state of undress, especially in cold weather, this sequence of events was set in motion by the choices that (the man) made, and at many points in that sequence, the outcome could have been altered by different choices on his part,” Nelson said.
The man in the photo was charged with misdemeanor criminal trespass and misdemeanor domestic battery.
According to Aurora police reports written by the officer at the scene, police were called to the Plum Street apartment by a woman who identified herself as the man’s ex-girlfriend. She had invited him into her home and now wanted him to leave, but he was refusing, she said.
The officer arrived around 12:50 p.m. and found the man inside a bedroom in just his boxer shorts, he wrote in reports. The man refused to acknowledge the officer, and just sat on the bed with his head down, the officer wrote.
“I gave (the man) the option to either leave, or I was going to place him under arrest for criminal trespassing,” the officer wrote. “(The man) just sat on the bed, and did not respond to me. I told (him) that he was under arrest for trespassing, and told him to stand up. (He) just sat on the bed.”
Even after he was placed in handcuffs, the man was offered a final chance to get dressed and leave of his own accord, the officer wrote. He still did not respond, and was led toward the door, the officer said.
The officer said that on the way out of the apartment, and without saying a word, the man kicked his ex-girlfriend in the stomach, landing him an additional domestic battery charge.
“It was due to this display of violence that (the officer) chose to immediately remove (him) from the apartment in his state of undress,” Nelson said.
In dash camera video taken from the squad car, which begins at 1:18 p.m., the officer is heard radioing in the call. The man’s head remains down on the squad’s hood. He doesn’t say a word.
It is at this point that the photo was snapped and later posted to Facebook.
Ten minutes later, a transport van arrives and takes the man to jail.
Nelson said that because the man was only wearing boxer shorts, the van was diverted from another pick-up to come get him first. Still, he said, the situation was certainly not “optimal.”
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“Was it the perfect decision (to leave the man outside of the squad)? I think there’s a lot of room for a better decision to be made,” he said.
He said he took the situation as an opportunity to sit down with the officer at the scene and address what could be done differently next time.
“We’ve already discussed it with him and suggested that there were other options available,” Nelson said. “He acknowledged that, yeah, it could have been handled better. When the officer made the judgment not to put him in the squad, it may have been made on the basis of (the man’s) unpredictable nature of committing violent acts,” Nelson said.
Nelson said he didn’t think the officer’s actions were done out of malice, but in light of what he called the man’s “unprovoked” attack on his ex-girlfriend.
“Officers make dozens of decisions every single day,” he said. “It’s unreasonable to expect they make the perfect decision every time. There’s a difference between that, and doing (something wrong on purpose). We’ve used this as an opportunity to pull the officer aside and redirect.”