Video: Colorado officers who arrested woman, 73, with dementia later laughed about incident

LOVELAND, Colo. — The Colorado police officers who violently arrested a 73-year-old woman with dementia in 2020 later laughed about the incident, adding that “we crushed it,” according to a video released Monday by the woman’s attorney.

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The nearly one-hour booking cell video released Monday shows two Loveland Police Department officers who arrested Karen Garner fist-bumping each other while discussing the incident, according to the Loveland Reporter-Herald.

The officers are the subject of a federal civil lawsuit filed April 14 against the Loveland Police Department on behalf of Garner by attorney Sarah Schielke, alleging excessive use of force by the department, officers Austin Hopp and Daria Jalali, and Sgt. Phil Metzler. Schielke announced an amended lawsuit after the release of the new video of the June 2020 arrest, KDVR reported.

Schielke called the video “heart-wrenching” and “unseeable.” She worked with a forensics audio engineer to capture the dialogue, The Washington Post reported.

“At one point, I broke down and I wept because it was so raw, wrong and heartless,” Schielke told the newspaper. “I don’t even know Karen, but it could have been my grandmother and I can’t imagine what the experience of having to live through that would be.”

Garner suffered a fractured arm and dislocated shoulder in the June 26, 2020, incident at a Walmart in Loveland, according to the original lawsuit. Garner was accused of not paying for $13.88 in items, KCNC reported.

The arrest put Garner in the hospital and drastically worsened her dementia symptoms, her family told The Denver Post. Garner was placed in an assisted living facility in August because family members no longer believed she would be safe living alone, the newspaper reported.

>> Attorney for Colorado woman with dementia files civil rights lawsuit

“She hasn’t come back the way she was before,” Shannon Steward, Garner’s daughter-in-law, told The Denver Post. “It was too much.”

According to the video released by Schielke, Hopp and Jalali were rewatching body camera footage of the arrest and were laughing about it while Garner was handcuffed to a bench in a nearby cell, The Washington Post reported. The 14-minute video compiled by Schielke includes video footage of the booking area where Loveland Police Department Officer worked, according to the Reporter-Herald.

The full surveillance footage from the booking area also can be found on the Life and Liberty Law Office’s YouTube channel, the newspaper reported.

Steward, who lives in Littleton, said the beginning of the video shown from Hopp’s body camera footage was a great representation of who Garner was.

“That was Karen, those first eight seconds,” Steward told the Reporter-Herald. “Then she was gone.”

In the video, Jalali can be heard saying that “bodycams are my favorite thing to watch.” Moments later she can be seen pulling her hat down over her face, saying, “I hate this,” according to the Reporter-Herald.

“This is great,” Hopp says.

“Ready for the pop? Hear the pop?” Hopp can be heard saying about the apparent dislocation of Garner’s shoulder.

“What popped?” another officer asked.

“I think it was her shoulder,” Hopp responded.

In the video, Hopp can also be heard saying, “I can’t believe I threw a 73-year-old on the ground.”

Schielke alleges that Metzler, the supervisor on the scene when Garner was arrested, knew she was injured and authorized that she be kept in a cell without medical evaluation or treatment at the department, according to the Reporter-Herald.

Family members were angered by the video.

“To hear that tone in someone’s voice, to get that tone in your head, it just stirs you to more anger,” Steward told The Denver Post.

The original lawsuit alleged that Walmart employees asked Garner to return to the store when they saw her leave without paying and took the items back -- a soda, a candy bar, a T-shirt, and wipe refills -- denying her request to pay for the items.

Loveland Police Department officials have declined to comment on the additional footage, stating that they were unaware of Garner’s injuries until the lawsuit was filed, according to the Reporter-Herald.

On Tuesday, a Loveland police spokesperson told The Washington Post that four officers, including Hopp, have been suspended. The criminal investigation will be conducted by the office of Gerald McLaughlin, Colorado’s Eighth Judicial district attorney, and the Fort Collins Police Department, according to the newspaper.

Loveland Mayor Jacki Marsh called the new video “horrific and outrageous.”

“This is not how I want my city to be known,” Marsh told the Reporter-Herald. “I think we’re a caring, compassionate community. And I know the investigation needs to go forward. I’m speaking to what I’ve seen with my own eyes and heard with my own ears.”

“We heard that pop and burst into tears; you’re hearing the pop and giving fist bumps over it,” Steward told the Reporter-Herald. “This is far beyond what we even suspected, but yet did suspect.”

Steward called the suspensions of the police officers “a Band-Aid on a bullet wound.”

“It is nothing meaningful,” Steward told the Reporter-Herald. “It is just gestures and required statements.”

Cox Media Group