Aurora, Colorado, Police Detained the Wrong Guy at Gunpoint. They Gave Him a Ticket Anyway.

Police forced 44-year-old Teddy Pittman facedown on the road at gunpoint after mistaking him for a fugitive. When they let him go, they slapped him with a traffic ticket.

Newly released body camera footage shows Aurora, Colorado, police forcing 44-year-old Teddy Pittman to the ground at gunpoint after mistaking him for a fugitive. After searching the terrified Pitman and his car, the cops eventually let him go—but not without giving him a ticket for driving with a suspended license and making a bad turn.

"I was shocked," Pittman told 9News, a local news station. "I was just minding my own business."

The incident occurred in April 2020. According to a lawsuit Pittman has filed against the officers, he left a friend's house on the afternoon of April 24 when the FBI Rocky Mountian Safe Streets Task Force began following him. The task force is a group designed to track down violent fugitives and is comprised of Aurora and Denver police officers as well as FBI agents and U.S. Marshals. 

A few miles later, one of the task force vehicles pulled Pittman over, when he complied, Pittman says that the officers approached his car with their weapons drawn and ordered him to exit his vehicle with his hands visible.

Body camera footage shows officers ordering Pittman to lie facedown in the road. Over the next several minutes, the officers patted Pittman down and searched his car. One officer even falsely claimed Pittman had a gun in his car.

After seizing Pittman's wallet and checking his driver's license, the officers realized that Pittman wasn't the fugitive they were looking for and that there were no warrants out for his arrest. But the officers kept searching Pittman's car for guns and drugs.

"It's not our target….It's not our guy," one of the officers says near the end of the video."Push it as far as you want or don't want."

After coming up empty-handed, the task force let Pittman go—but not without slapping him with a traffic ticket for driving with a suspended license and making a faulty left turn. A judge eventually dismissed the ticket.

This is far from the first time Aurora police have made this kind of mistake. An almost identical case occurred in 2020 when police forced a family—including a 6-year-old girl—to lie facedown on the pavement at gunpoint after officers mistook their car for a stolen vehicle. In addition, multiple reports on the Aurora Police Department revealed extensive misconduct and constitutional violations.

According to one 2021 report, after Aurora police killed 23-year-old Elijah McClain, racial profiling is a major issue in the city's police department. "Aurora Police used force against 1.5% of Black subjects who had at least one interaction with police from 2018 to 2021," the report read. "That is nearly double the corresponding figure for white subjects. Racial differences in arrest rates…cannot explain the use-of-force disparity, at least as to Black individuals."

Comments

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

Aurora. Come for the police misadventures. Stay for the gang shootings.

[MarianneMTenorio]

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[Naime Bond]

In Aurora, driving while black is better than buying lottery tickets; but you do have to survive the encounter before you can collect.

[DVD]

It's "driving as a black person". You can drive while drunk, drive while sick, drive while in Aurora - all temporary conditions. If you're white or brown or black, that never changes, so you can't drive while being a certain skin color. Get it?

[sarcasmic]

Can't allow no damn insult without injury dawg!

[CE]

What did they charge him with, blocking traffic without a "Free Palestine" sign?

[SQRLSY One]

Thread winner!!!

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

Sounds more like a BrickBat. Is Oliver retiring?

[Nazi-Chipping Warlock]

So... He shouldn't have gotten a ticket for driving on a suspended license? Why?

[Rossami]

Fruit of the poisoned tree. They would not have known of the suspended license but for the illegal stop. Note that the initial stop was plausible but once they looked at his ID and confirmed that they had the wrong guy, any extension, even just to check for the suspended license, was unnecessary. He wasn't the fugitive.

[Minadin]

They could have run his plates at a stop sign / stop light and found that the car belonged to a guy with a suspended license, and you might have had the stop anyway - but that's apparently not what they did.

At least in April of 2020 the traffic was light and the asphalt isn't hot if you're force to cohabit it with your face.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

'Fruit of the poisoned tree.'

As a scientist, I have long been confused by this. Either a thing happened or it did not happen, and evidence of that thing exists or not.

I get that we want to inhibit misconduct by law enforcement. But why not treat them the same as the rest of use. If they break a law, prosecute them. How does it possibly make sense to excuse one crime because of another?

Or is the entire legal system a bullshit fantasy club with special rules for members?

[Vernon Depner]

Or is the entire legal system a bullshit fantasy club with special rules for members?

Yes.

[sarcasmic]

Government is a bullshit fantasy club with special rules for the members. Do you know anyone before and after getting a job in government? It changes a person. Not in a good way.

[Elmer Fudd the CHUD 2: Steampunk Boogaloo]

You mean like 40+ years of severe alcoholism turns a person into a whiney, gutless leftist pussy? Yeah, I can see that.

[CE]

I get that we want to inhibit misconduct by law enforcement.

Don't give them any excuses then.

[Davy C]

If they break a law, prosecute them.

In theory this works. But in practice this basically only happens when they kill someone, and even then only sometimes.

[bacchys]

Right now, the only shitty incentive we have against police misconduct like this is the exclusionary rule. Law enforcement won't hold each other accountable for violating rights and injuring people. Neither will prosecutors or judges. On the rare occasions there's an effort for some accountability against an individual cop, it'll always be a relative slap on the wrist.

[Dick King]

Was his ID the suspended license, so they found out that he was not the fugitive and that he had a suspended license simultaneously?

-dk

[Rossami]

No because the license itself immediately established his identity as soon as you pull it from his wallet and compare the picture to his face. The license cannot be identified as suspended until you take it back to the patrol car, enter it into the computer and wait for the search results to come back.

It would be different if the license magically changed color as soon as it was suspended. But we don't have that kind of technology yet.

[NOYB2]

The stop wasn't illegal.

[Rossami]

Read more carefully. The initial stop wasn't illegal but the unnecessary extension of it was.

[NOYB2]

A fugitive might well carry a fake license; there is nothing wrong with checking it online... and then discovering that it was suspended.

[Elmer Fudd the CHUD 2: Steampunk Boogaloo]

Back in the 90’s, I was following a friend who was (improperly) towing a vehicle. This got him pulled over. He had the misfortune to have e same name as a man who had multiple arrest warrants. The cop said he didn’t think my firmed was the guy, but said he had to cuff and detain him in the back of his squad car until he could clear that up. It took less than ten minutes and the cop let him go. He only gave my friend a warning for the towing violation.

That’s how you handle something like that. I will also note that the cop was professional and didn’t act like an asshole.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul. they/them)]

Oh looky! Upzoning and *cough* rent control *cough*!

Last year, lawmakers took an ambitious swing at the state’s housing shortage, passing legislation to bar exclusive single-family zoning in many parts of the state and speed up local permits. On Monday, the House passed a bill requiring cities to allow residential lots to be split and easing regulations on development on split lots.

Such measures, which aim to infuse the state with more housing by smoothing the path for developers, have garnered broad and bipartisan agreement, but measures to stabilize rent have proved more polarizing.

[...]

House Bill 2114 wouldn’t limit rents on the open market, and its supporters say it shouldn’t be described as rent control. Rather, the proposal would prevent existing tenants from seeing increases of more than 5% year-to-year. When a tenant moves out, a landlord wouldn’t face any limits on raising rent for the next tenant.

Bill sponsor Rep. Emily Alvarado, D-Seattle, said the bill has been changed from prior versions to accommodate concerns from landlords and that rent hikes drive evictions and homelessness.

“Right now, our constituents need action,” Alvarado told her colleagues on the House Housing Committee Thursday. “Seniors and families who are struggling with excessive rent increases need relief. They deserve the reasonable protections that are included in this legislation.”

[Elmer Fudd the CHUD 2: Steampunk Boogaloo]

If democrats didn’t govern like democrats, rents would be much lower. Inslee and the goddamned state legislature should be overthrown. Also, Spokane just had some stupid law go into effect that requires all long term rentals be registered with the city (for a $15 annual fee per unit) and the landlord hold a state business license. Which makes them subject to ‘inspections’. And it was a lot of fun to set up mine and my parent’s properties through City of Spokane’s crappy website.

I’m sure an ulterior motive is to make rental income subject to Washington’s B&O tax at some point in the near future.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul. they/them)]

After coming up empty-handed, the task force let Pittman go—but not without slapping him with a traffic ticket for driving with a suspended license and making a faulty left turn. A judge eventually dismissed the ticket.

If this brickbat fodder is the worst of police brutality, color me unimpressed. Guy breaks law (a minor one, yes) is wrongfully pulled over and discovered to be breaking the law. He's let go for the initial reason for being pulled over, but given ticket for breaking the law. Guy shows up to fight ticket for breaking the law, ticket dismissed so that he may continue breaking the law.

I’m honestly having trouble figuring out what part of the system failed here. I suspect the answer to my question would be: yes.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul. they/them)]

Back in the early 1990s, there was a particularly bad snowstorm in Seattle. I had to abandon my car on a side street because it simply wouldn't make it up Seattle's 90% grade hills. There was so much snow, I could barely see the curb, let alone where or what I had parked by. Car got towed. When I picked up my car, there was a ticket that came with it. I went to contest the ticket under extenuating circumstances, the kindly judge dropped the ticket. Six months later, I received a nastygram from the city telling me that I had an unpaid ticket, and that the fines had accrued with penalties and that if I didn't pay it within 30 days, they'd issue a bench warrant for me. When looking at the ticket, the address was a transposed version of the address of the ticket that I had successfully contested. The address was an address that literally didn't exist in the city, based on its numbers.

I called the city. The city told me, "fuck you, pay me."

I wrote a letter to a judge, the judge wrote back and said, "Fuck you, pay me."

At this point, this had become personal, so I talked to free legal advice. The lawyer at the legal advice clinic told me to write a letter to the city attorney, for whom he was familiar, and explain my circumstances, he also said that I might try the media.

I went with option one. A different judge wrote me back and told me to pay the base amount of the ticket, and the penalties would be waved.

I paid the ticket.

The point here is these kind of Kafkaesque tragedies of petty justice happen all the time.

I'm pretty sure my case was because of systemic racism.

[AnAcorn]

I’m happy to help you understand where the system failed here.
1.) Federal task forces should not waste their time or our money on petty administrative enforcement. I personally think every driver on the road should be licensed, and hope that police enforce those rules in traffic stops. But, when federal agencies feel the need to dedicate exorbitant resources on local task forces, those task forces should not waste even a thought on that kind of enforcement. As soon as they realized they had the wrong guy, they should’ve moved on to actually hunting fugitives (which is what we pay them to do) rather than waste their time drafting administrate citations.
2.) Innocent, cooperative people should not be held at gunpoint, even if they make illegal turns and drive with suspended licenses. Again, it’s a waste of time but also exceedingly dangerous to the people involved (including the officers). I don’t know enough about the circumstances of this case to assess how reasonable the initial belief this guy was a fugitive was, but it doesn’t actually matter: its still a system failure when random people are subject to inhumane treatment due to (perhaps even reasonable) mistakes.

Hope that helps!

[NOYB2]

Guy breaks law (a minor one, yes) is wrongfully pulled over and discovered to be breaking the law.

How was his stop even "wrongful"? The police suspected that he might be a fugitive, and they can legitimately stop people for that.

[Gaear Grimsrud]

OT
Turns out the Koch libertarians might not be as thoughtful and informed as they pretend to be.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1745793256779092327.html
Rand Paul:
I’ve been watching the GOP Primary closely for a while now, and I like various aspects of several candidates - Republicans like President @realDonaldTrump, Governor @RonDeSantis, and @VivekGRamaswamy. I’m interested in the ideas of some independents too, such as @RobertKennedyJr.
As I look over the field, I don’t think I yet have a first choice, but I do know one thing: count me in as #NeverNikki!
Based on her record and campaign, I don’t see how any thoughtful or informed libertarian or conservative should vote for @NikkiHaley. If you agree, let your voice be heard.

[Gaear Grimsrud]

More:
Her thirst for war is so strong she actually said: "I'm sick of talking about a Department of Defense. I want a Department of Offense." #NeverNikki
She even personally received millions of dollars from the arms merchants who benefit from the war, a conflict of interest that undergirds her eagerness for foreign military intervention.
This position isn’t new either - as governor of South Carolina she gave tax dollars to those same arms merchants, and they showered her with campaign contributions and a seat on their board when she left office.

[NOYB2]

Wow, good for him. #NeverNikki is pretty much the only thing I care about: she represents a return to the dark days of the GOP and she doesn't stand a chance of getting elected. I don't have a strong preference yet among Trump, DeSantis, and Vivek,

[MWAocdoc]

Left completely out of this narrative is why the “Task Force” thought the victim was the fugitive they were looking for or why they were looking in that particular spot at that particular time. The police abuse chronicles are replete with tales of wrong addresses, false affidavits, boilerplate warrants, and illegal searches in violation of the specifications of the search warrants. Police stop some random young colored male with no probable cause and pretend after the fact that it was a case of mistaken identity. They were bored that day, frustrated that they hadn’t found the guy they claimed they were looking for so they hassled the first guy that came along. “Qualified immunity! Qualified immunity! I thought he had a gun! No … wait … I feared for my life!”

[bacchys]

The annals of police abuse are also full of lies about the pretextual reasons stops are made.

[AT]

I don't feel bad for him. It was 100% avoidable.

As it stands, the law is that if you don't have a license you don't get to drive a car. Had he been law-abiding, he would not have been driving and avoided the situation completely.

Now, we can certainly debate whether requiring government permission to engage in modern transportation is right or not - but that's academic as it pertains to this Pittman clown. He shouldn't have been driving that car. Period.

Might they have still detained him as a pedestrian while they verify whether they have the right guy? Possibly. Likely, even. But it's nothing to get worked up about. I've been detained at gunpoint by police who were looking for someone else. It's not a big deal if you're law abiding. Put your hands up, let them take/verify your ID, answer their questions, and then you'll be free to leave.

[AnAcorn]

Anybody who finds themselves staring down the barrel of several guns would probably get worked up about it. I’m glad you didn’t, I’m sure that served you well, but I don’t think your experience is especially informative when thinking about what *ought* to be okay. When I imagine effective policing (and an efficient use of finite federal tax dollars on joint FBI/local police “task forces”), hounding random passerby is not what I have in mind—even when those passerby have suspended licenses or make illegal turns. Even if it only takes the members of said task force 30 seconds to write this person a citation, that’s 30 fewer seconds they are spending their time (and all our money) on the actual purpose their task force exists for, which is finding fugitives.

I also take issue with your point it is this poor guy’s fault. By your logic, if I get hit in the head by a falling A/C unit walking down the street it would be my fault—after all, had I walked a foot to the left or right, I wouldn’t have been hit. Sounds a little silly, doesn’t it? Driving with a suspended license is bad, and he should not have done it, but that has absolutely nothing at all to do with being held at gunpoint (after all, if the police knew he had a suspended license when they stopped him, they would have also known he wasn’t their fugitive from the start). I want every driver on the road to be licensed, but not at the cost of FBI task forces holding violators at gun point, and I think my view is more reasonable in that regard.

[AT]

hounding random passerby is not what I have in mind

That's not the read I took from it. Did you read his pro se complaint? (It's OK if you didn't, I'm reasonably certain Emma/Reason didn't either as they banged out their latest ACAB clickbait.) You notice he didn't even mention any case of mistaken identity in his rambling, incoherent complaint?

Pittman's a perpetual plaintiff, clearly hoping for some of that George Floyd lightning to strike him. Emma/Reason, on the other hand, watched 7 minutes of police body cam footage and then wrote an article based exclusively on their own prejudices and narratives.

I also take issue with your point it is this poor guy’s fault.

He was driving without a license. He was ticketed for driving without a license. How is that anybody else's fault but his own?

[rbike]

I have found myself forgetting to renew my driver's license several times. Both time t realized this when attempting to rent a car. Imagine my surprise to find out they won't rent you a car without a driver's license. I did drive for several days afterwards but I knew I could use my white privilege to avoid any penalty if caught.

[AT]

Kinda like Pittman used his black privilege to ultimately do the same.

[CE]

“The law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.”

Everyone has a basic human right to safely and peacefully travel on a public thoroughfare, without a government permission slip.

[AT]

I agree, but again - it's academic. Fact remains that he was driving, poorly, without that currently legally required government permission slip. If you want to argue that it shouldn't be a law, be my guest. I'll back you on that.

But if you want to argue that he didn't commit a crime/violation/infraction - then you are factually incorrect. Or pretend that ticketing him was somehow unjust because, despite his crime, they were looking for someone else at the time and only happened across him while in commission - then you are factually incorrect.

[NOYB2]

Everyone has a basic human right to safely and peacefully travel on a public thoroughfare, without a government permission slip.

No such right exists in general, in any country. And public thoroughfares don't even exist in libertarian societies.

Furthermore, police can stop you if they merely suspect that you have committed a crime.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul. they/them)]

So why do I have to have a permission slip, but Pittman doesn't? Seems racist.

[MWAocdoc]

Apparently you're not familiar with the concept of probable cause. It was ZERO percent avoidable. He wasn't hassled because of a suspended license and I doubt that he was hassled because of an improper turn. He was hassled because a Task Force was looking for a young black male and he happened to be a young black male. Sometimes it's hard to tell on a blog whether a post is sarcastic or the poster is just an idiot. If you don't sympathize with someone going about his business who has been stopped by the gestapo for no reason and terrified you're just an idiot!

[AT]

He was hassled because a Task Force was looking for a young black male and he happened to be a young black male.

He was hassled because he was mistaken for a suspect in another matter in which they DID have probable cause. He wasn't stopped for NO reason. He was followed for a MISTAKEN reason. He was also a poor driver, which justified - if only by pretense (but still currently legal) - a pull over/detention. Soon enough, they figured out they had the wrong guy they were looking for, but hey this guy happened to have committed a few traffic violations too. So, lemonade out of lemons.

I don't know why you're even bothered by it. The Court just ignored the violations anyway (likely on account of him being a serial litigant constantly trying to win the race-persecution lottery, and the fact that we now openly practice the racism of lowered expectations from black people). So you/he got what you wanted in the end anyway.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

Just to remind everyone, since I went to school in this city and lived there off and on for several years–Aurora is a fucking shithole. It’s gone increasingly downhill ever since the California OGs came out to expand their drug-dealing networks from the bases in east Denver, and things actually started to accelerate after Lowry and Fitzsimons closed, as the military brats were largely raising the academic standards of the schools in APS. There’s still Buckley, but the people who work there are smart enough to live around Parker or Centennial, and send their kids to Cherry Creek or Douglas County schools.

On the north side of Hampden, it’s basically just a colony of Mexico at this point, with the last remnants of the Blood/Crip gangs that operated around Colfax and Hoffman Heights in the 1990s down to a few pockets. Most of the rest is a deteriorating garbage dump as the city’s white residents age out or leave altogether. About the only decent part of the city is the far southeast area, where the Southlands shopping center lies.

The city is an absolute slough of social dysfunction, and it makes the cops who have to patrol it extremely mean in response.

[MWAocdoc]

Cops patrolling in shithole: "Gosh! Look what you made me do!" The reason more and more people are angry at law enforcement these days is the law enforcement officers' meanness and the meanness of idiots like you who make excuses for their meanness.

[DVD]

Make up your mind - the city can't be "absolutely" dysfunctional but then have all of these exceptions ("north of Hampden", "most of the rest", "decent part of the city"). Name one city of 400,000+ residents that doesn't have similar problems - we'll wait.

[jimc5499]

So let's see. A stop for an illegal turn. When the stop is made the Police check to see if he is a wanted person. Finding out that he is NOT the wanted person, they cite him for the illegal turn and suspended license. The search of his vehicle is the only thing I see an issue with and that might even be justified.
So what's the freaking problem here?

[MoreFreedom]

The BLM riots were for alleged police abuse, and this is what Democratic run Aurora has for police, and it explains the riots.
Note the Dems decided to defund the police they hired, trained and managed because they (and the management as well) were all systemically racist according to them (I disagree, but will hold them to their absurd beliefs). Anything but police reform reducing abuse, so the Dems created the absurd distraction of racist police, so they could continue abusing people.

Their BLM protest was counter effective.

[Liberty_Belle]

The task force is a group designed to track down violent fugitives and is comprised of Aurora and Denver police officers as well as FBI agents and U.S. Marshals.

Is this one of those setups where when they screw up , they point at each other for jurisdiction to rob the victim of the chance to sue them for improper stop ?

[AT]

How was the stop improper?

[Think It Through]

Show him who's boss.

He's lucky they didn't shoot his dog.