“The way they treated me was because of the tone of my skin,” said Travis Cole, an Arkansas man suing the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office for excessive force.
Cole, 34, of Rogers, Arkansas, is thankful to be alive after a violent encounter with Boulder County Sheriff’s deputies in Boulder County, Colorado, on Sept. 22, 2020.
On that night police responded to a domestic dispute between Cole and his then-girlfriend he was visiting in Longmont, Colorado, which led to Cole being arrested on misdemeanor domestic violence charges. Those charges were later dropped, but the hours Cole spent at the jail is what prompted his excessive force lawsuit filed against the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office.
“They all hurt me, I’m traumatized,” Cole said of his experience while in Boulder County Sheriff deputies’ custody.
According to the lawsuit filed on Sept. 21, 2022, Cole says a white deputy sergeant, Christopher Mecca, used excessive force against him by tasing him as he was already restrained in a restraint chair. The lawsuit further claims Mecca admitted he decided to tase Cole because he was Black.
“This Boulder County Sheriff sergeant said, he knew it wouldn’t look good on video to use brute force against an African-American man so he decided to tase him, that means he decided to use that taser because he thought he could get away with it,” said Mari Newman, Cole’s attorney.
Bodycam video shows the moments Cole arrived at the Boulder County Jail. Cole says things were going calmly in squad car of Longmont Police Department officers who made the arrest before transferring Cole to Boulder County Sheriff’s deputies’ custody at the jail. Although Cole says he was calm and cooperative, the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office claim he was intoxicated and combative during the arrest and is what prompted them to resort to the restraint chair. Cole says as he arrived at the jail, he was met by eight Boulder County deputies, all named in the lawsuit as defendants, with taunts and an aggressive tone.
“Seeing these officers with these smirks on their face, I just knew how this was going to go so I just dropped down to my knees because they already brought the chair out and said, go ahead and put me in the chair if that’s what you’re going to do,” Cole said as he is strapped into the awaiting restraint chair.
Bodycam video shows Cole and Sergeant Mecca exchanging words and Mecca asking Cole, if he ‘wants to go’ to which Cole replied, “you want to go, we can go,” and at this moment Mecca tases a restrained Cole.
“When he asked me, do I want to go, and I said, yes, that’s when I get that electric shock, and that’s painful,” Cole described of the moment he was tased while restrained.
Cole says he sensed Sgt. Mecca had it out for him from the onset because he was Black and continued to taunt him as he was being tased while restrained. He also describes his treatment once inside a holding cell where he continued to sit restrained for hours.
“They left me in that chair for about four hours, then they came back about 45 minutes later, then he lets me use the restroom, still didn’t search me, I didn’t even eat breakfast, they didn’t even bring me a breakfast tray,” Cole said of his experience while at the Boulder County Jail.
The lawsuit says, the arresting officers from the Longmont Police Department who witnessed Boulder County Sheriff deputies’ treatment of Cole ended up reporting the incident to their supervisors which ultimately led to Mecca’s firing and arrest for misdemeanor counts of third-degree assault and official misconduct.
In a Boulder County Sheriff’s Office news release on Mecca’s firing, it says, “Mecca then drive-stunned the man on his left thigh for five-seconds with a Taser. The Taser utilization was against sheriff’s office policy and was determined to be both an unnecessary and excessive use of force.” Mecca was hired by the sheriff’s office in March 2007 as a deputy and was promoted to sergeant in January 2018 before his firing on Oct. 9, 2020.
The lawsuit also lays blame on the other deputies who failed to intervene.
“The other deputies on staff who were standing around watching this happen, not a single one of them stepped in and it’s their constitutional duty to do so,” said Newman.
Newman says she and Cole hope the lawsuit forces the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office to improve its policies so people within their custody are not subjected to harsh treatment.
“What we’re looking for in this case is to change conduct, it is long overdue that officers of the law whether on the street or in correctional facilities treat human beings as the human beings that they are and treat them with dignity and respect,” said Newman.
Boulder County Sheriff, Joe Pelle, sent Atlanta Black Star a statement regarding the pending lawsuit.
“The Boulder County Sheriff’s Office had a policy in place prohibiting the use of a taser on a restrained inmate at the time of this event, and our staff had been trained on that policy. The involved deputy, (Sergeant Mecca), was placed on leave within hours of the incident, and within a few weeks he was separated from our employment and charged with misdemeanor assault. The Sheriff’s Office acted quickly and with full public transparency in the handling of this misuse of force, and to hold the former employee accountable. The Sheriff disagrees with the allegations in the lawsuit alleging culpability on the part of our agency, and counters that the former employee acted outside of our policy and training, and bears responsibility for that decision alone.”
As the federal lawsuit churns through the legal process, Cole, a father of three children ages 14, 10 and 7-years-old, says he is still traumatized by the experience two years ago.
“I fear police officers, I fear jail deputies, I fear it all now,” Cole said.
