Colorado Springs agrees to settle Taser death for $3.2 million

DENVER (AP) — The city of Colorado Springs has agreed to pay $3.2 million to settle a lawsuit in the death of a man who was repeatedly hit by a Taser while resisting being handcuffed in 2018.

City councilors met in closed session to discuss a settlement in the lawsuit over the death of Jeffrey Melvin on Tuesday and voted 6-2 to approve it during a brief public portion of their meeting. Deputy City Council Administrator Michael Montgomery confirmed the amount of the settlement, which was announced by lawyers for Melvin’s family.

Melvin’s death was part of a 2024 Associated Press investigation that looked at cases over a decade where hundreds of people died even though police had used force that was only meant to stop them, not kill them. Most violations involved pinning people face down in ways that could restrict their breathing or stunning them repeatedly with Tasers.

One of two Colorado Springs officers who fired their Tasers at Melvin a combined eight times testified in the lawsuit that he was not trained about the danger of shocking someone more than three times. The deputy chief of the Colorado Springs Police Department at the time testified that its policy allowed officers to keep delivering electricity until the person’s behavior changed. The department determined the officers did nothing wrong.

The settlement came as the lawsuit was about to go to a trial next month.

In a statement, the police department said the decision to settle was made by the city’s insurance provider and was not an admission that its training standards were inadequate or that it had failed to properly train its officers.

“While CSPD respects the contractual authority of our insurance carrier to force a settlement in this case, which they did, we do not agree with that decision and were prepared to proceed with a trial,” it said.