Denver will pay $75,000 to an innocent 60-year-old man who was injured during his arrest

The city of Denver will pay $200,000 to settle two lawsuits stemming from the actions of city employees — including a case filed after police officers assaulted and arrested a 60-year-old man who was not suspected of a crime.

The city council unanimously approved settlement agreements in those cases on Monday afternoon. Aaron Hernandez and his attorneys will receive $75,000 for the police incident five years ago, according to city documents, while another settlement will pay $125,000 to Morgan Riss for a car crash involving a city employee’s truck that injured her in 2021.

Hernandez was arrested on June 30, 2019, after he and his son, Aaron Hernandez Jr., were spotted by Denver police officers sitting in a car in a vacant church parking lot next to a nuisance property.

Officers approached the vehicle after a license plate search revealed that the younger Hernandez, the car’s owner, had a warrant out for his arrest, according to a police report provided to JS by Hernandez’s attorneys at Baumgartner Law after they had filed suit in 2021.

As officers approached, Hernandez Sr. out of the car on the passenger side. As soon as he did, an officer identified in the lawsuit as Jayme Larson ran up and grabbed him by both wrists.

He told Larson he needed to get up because he had recently undergone surgery and was experiencing severe sciatica pain, the lawsuit said.

During the subsequent arrest, Larson punched Hernandez in the side and another officer, identified in the lawsuit as Vance Johnson, elbowed him in the face, causing Hernandez to fall to the ground and causing serious facial injuries, the lawsuit said.

Larson and Johnson both wrote in their police reports that Hernandez kicked them before hitting him — but later made those claims were refuted by body camera footage.

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The footage also showed no evidence that Hernandez took a step toward Larson or clenched his fists before first grabbing him, contrary to what she wrote in her report.

Hernandez was jailed for three days after his arrest and was ultimately charged with two counts of assault. Those charges were dropped about nine months later, court records show.

He had no criminal history in Colorado. The type of warrant his son faced at the time was unclear from court documents, although Hernandez’s attorney described it as a “warrant for a non-violent crime.”

“That was an attack on me because I didn’t do anything,” the elder Hernandez told JS in 2021 after the charges were filed. “I told them I couldn’t do anything, and then suddenly I was on the ground and I was beaten up and punched in the face. It was brutal.”

The lawsuit stated that Larson was later disciplined by police for her actions that day. The Post contacted Denver police to confirm this information, but the department’s public information office had not responded as of late Monday afternoon.

Birk Baumgartner, who represented Hernandez in the case, said his client did not want to take the case to trial.

“We believe it is a fair settlement considering all the various complicated factors in this case,” Baumgartner said after the council vote. “Mr. Hernandez is glad it’s over. It’s been a number of years and he’s just happy to have it in his rearview mirror.