When the Fort Collins Police or Larimer County Sheriff Deputies respond to reports of an intoxicated person in public, they usually show up on the location and expect take the person to the Larimer County Jail for detoxification. The drunk person is held for a few hours to sober up, and then released without any criminal charges being filed. That is, as long as the person behaves.
One such decision to misbehave, resulted in felony charges against a Fort Collins woman. The woman was being held in the Larimer County Jail for detoxification and ended up being charged with Assault after kneeing a Larimer County Sheriff Deputy in the groin. The woman was uncooperative from the start and refused to leave the police car. After they got her out, the deputies took her inside and started the procedural pat down. At this point, the woman became very aggressive and kneed a deputy in the groin. She is now facing 2nd Degree Assault charges.
What is Second Degree Assault in Larimer County?
Colorado law defines Assault in the Second Degree – C.R.S. 18-3-203 – as:
(b) With intent to cause bodily injury to another person, he or she causes such injury to any person by means of a deadly weapon; or
(c) With intent to prevent one whom he or she knows, or should know, to be a peace officer, firefighter, or emergency medical service provider from performing a lawful duty, he or she intentionally causes bodily injury to any person; or
(d) He recklessly causes serious bodily injury to another person by means of a deadly weapon; or
(e) For a purpose other than lawful medical or therapeutic treatment, he intentionally causes stupor, unconsciousness, or other physical or mental impairment or injury to another person by administering to him, without his consent, a drug, substance, or preparation capable of producing the intended harm; or
(f) While lawfully confined or in custody, he or she knowingly and violently applies physical force against the person of a peace officer, firefighter, or emergency medical service provider engaged in the performance of his or her duties, or a judge of a court of competent jurisdiction, or an officer of said court.
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Looking at the different situations that apply to this statute, most of them require the use of a deadly weapon or a result of seriously bodily injury. However, when it comes to law enforcement, no weapon needs to be involved and only bodily injury needs to occur in order to charge this serious crime in Larimer, Boulder, and Grand County.
According to the law, ‘bodily injury’ means:
physical pain, illness, or any impairment of physical or mental condition.
This means a police officer would only have to claim they felt some sort of physical pain for it to be considered bodily injury in Fort Collins, Loveland, and Estes Park. Now, I do not doubt that a knee to the groin was physically painful, but was it enough to charge someone with a class 4 felony? Is it enough to sentence someone to 2 to 6 years in the Colorado Department of Corrections? If the ‘victim’ had not been a police officer, the woman would have been facing 3rd Degree Assault, a class 1 misdemeanor at most.