The cost to Custer County taxpayers was $60,000 as part of the insurance deductible

$700,000: that is what it took to settle an excessive force lawsuit aimed at former deputy Michael Kear et. al., when he tased and allegedly punched a handcuffed 16-year-old minor in January of 2022. $60,000 of the $700,000 is Custer County’s share of the deductible. Further adding to the financial sting of the cost to settle the lawsuit is that the Custer County Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) was wholly left out of the legal and settlement process by the county’s insurance provider, County Technical Services, Inc (CTSI). The BOCC had only learned of the settlement when the insurance cooperative sent the county a bill for $60,000 without notice that the case had been settled in December of 2024.

This settlement brings the total amount of lawsuit payouts and early severance costs since 2020 paid by the BOCC to an eyewatering $1.1 million dollars, with roughly $250,000 of that paid by local taxpayers. The financial pain from lawsuits has no end in sight, as two new federal civil rights lawsuits have been filed against the county and the Sheriff’s Office in the past two months (those stories will be published in next week’s edition of the Tribune).

According to the lawsuit complaint from January of 2024 filed on behalf of the minor in the lawsuit, L.Z. (because she was under the age of 18, a two-letter name was used to protect her identity), the Custer County Sheriff’s Office received a call on January 18, 2022 regarding a “runaway teenaged female that had stolen a vehicle at her guardians’ address in north Cañon City.” Former Custer County Deputy Michael Kear was on duty and requested a ping of L.Z.’s phone from the cell phone provider. It showed that L.Z. might be located in Westcliffe in the Lea Lane Trailer Park north of downtown Westcliffe.

The complaint stated, “When Defendant Kear arrived at the address, a trailer, he heard rock music playing from the outside. Defendant Kear then knocked on the trailer door, which was answered by fifty-one-year-old Ray Running-Eagle and another unidentified man. Mr. Running-Eagle answered the front door with a red solo cup in his hand. By all appearances, Mr. Running-Eagle and his unidentified male companion were having a party on a Tuesday afternoon where the only guest was a sixteen-year-old child.” When the men learned that the girl Kear was looking for was not 18, they apologized and showed him into the trailer and showed Kear that L.Z. was hiding in a closet. At no point, according to the complaint, did Kear think about investigating why two middle-aged men were drinking with a 16-year-old with whom they had no relationship or connection. Further, neither man appeared to be a resident of the region.

When Kear found L.Z. he placed her in handcuffs. The complaint states, “Upon entry into and viewing the entire interior of the trailer, Kear’s body camera shows a single piece of furniture in the whole trailer: a bed. Defendant Kear would later admit that he believed that L.Z., a child, had ingested a controlled substance. Indeed, the body-camera shows that L.Z. was in distress.”

As Kear pulled L.Z. from the closet, he placed her in handcuffs and walked her out of the trailer; she quickly became distressed and tried to pull away. By this point, Deputy Miles De Young had arrived on the scene to assist. This is where the situation allegedly became chaotic. “The body-camera shows that L.Z. did not walk as ordered. As a result, the body-camera shows Defendant Kear and Defendant DeYoung began dragging L.Z. from her handcuffed arms. While L.Z. was being dragged, Deputy Kear alleges that she attempted to bite him. Deputy Kear does not allege that L.Z. actually bit him. The body-camera video shows L.Z. turning her head, but no bite occurs. Nevertheless, in response, Deputy Kear punched L.Z. in the arm. Defendant Kear then forced L.Z.’s face into the ground by lifting her cuffed hands.”

It was at this point Deputy DeYoung started to suggest and encourage Deputy Kear to tase the girl with an electric shock to make her comply with the orders to get in the car. De Young was not a novice law enforcement professional. He had been the Woodland Park Police Chief and served in that position from 2015-2021. He retired from the job in May of 2021 after an independent investigation had reported to the Woodland Park City Council that De Young had created “an extremely toxic environment, filled with gender bias against women, harassment, and intimidation.” At the same time, criminal investigations by the Teller County Sheriff’s Office and Colorado Bureau of Investigation were being conducted on De Young on separate matters. Three weeks later, De Young resigned after first penning a letter to the council stating that he was innocent of the accusations made against him by the independent investigation into the department.

Despite the ongoing criminal investigation into De Young at the time (no charges were ever filed), former Custer County Sheriff Shannon Byerly hired him in July 2021. Shannon Byerly stated at the time to the Tribune that, “in reference to his prior experience, or the baseless accusations made against him, I can offer some thoughts since all of the complaints were unfounded. The agency that did the investigation did such a terrible job no self-respecting investigator would even give a second thought to them to be honest.”

After the first suggestion to tase L.Z, Kear and De Young attempt to force her into the patrol vehicle. As L.Z. struggled in handcuffs, Kear asked De Young that perhaps they should tase her. Kear pulled his TASER weapon and pointed it at the girl, telling her to get fully in the car. When she did not comply Kear used the “drive stun” mode of the TASER on her and closed the door.

After she was in the car, the lawsuit complaint states that, “Defendant Kear went back to speak with Mr. Running-Eagle. Mr. Running-Eagle told Defendant Kear that he had brought L.Z. to the trailer from some other, unknown location. Defendant Kear asked Mr. Running-Eagle if L.Z. had been using drugs. Mr. Running-Eagle alleged that he did not know. Mr. Running-Eagle spontaneously asserted that he traveled all over the state, as well to South Dakota, and regularly “helped” girls like L.Z. by letting them stay at his trailer, which contained a single bed. The situation presented all of the hallmarks of sexual trafficking of a minor, yet Defendant Kear conducted zero investigation as to whether Mr. Running-Eagle, or his unidentified adult male companion, had furnished controlled substances to L.Z, were providing her with alcohol, or were engaged in sexual activity with L.Z. Upon information and belief, Mr. Running-Eagle and his unidentified male companion were, in fact, sexually trafficking L.Z.” There is no known criminal investigation into Running-Eagle, who does not appear to be a resident of Custer County.

Kear and De Young took L.Z. to the Sheriff’s Office, and other members of the staff brought out a restraining chair. L.Z. refused to get out of the car, and Kear continued to tase her, “L.Z. cried out, urinated in her pants from being shot with the TASER, began convulsing and hyperventilating. Defendant Kear continued to yell at L.Z., threatening to use his TASER weapon against her again.”

A key point in the lawsuit is that it was against the Sheriff’s Office policy to tase handcuffed people as the electric shock can cause extreme injury to people when they are already restrained, “The use of the TASER device on certain individuals should generally be avoided unless the totality of the circumstances indicates that other available options reasonably appear ineffective or would present a greater danger to the deputy, the subject or others, and the deputy reasonably believes that the need to control the individual outweighs the risk of using the device. This includes (b) Elderly individuals or obvious juveniles. (d) Individuals who are handcuffed or otherwise restrained.”

The recounting of the incident from L.Z.’s perspective ends with, “Defendant Kear was later terminated by the Custer County Sheriff’s Office while under investigation for engaging in sexual misconduct, both with co-workers and underage girls.”

The answer to the complaint filed by the attorneys for the defendants denied all of the allegations made by L.Z. but did not give any details on why the accusations were wrong. The case did not proceed very far before a settlement agreement and payment was reached in December for $700,000.

Yet, this settlement was odd because, by all accounts researched by the Wet Mountain Tribune, the Custer County Government was left completely out of the discussion with its insurance provider CTSI. While Custer County was never officially named in the lawsuit, it appears that the Officers named in the lawsuit were covered by CTSI even though they no longer worked in Custer County by the time the lawsuit was filed in January of 2024. In normal situations, the settlement agreement is a public record, and the county is the entity that decides if a settlement agreement should be signed or not. However, for unknown reasons, the only involvement of the county was a bill they received for $60,000 as the insurance deductible.

– Jordan Hedberg