A Denver man is suing a police sergeant he says sprinted through a line of officers to tackle him from behind during last year's No Kings protest, leaving him with hand and knee injuries and an aggravated old ACL tear. Austin Breen filed the lawsuit against Sgt. Lee Ingersoll individually, not against the Denver Police Department as a whole, accusing the sergeant of brutally tackling him and wrongfully arresting him as the demonstration wound down near the state capitol on October 18, 2025.
According to the complaint, Breen and roughly 70 other protesters had marched along a predetermined route and were peacefully returning to the capitol around 4 p.m. that day. Hours later, around 6:55 p.m., the group encountered a police line stacked with dozens of officers at Santa Fe Drive and 6th Avenue, as reported by FOX31 Denver. Officers told the crowd around 7 p.m. to turn around and leave, giving them about five minutes to comply, and the complaint states Breen's group did exactly that.
Charge, Tear Gas, and a Tackle Caught on Drone Video
Despite the group's compliance, officers charged the retreating protesters around 7:05 p.m. to push them east faster, then fired tear gas at their backs from 100 to 150 feet away, the lawsuit alleges. Breen claims the group was retreating in orderly fashion until that charge and gas deployment, and that drone footage shows officers trampling protesters, including Breen himself, in the chaos that followed.
Breen says Ingersoll ran from far behind the police line, sprinted through it, and tackled him to the ground, pushing him down hard enough to cause lasting damage. He alleges the fall injured his hand and knee and aggravated an old ACL injury that had already required four surgeries. Drone footage, according to the complaint, shows Breen was the first protester Ingersoll came into proximity with before the tackle.
Officer's Jailhouse Comment Echoes 2020
Breen was arrested around 7:07 p.m. and arrived at the Denver County Jail roughly 14 minutes later, per the complaint. Court documents filed in Denver District Court on October 13 cite a trooper in Breen's transport vehicle remarking that the night was feeling like 2020 and that officers were all getting excited, a comment the lawsuit frames as evidence of enthusiasm for aggressive crowd control, as detailed by Yellow Scene Magazine. Breen was released from jail around 1:13 a.m. on October 19, and the charges against him were ultimately dismissed on February 24, after the city determined it could not prove them beyond a reasonable doubt.
Breen is represented by attorneys Dan Williams and Clarice Tenorio of Boulder-based Grata Law and Policy LLC, a firm that specializes in civil rights and First Amendment litigation. The lawsuit alleges Ingersoll has a documented history of wrongfully arresting people for First Amendment-protected activity. That history includes a 2019 incident outside Denver Union Station, where U.S. District Court Chief Judge Philip A. Brimmer allowed a separate federal civil rights lawsuit against Ingersoll to proceed in March 2023, declining to dismiss claims that he unlawfully arrested two men for protected speech, the same outlet reports.
Why Breen Sued in State, Not Federal, Court
The lawsuit was filed under Colorado's Senate Bill 20-217, the state law passed in June 2020 that eliminates qualified immunity as a defense in state court civil rights actions. That statute allows individuals to sue officers personally and exposes them to liability of up to $25,000 if a court finds they acted without a good-faith belief their conduct was lawful. By filing in Denver District Court rather than federal court, Breen's attorneys sidestep the qualified immunity defenses that have shielded officers in similar cases.
The timing is notable: Grata Law and Policy filed the complaint on October 13, less than a week before this year's No Kings protest in Denver, a scheduling choice that suggests an effort to pressure department leadership ahead of another mass demonstration. Breen alleges Ingersoll's actions have caused him ongoing emotional distress and anxiety. The Denver Police Department has said it does not comment on pending litigation.
A City Already Paying for Protest Policing
Breen's case lands against a backdrop of mounting financial and legal exposure for Denver over its handling of protests. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit unanimously affirmed a $14.75 million jury verdict against the city in April 2026, finding Denver had inadequately trained officers who used excessive force and less-lethal weapons against peaceful 2020 protesters, according to the ACLU of Colorado. Total city payouts tied to police misconduct claims from the 2020 racial justice demonstrations had climbed to nearly $25 million by June, per The Denver Post.
The numbers around the October 2025 No Kings rally specifically are stark. Hoodline previously reported that Denver police logged nearly 30 separate use-of-force reports tied to pepper balls and chemical canisters deployed during that single rally near Interstate 25. Citywide, the department recorded 993 total use-of-force incidents in 2025, a 13% jump from the year before and the highest five-year total the department has publicly reported.
Oversight data shows a widening gap between what the public is reporting and what the department is flagging internally. The City and County of Denver Office of the Independent Monitor found that community complaints alleging police use of force nearly doubled, from 34 in 2024 to 67 in 2025, even as internal departmental complaints fell from 24 to just six over the same period. That divergence sits at the center of the broader scrutiny now surrounding Breen's lawsuit and the department's crowd-control practices heading into future demonstrations.
