Denver council approves $2.865 million in settlements, with at least $1.3 million tied to police cases
Council members approved 13 settlement resolutions Monday totaling $2.865 million. Public records reviewed for the package show at least $1.3025 million involved Denver Police Department cases, including five payouts tied to a federal protest-policing lawsuit.
Denver City Council approved 13 settlement resolutions Monday totaling $2.865 million, a package that Councilmember Chris Lewis said during Monday’s council meeting pushed the city’s 2026 settlement total to about $3.867 million.
The clearest driver visible in the public record was police-related liability. The June 8 council agenda summary said the Health and Safety Committee sent forward a “substantial batch of police-related liability settlements” tied to Marquis Dominick, et al. v. City & County of Denver. Posted agenda materials list five payouts in that case: $190,000 to Kristen Klotzer, $165,000 to Susan McKillips, $275,000 to Alex Hickman, $155,000 to Tashari Sayers and $300,000 to Joe Szuszwalak.
Those five resolutions total $1.085 million, about 38% of Monday’s full settlement package. The council’s Legistar meeting record also identifies three additional Denver Police Department settlements approved that day: $67,500 in Castillo v. Denver et al. and two payouts in Stacie Lorraine Grant and Ariel Wolff v. City and County of Denver totaling $150,000. Together, the police cases clearly visible in the public record account for at least $1.3025 million of the $2.865 million total, or about 45%.
A federal court case listing shows the Dominick case stems from a lawsuit brought by people injured during Denver police responses to the 2020 George Floyd protests. The settlement resolutions do not by themselves establish the merits of each allegation, but the public record does show that one of Monday’s largest settlement clusters was tied to that single case.
The package also mattered fiscally. During the council meeting, Lewis said the payouts come from the city’s liability claims pool and that Denver had already made a $3 million rescission from General Fund contingency to support that account.
Based on the year-to-date figure Lewis cited, Monday’s vote represented about three-quarters of the city’s roughly $3.867 million in 2026 settlements so far. That makes the package significant on its own, even as the available public materials do not fully show the breakdown of all 13 settlements by department and incident type.