FILE – This video from the Loveland Police Department body camera footage shows Karen Garner on the ground while being arrested on June 26, 2020. Austin Hopp a former Colorado police officer shown on body camera video roughly arresting the 73-year-old woman with dementia and later seen joking about it has been sentenced to five years in prison. A judge also ordered Austin Hopp to serve three years of parole during Thursday May 5, 2022, sentencing hearing. (Loveland Police Department via AP, File) 
FILE – This undated photo provided by the Larimer County Sheriff’s Office shows Austin Hopp in Fort Collins, Colo. Hopp, a former Colorado police officer shown on body camera video roughly arresting a 73-year-old woman with dementia and later seen joking about it with colleagues was sentenced Thursday to five years in prison. (Larimer County Sheriff’s Office via AP, File)
DENVER | A former Colorado police officer shown on body camera video roughly arresting a 73-year-old woman with dementia and later seen joking about it with colleagues was sentenced Thursday to five years in prison.
Austin Hopp arrested Karen Garner in 2020 after she left a store without paying for about $14 worth of items in Loveland, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) north of Denver. Police body camera video shows that after she turned away from him, he grabbed her arm and pushed her to the ground, still holding the wildflowers she had been picking as she walked through a field.
Hopp had faced anywhere from probation up to eight years behind bars after pleading guilty to second-degree assault in March under a deal with prosecutors that was opposed by Garner’s family. He had faced a mandatory prison sentence of between 10 and 32 years under an original, more serious assault charge.
The footage shows that when Hopp had Garner pushed against the hood of his car, she tried to turn around and repeated that she was trying to go home. He then pushed her back against the car and moved her bent left arm up near her head, holding it, saying, “Are you finished? Are you finished? We don’t play this game.”
A federal lawsuit that Garner filed claimed he dislocated her shoulder. The city settled the lawsuit for $3 million, money which her family has said will pay for the around-the-clock care she has required after her condition deteriorated following her arrest.
Police station surveillance video released by Garner’s lawyer showed Hopp and others talking and at times laughing or joking about the arrest as they watch the body camera footage with Garner in a holding cell nearby. At one point, Hopp told the others to listen for the “pop” during the part of footage when Garner’s shoulder was allegedly dislocated.
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The emotional side of things and the public second guessing are now going to make law enforcement almost impossible. You might fire the officer and you might settle a civil suit, but this was not criminal. As people with all kinds of problems (both physical and mental) are stopped by the police, there will be injuries when people choose to struggle. There is no way to tell what the person’s flexibility is like and what infirmities they may have. It is a sad reality that people will be injured and die in many cases when it started because of their resistance. If the public wants there to be no injuries, then they must tell the police to never use any force and to let all suspects walk away. In doing so, we must acknowledge that no laws will be enforced. We are headed that way. The public should understand that they have accepted the crime that is going to result.
The officer was not striking this woman. He had her arm behind her back. She continued to struggle, most likely due to her diminished mental capacity. That information was not available to the officer. Do I treat everyone who resists as someone who has dementia? Please show me what techniques you use for someone who resists and has dementia. Most of you have not struggled with a female who has flexibility and continues to squirm around the entire time. But, I am open, please show me the way you would do it. There was no assault. There was an officer trying to control a woman with enough flexibility to squirm while he tried to put her arm in a position that would stop it. If you watch the video, the first response he had to the pop was “Oh no”. The laughter that ensued while viewing the video was a form of dark humor that real people use while dealing with terrible things. It was private moment in their minds. I have seen the same type of humor many times in the medical field. Unfortunately, not everyone has adjusted to the fact that there are no private moments and the public cannot accept that humor doesn’t mean that you don’t do what you can professionally.
If you watch the treatment of the woman at the jail, there is no mistreatment. They are simply trying to move and control another struggling female. They have to do it all the time with drunken females. You can say that they should have sought treatment right away after the pop of the shoulder. I can tell you that peoples joints pop all the time when you are struggling to put some type of control on them.
The gist of this is that maybe you feel that it could have been handled better. So, maybe the officer should be fired and sued. But, this was an officer, like the others who are involved, who came to work to do his job. He had the unfortunate luck to have to stop a female who had dementia and who did not listen to orders to stop. He tried to control by simply putting her arm behind her back. You put people on the ground to make it harder for them to resist. He did not use one of the many more powerful control holds with greater chance of injury. I realize that this is simply an emotional issue for most of you. It is sad that we must now guess what emotional response the public will have in their second guessing of an arrest. The police deal with people in all kinds of unknown situations and conditions. If you want them all to go to prison because they didn’t meet your uninformed standards, then there will be no enforcement. Unfortunate things happen when people struggle. Many of those things are accidental and unpredictable. If you cannot accept that, then you must accept the chaos that will result in our society. Yes, the actions must always be shown to the public. Yes, the actions must be reviewed by people who know something. Officers will make mistakes. Their job deals with quickly moving circumstances with all kinds of people. If we are not going to allow any mistakes, then young officers will be fired before they learn how to do the job better.
Unfortunate as this situation was, it was not criminal. This is another sad day for law enforcement. The badly flawed police reform bill was bad enough. Sending officers to prison for this type of struggle sends a message to all those who would consider law enforcement as career.
No, you’re wrong about this one. Hopp deserves to go to prison. This was an assault.
I understand that there aren’t different techniques for controlling a person with dementia vs. a person without dementia. But Karen Garner was obviously too frail to be a threat to Austin Hopp. Absent a weapon (which wasn’t present), she was incapable of attacking him in a dangerous way. He didn’t need her medical background in order to assess that.
And there was no urgency to this arrest. It was a petty theft from a multibillion dollar corporation, with no violence involved, and with a “suspect” who obviously wasn’t in her right mind. Again, Hopp didn’t need Garner’s medical background in order to assess that. He knew the call he was responding to, and Karen Garner’s mental state is obvious from the first few seconds of the encounter. If he had made the decision to apprehend her (either for the theft or more reasonably for her own safety) then okay, but there was no reason to go all tough-guy on her.
And I’m not saying this as an armchair quarterback, I’m saying this as a guy who currently enforces the law and who currently has to make these decisions and live or die with the consequences. I’m saying this as a guy who has learned a lot from you about physical control, and about the police role in physical arrest. I’m saying this as a guy who grapples a couple hours every week, and who wouldn’t dream of twisting my healthy training partner’s arm as far as Hopp twisted Garner’s arm. He had other options, he chose to inflict injury.
And I’m saying this next part as a guy who fully understands the black humor that law enforcement uses to cope with the stress of the job: I’ve broken a few arms too, and it feels sick when it happens. Laughing at morbid jokes is one thing, but I’ve never watched a video gleefully and laughed at the injury right after hurting someone. I’ve never bragged to my partners about kicking an old lady’s ass. Granted, Hopp’s attitude after the fact isn’t an element of the assault, but it does speak to his mindset and to his suitability for the profession.
I appreciate your willingness to stand up for law enforcement, and to say unpopular things. I appreciate how outspoken you are about the recklessly flawed SB 20-217. I appreciate that you stick up for the cops who tried to detain Elijah McClain, without knowing what the outcome of that encounter would be. And you’re right about all of those things. But when cops are wrong, cops need to be willing to call them out.
Austin Hopp was criminally wrong. And he’s getting off light.
You’ve gotta b kidding me, first of all 13 dollars doesn’t constitute injury, second dimensia is not hard to deal with.
Now let’s talk about what was so dam funny that they just beat this 75 year old 104 pound woman, and let her sit in a cell after knowing he just pulled her shoulder out its socket, its on film. How dare u condone anything that those officers did. The Loveland police department are criminals and it’s so sad that they get away with it and have been for a long time. You should be ashamed
You are an idiot