A judgment against a Casper police officer for forcing a woman to the ground and kneeling on her neck during a 2020 arrest cost Wyoming $130,000 in public funds.
The episode is part of a pattern of unconstitutional behavior by Casper Police Department officers, according to the plaintiff’s lawyers, and a claim against the city in connection with the incident resulted in an additional settlement with the municipality for $25,000 — an award that was paid for by a municipal liability pool.
Officer Michael Quirin denied liability in the judgment against him, but Adrianah “Nana” Rodriguez was glad for the legal recognition of the harm done to her.
“One of my most important goals in this case was to hold the police and the City accountable for their brutality and misconduct,” she said in a statement about the decision. “I hope they have learned a lesson, and that they will not do this to people in the future.”
The incident
Quirin had been on the job for 18 months before he and another officer responded to a noise complaint in the early hours of Jan. 5, 2020, the Casper Star-Tribune reported.
“It’s not that loud,” Quirin’s bodycam recorded him saying as he approached the door to the apartment he’d been summoned to for a noise complaint.
WyoFile independently reviewed both officers’ unabridged bodycam footage, provided by Rodriguez’s attorneys.
The officers knocked on the door. Then banged on it. About a minute went by before the door was opened. Quirin appeared agitated while waiting for someone to answer the door, saying it made him nervous when people took that long. The party of ten people behind the door recalled being a bit startled by the officers’ presence.
Quirin was all business when one member of the group answered the knock.
The officers immediately came in, justifying their entry on the scent of marijuana, the department later stated. (Some of the attendees were later charged with suspicion of misdemeanor marijuana possession, but the district attorney declined to prosecute.)
Quirin ordered a sleeping, underwear-clad man out of bed, yelling and shining a light in the clearly disoriented man’s face.
“I hope they have learned a lesson, and that they will not do this to people in the future.”
Adrianah “Nana” Rodriguez
He then asked everyone present for identification. Rodriguez brought hers out immediately, then said “I know my rights.” He asked whether she’d like to be quiet or be in custody, and she withdrew her ID, telling him “no, I would not like to be in custody.”
Seconds later, the much larger 54-year-old Quirin had the 120-pound, 5’3” Rodriguez pinned to the ground, eliciting yells from others in the group. In the bodycam footage, the prone young woman can be heard sobbing and refuting Quirin’s claims she was resisting. “You’re hurting me,” she said in tears. He asked if she was on drugs and she said no, but admitted to being a little drunk as she continued crying.
A man in the background shouted “you’re on her neck, bro. Chill.”
The other officer, Ryan Lowry, can be heard saying “Hold up, Quirin, Quirin.”
Nearly five months later, a similar hold was applied to George Floyd but for an extended period of time, leading to his death. His murder lit a flame that drew thousands of crowds together from across the nation, calling for just policing.
For Rodriguez, a Latina/Black woman, the event ended in handcuffs and then a jail cell — a detainment that bled into the next day. She was charged with “interference with a peace officer,” but charges were later dropped.
Crime and punishment
Immediately following the incident, the Casper Police Department suspended Quirin for a week without pay. He was then required to undergo more training before going back on the street. An internal investigation also resulted in the entire department getting additional training, according to the department’s response to the Casper Star-Tribune.
“Although the officer’s actions were consistent with constitutional laws governing police conduct, it was the opinion of the Department that his conduct did not rise to the higher standards of conduct expected at the Casper Police Department,” the department told the Casper Star-Tribune. “Those higher standards include the expectation that, whenever possible, through their training and professionalism, officers should exhibit calm professionalism in the face of chaos.”
The department continued to stand by Quirin’s account of the incident, including claims that Rodriguez shouted obscenities at him and refused to move away from the group. Bodycam footage contradicts those claims.
Ultimately, Quirin’s legal team offered to have a judgment entered against him, which is unusual.
“I think Quirin and his lawyers must have recognized the indefensibility of his conduct, and they offered judgment to be entered against him, which we accepted,” Rodriguez’s attorney Darold Killmer of Killmer Lane
said. “That feels like a settlement, but when you get a judgment, you’re also entitled to obtain your attorney fees under the federal civil rights statutes.”
Of the $130,000, $30,000 was lawyer’s fees, Killmer said. He said the judgment, as opposed to a settlement, was “significant.”
“That’s a legal declaration that the judge signed,” he said. “And so in the future, if Michael Quirin is ever asked, ‘Have you ever you know had a judgment, a civil rights judgment, injured against you?’ … The answer is yes.”
Quirin remains a patrol officer at the Casper Police Department.
“Officer Quirin does fine work and is one our most active officers,” Chief McPheeters told Oil City News.
Bigger picture
The settlement was one of many in Casper over the last few decades, according to the lawsuit.
Others include a $149,000 settlement after an officer dragged a man out of a parked truck, throwing him to the ground and giving him a black eye after he declined to identify himself. Another officer entered a woman’s house without consent or a warrant to search for a runaway minor, shoved her and took her to jail, resulting in a $85,000 settlement. And $200,000 was paid out after officers looking for two teen male robbery suspects made a woman and her young son walk backwards, kneel and be handcuffed at gunpoint as her daughter looked on from her vehicle.
Several involved an officer named Marcus Maton who was later promoted to Sergeant and showed up the night of Rodiguez’s arrest before she was sent to jail, according to her lawyer.
But this isn’t just a Casper problem. Across Wyoming, the State Self-Insurance Program stated in its annual report that the public fund footed the bill for nearly $3.4 million in peace officer claim payouts and attorney fees between FY 2019 and FY 2023. There were 17 settlements reported each of those five years, except for in 2021 when there were 18.
In September, Casper Police Sergeant Jake Bigelow even spoke to one reason for many of these settlements: a lack of police knowledge about the Fourth Amendment, search and seizure.
“The lack of adequate training for Wyoming peace officers on search and seizure and Fourth Amendment issues across the state has reared its ugly head most recently with some very public lawsuits that have happened across the state,” he told the Joint Judiciary Committee. He was testifying on his own behalf, not the department’s.
While officers are required to have 10 hours of continued education training each year, Bigelow said they get to pick what kind of training they want, often opting for firearms training or interrogations instead of learning about the Fourth Amendment. He said he’d talked to several officers who’d been on the force for a long time.
“When I ask them, ‘How much search and seizure training have they received over their 20-year period,’ many of them say none,” he said. “They got their minimal training at the academy, their foundational knowledge, and then they spent 20 years as a police officer never having been forced to attend an additional hour of search and seizure training.”
He hopes that this training becomes a requirement.
In Rodriguez’s case, her attorneys argued the officers violated the First and Fourth amendments, going into the apartment illegally and retaliating against her for using her First Amendment right to free speech.
Attorneys’ views
Now based in Denver, Rodriguez’s attorney, said he grew up in Casper and really wants the police training to improve there.
“I’ve got family in Casper. I’ve got a lot of friends in Casper,” Killmer said. “I am not happy to see that the Casper police are not well trained and that they disrespect the law. Police with their badges, their primary duty is to protect the rights of residents like Ms. Rodriguez, not to violate them.”
As the incident unfolded, one of Rodriguez’s friends, Alex Fuller, had called his father — Don Fuller, an influential local attorney who’d gone toe-to-toe with the police department before.
The elder Fuller said he was proud of Rodriguez.
“It takes a great deal of courage to fight back against law enforcement in your hometown,” he said.
But at the same time, he felt Quirin’s actions showed that he doesn’t have the temperament for the job.
“Being a cop is a tough job,” he said in a text. “I was on the phone with my son during this incident, and heard Quirin screaming and a young lady crying … He turned a ‘nothing to see here’ moment into a horrifying event at the expense of an innocent young lady.”
When asked for a comment on the judgment against Quirin, Casper Police Department spokesperson Amber Freestone stated the department can’t comment on a Casper City judgment.
“The night I was assaulted by Officer Quirin was the most terrifying experience of my life,” Rodriguez said. “I am proud of myself for standing up for my constitutional rights. I hope Officer Quirin and the Casper Police Department have learned that they cannot assault innocent people like this.”
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