Jury awards $200K to Mexican tourist in ‘fart police’ translation mixup that led to excessive force

A Mexican tourist attacked by a police dog after Colorado police officers shouted commands in Spanish - which nonsensically translated to “fart police” - has been awarded more than $200,000 in damages.Salvador Alonso Guerrero-Salmeron, a professional musician, was staying at a home in Aurora in March 2023 when a SWAT team made an early morning raid to arrest a tenant in another room. The musician was renting the room while promoting his band and performing shows, court records show, and he had no connection to the suspect, according to a civil lawsuit he later filed, The Denver Post reports. Images from police body-cam footage show officers waking Guerrero-Salmeron, who does not speak English, before he holds up his ID and visa. In footage shown during his civil trial, officers point guns at him and speak Spanish. A police dog then bites the man’s elbow while he holds a document in his other hand.It is unclear exactly what officers were trying to communicate but they used a loudspeaker with the apparent intent to warn residents that a police dog was at the scene. Officers repeatedly shouted commands in English and poorly pronounced Spanish, saying: "Pedo policía pedo la madera." A translator’s report later determined this meant: "Fart police, fart the wood," according to court records.“You just ordered the taco plate,” one police officer noted as the commands were given, according to the report.The Mexican man was unarmed and holding up his tourist visa and identification when the police dog latched onto his arm for around 15 seconds during a March 2023 raid in Colorado (Arapahoe County District Court)During the encounter, police ordered their dog to bite Guerrero-Salmeron and the canine latched on to his arm for around 15 seconds. Guerrero-Salmeron was arrested and charged with failing to obey a police order, a municipal offense that prosecutors later dropped.Guerrero-Salmeron filed a civil lawsuit last month accusing Aurora Police Department officers of using excessive force and pursuing a malicious prosecution. The musician said he neither heard nor understood the commands, according to the complaint. He said that the use of force was unnecessary because he posed no threat to officers and was attempting to identify himself.The Post reported that during the raid, Guerrero-Salmeron had texted the building’s landlord believing intruders were breaking in and attacking someone downstairs, unaware the shouts were coming from police officers.On Tuesday, a jury found Officer Robert Wong, the police dog handler, liable for excessive force and Officer Grant Peet liable for malicious prosecution. Jurors cleared two other officers named in the lawsuit, Oscar Pena and Jeremiah Miles. Attorneys for Wong and Peet defended their actions, arguing that using the police dog was reasonable under the circumstances. They said Guerrero-Salmeron had failed to follow police commands for more than an hour and that officers had reason to believe he could be armed or preparing to attack them.The jury awarded Guerrero-Salmeron $200,000 in damages. Guerrero-Salmeron's attorneys, Joshua Landy and Luke McConnell, told The Independent that the verdict "sets the record straight.""What makes this verdict particularly significant is that the jury didn't stop at finding excessive force," the attorneys said in a statement. "The jury also found that an officer maliciously prosecuted an innocent man and imposed punitive damages for that conduct."The Aurora Police Department declined The Independent’s request for comment.