Boulder, CO

The Boulder Police Department has paid approximately $7.21 million in documented civil settlements between 2019 and 2024, a figure that is particularly significant given the department's size: with approximately 180 sworn officers, Boulder's per-officer settlement rate is among the highest in the PoliceRiskIndex dataset. The $7.21 million total across 180 officers yields a per-officer exposure of approximately $40,056 - compared to a national average of roughly $12,000 per officer for departments of similar size.

The dataset is anchored by a $3.41 million civil rights judgment entered in November 2021 in the case of Seth Garrett Franco. Franco spent 12 days in the Boulder County Jail following an arrest in which officers allegedly failed to properly assess his medical condition. A jury found that Boulder police officers violated Franco's civil rights through a failure-to-train deficiency - meaning the city itself, not individual officers, was held liable. Colorado Politics described the judgment as a record for Boulder and noted that the failure-to-train theory of liability is particularly difficult for cities to defend because it requires demonstrating systemic rather than individual misconduct.

The second-largest case in the Boulder dataset is a $1.3 million settlement reached in 2022 with a plaintiff who alleged excessive force during an arrest. The responding officers were cleared by the district attorney, but the city settled to avoid trial. In May 2024, Boulder paid $1 million to resolve a lawsuit alleging that officers mishandled a sexual assault investigation involving Benjamin Cronin - a case that illustrates the category of police civil liability that arises not from use of force but from investigative failures.

Boulder is classified as a Non–Consent Decree Dataset in the PoliceRiskIndex system. Colorado's Open Records Act (CORA) requires responses within 3 business days and is one of the most accessible state records laws in the country. For insurance underwriters, the Boulder dataset presents a distinctive risk profile: a small department with a high per-officer exposure rate, driven primarily by systemic liability theories rather than named-officer repeat patterns. This profile suggests that standard concentration-index modeling may underestimate risk in smaller departments where a single systemic failure can generate outsized exposure.