Update: This story was updated on May 3 with a statement from the lawyers representing Benjamin Cronin.
The Boulder City Council on Thursday approved a $1 million settlement agreement with Benjamin Cronin, a Boulder resident who was accused of sexual assault as a minor, according to city officials. The settlement follows allegations by Cronin that city police officers failed to consider evidence that could have exonerated him from a criminal investigation, a city official said.
The settlement underscores the stakes of mishandling criminal investigations, as one of the officers initially responsible for the case was later suspended for failing to complete investigations into dozens of reported crimes, citing a heavy caseload.
The details of the charges against Cronin remain largely suppressed from public view. The 20th Judicial District and the Boulder Police Department said public records of the case do not exist. A city official said they were expunged.
City officials said Cronin was accused of a sexual assault that occurred in 2019 when he was a minor. He was arrested in October 2022, a city official said. During a preliminary hearing in March 2023, a district court judge dismissed the city’s charges against Cronin due to a lack of probable cause, according to a city official.
In October 2023, lawyers representing Cronin sent the city a notice threatening litigation and requesting $4 million, according to city officials. The city has not yet responded to an open records request from Boulder Reporting Lab for a copy of the written notice.
A city official said the City Attorney’s Office negotiated the settlement and determined it was in the best interest of the city. A city official said Cronin “accused the city and two police officers of negligence because the detective assigned to the case failed to secure social media messages that the young man said would have undercut the probable cause for a warrant and even exonerated him.”
The financial settlement is a relatively sizable one, particularly given the lack of public information regarding the circumstances surrounding the case and the allegations against the city.
In 2020, the city paid $125,000 to Zayd Atkinson, a Black Naropa University student, after he threatened legal action. His confrontation with police while picking up trash outside his home sparked national attention and the creation of a police oversight panel. In 2022, the city paid $95,000 to Sammie Lawrence, a Black Boulder resident who was arrested by police in 2019 after filming an interaction between officers and homeless people, over allegations of First and Fourth Amendment violations. And in April 2024, the city paid $75,000 to Joslynn Montoya, a deaf woman who alleged in a federal court lawsuit that city police officers discriminated against her in part by not using American Sign Language to communicate effectively.
The latest threat of legal action against the city appears to be at least in part a consequence of a prior “systemic failure” in the city’s detective section. The police department’s mishandling of investigations was brought to light in 2022 following an internal investigation. The internal investigation was reviewed by the city’s Police Oversight Panel, a volunteer board that reviews investigations into allegations of officer misconduct.
The officer who investigated the accusations against Cronin failed to complete investigations into at least 45 other cases from 2019 to 2022, according to investigation records. His investigations into more than a dozen of these cases were never started, including reports of domestic violence, child abuse, sexual assault and stalking, according to records obtained by Boulder Reporting Lab through an open records request.
A city official said the investigation into the allegations against Cronin was “incomplete” and “not handled effectively.” The accusation of a sexual assault in 2019 was investigated in 2021, the city official said. Cronin was arrested in October 2022. A judge dismissed the charges less than a year later.
In July 2022, before Cronin’s arrest, interim Police Chief Steve Redfearn, then deputy chief, submitted a complaint to the city’s Professional Standards Unit against officers in the detective unit for mishandling investigations, including the officer at the center of Cronin’s investigation.
That officer, who has since resigned, said he was “overwhelmed with his caseload.” The officer, and two of his supervisors, were temporarily suspended without pay. One of his previous supervisors retired. A city official said the city has overhauled its case management system and revised its internal policy limiting the number of cases that can be assigned to an individual detective, among other steps to address what the police department described as a “process breakdown.”
“The fact that this case was not investigated as it should have been in the months after it was first opened, however, is deeply regrettable,” Sarah Huntley, a spokeswoman for the City of Boulder, wrote in a statement to Boulder Reporting Lab. “The mishandling of the case does not reflect the standards that we expect of ourselves as an organization, nor what our community expects of us, and the city recognizes the lasting and devastating impact this has had on everyone involved in the original case.”
The lawyers representing Cronin, Christian Griffin and Gwyneth Whalen, said they were pleased that the city is taking responsibility for the “concealment and destruction of exculpatory evidence.” The lawyers, who in 2021 won a $3.4 million federal jury award in a separate case against the city, said they are cautiously optimistic that the city will implement new policies and procedures for the training and supervision of its officers.
“Mr. Cronin’s high school and college years were irreparably damaged by the detectives’ violations of his constitutional rights,” they wrote in a statement to Boulder Reporting Lab. “And, sadly, their misconduct is part and parcel of the Boulder Police Department’s ongoing, systemic failure to train and supervise its detectives, despite the fact that just two and a half years ago, we obtained a $3.41 million verdict against BPD for failing to properly train its officers.”
Huntley said the city is not aware of any other pending threats or filings of civil lawsuits related to the prior mishandling of investigations in the city’s detective unit.
The circumstances leading up to Cronin’s threat of a lawsuit are unclear. Huntley said in the statement that the settlement does not reflect the merits of the underlying allegations against Cronin.
A city official said half the settlement will be paid from the city’s Property and Casualty Fund and the other half will be paid for by an insurance carrier.