Cop Accused Of Busting Sober Drivers For DUIs Resigns Ahead Of Lawsuit

Sometimes I comment before posting these horror stories. At other times I prefer to remain silent and allow the depravity to sink in. This is what obtains in America as law enforcement to a large degree. People talk about good cops, which begs the question, where are they?

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By Pilar Melendez.
Harris Elias and his 15-year-old son were dri­ving home from din­ner at a local Fort Collins, Colorado, taco spot when they got pulled over.
Elias, a 51-year-old sin­gle father of three, told The Daily Beast that he imme­di­ate­ly “put his defens­es up” as he noticed Officer Jason Haferman walk­ing up to his dri­ver-side win­dow on Dec. 3, 2021.
“At first, he asked me if I knew why he had pulled me over, which I thought was a ridicu­lous ques­tion because I had no idea why he would pull me over,” Elias said. “As soon as he asked me what I had to drink, I knew it was hap­pen­ing all over again.”
The har­row­ing sense of déjà vu, he said, was spurred because just two years pri­or, he had been arrest­ed by a Loveland, Colorado, police offi­cer on sus­pi­cion of dri­ving under the influ­ence (DUI). The case was even­tu­al­ly dis­missed, but it instilled a deep fear of overzeal­ous law enforce­ment in Elias.

In a police report obtained by The Daily Beast, Haferman claimed Elias’ “eyes were glassy, pupils con­strict­ed, and his breath­ing was deep” and imme­di­ate­ly placed him under arrest to get test­ed for drugs and alco­hol at a local hos­pi­tal. A Colorado Bureau of Investigation Forensic Services lab report lat­er detect­ed no drugs or alco­hol in his system.
But before those results came back, Elias was already halfway to hell.
“I can’t explain what it is like walk­ing through the hos­pi­tal hand­cuffed. To see how peo­ple look at you, and how the staff inter­acts with you,” Elias said. “It was real­ly degrading.”
The humil­i­a­tion, he said, was just the start. When he was allowed to bond out of jail three days lat­er, he said, he had to deal with child pro­tec­tive ser­vices and beg a judge to let him have con­tact with his son.
That’s because in Colorado, state law dic­tates that an indi­vid­ual who com­mits a DUI that involves a child can also be pros­e­cut­ed for child abuse, a charge Elias faced in addi­tion to dri­ving under the influ­ence and care­less dri­ving. Elias even­tu­al­ly got all charges dropped after approx­i­mate­ly two months — but, he said, the sting hasn’t gone away.

“Knowing that I couldn’t even dri­ve with my own kid and there was zero evi­dence that I vio­lat­ed any law… it made me feel six inch­es tall,” Elias explained. “By far, the thing that doesn’t go away from this case is the child abuse aspect of it. It is the ulti­mate way to hurt some­one who has spent the last 15 years as a sin­gle dad.”
Elias is not the only Colorado res­i­dent to be wrong­ful­ly accused of dri­ving under the influ­ence after being stopped by Haferman. In fact, the Fort Collins Police Department con­firmed to The Daily Beast that in the last two years, at least nine of Haferman’s DUI arrests were exe­cut­ed on dri­vers with no drugs or alco­hol in their systems.The shock­ing series of ques­tion­able arrests was first report­ed by Fox31.
Not includ­ed among those nine is the case of Harley Padilla — even though the severe­ly dis­abled man was forced to spend a year in jail when Haferman arrest­ed him after he said Padilla was slur­ring his words and that his bal­ance was uneven. After a motor­cy­cle acci­dent four years pri­or, the 52-year-old lost his left arm and is forced to speak through a hole in his throat.
“Because of his injuries, I don’t think Harley Padilla even has the capac­i­ty to slur words,” his attor­ney, Troy Krenning, told The Daily Beast. “He speaks through his throat and doesn’t use his tongue or lips. Haferman also talked about his bal­ance being uneven. No shit, he is disabled.”

At the end of his bench tri­al over the Feb. 18, 2021, arrest, Larimer County Judge Sarah Beth Cure found not only that Padilla was not guilty of dri­ving under the influ­ence, but also that Officer Haferman lacked “cred­i­bil­i­ty” and offered “incon­sis­tent” testimony.“It changed course on sev­er­al of the key facts. Some of his tes­ti­mo­ny is not sup­port­ed by the evi­dence,” Cure con­clud­ed in her rul­ing, accord­ing to a tran­script obtained by The Daily Beast. “In fact, some of it was con­trary to the evidence.”
But before Fort Collins Police Chief Jeff Swoboda could fire Haferman after an inter­nal police inves­ti­ga­tion, the 31-year-old resigned from the force, as the chief announced ear­ly this month. A police spokesper­son con­firmed the res­ig­na­tion came after Haferman had been reas­signed twice and ulti­mate­ly placed on leave after a review ini­tial­ly began at the start of the year — before inter­nal affairs began their own inves­ti­ga­tion in April. “The inter­nal affairs inves­ti­ga­tion did not iden­ti­fy any mal­in­tent or crim­i­nal vio­la­tions,” the spokesper­son said. “It did reveal a pat­tern of poor per­for­mance in terms of admin­is­tra­tive respon­si­bil­i­ties, pro­ce­dur­al con­sis­ten­cy, and adher­ence to the stan­dards of oper­a­tion that we train and expect from our offi­cers.” Three res­i­dents sub­ject­ed to Haferman’s arrest spree told The Daily Beast they were hor­ri­fied by the idea the now-for­mer cop has seem­ing­ly got­ten off “scot-free” while they are left with what they describe as phys­i­cal, men­tal, and emo­tion­al scars from encoun­ters with him.

All describe Haferman stop­ping them under the pre­tense that they com­mit­ted a minor traf­fic infrac­tion. Then — after claim­ing they exhib­it­ed signs of drunk dri­ving such as smelling like alco­hol or hav­ing glassy eyes or dilat­ed pupils — they say Haferman forced them into squad cars and took them to hos­pi­tals, hand­cuffed, to get a blood test. The peo­ple who spoke with The Daily Beast all pro­duced state blood test results show­ing that no alco­hol was found in their system.
All say they were forced to spend time and mon­ey to clear their name and even­tu­al­ly have the charges dropped. “It was hor­ri­ble,” Padilla told The Daily Beast.
Another woman told a local news out­let that she was forced to stay in jail overnight even though she repeat­ed­ly explained to Haferman that her eyes were red because she had just been dumped by her boyfriend and had been cry­ing for three hours.
Haferman did not respond to a request for com­ment for this sto­ry. And his record is not unblem­ished: if he were to apply to a new depart­ment, the state’s “Peace Officer Standards and Training” data­base would show the cop “resigned while under investigation.”
But the cop’s res­ig­na­tion, accord­ing to crim­i­nal defense lawyers and the police depart­ment, means that tech­ni­cal­ly, Haferman can move to anoth­er state (or even anoth­er Colorado coun­ty) and apply for anoth­er law enforce­ment posi­tion. A spokesper­son for the Fort Collins Police Department told The Daily Beast that even though Haferman was fac­ing ter­mi­na­tion, the state agency “does not pro­hib­it employ­ment if an offi­cer resigns from an agency, and ter­mi­na­tion is not auto­mat­ic grounds for decer­ti­fi­ca­tion in Colorado.”

That rais­es the prospect the cop could land in a new gig — infu­ri­at­ing those caught up in what they described as a sense­less drag­net that upend­ed their lives. “I can nev­er look at a police offi­cer the same way again,” Elias said. Haferman was not exact­ly shy about accus­ing peo­ple of drunk dri­ving. It was, after all, his job.
Of the 504 dri­ving-under-the-influ­ence arrests his depart­ment made last year, a police spokesper­son con­firmed that Haferman was involved in 191 — or about 37 per­cent— “either as the pri­ma­ry arrest­ing offi­cer or pro­vid­ing DUI inves­tiga­tive support.”
That num­ber is not, in and of itself, ter­ri­bly sur­pris­ing giv­en that Haferman worked in a DUI enforce­ment assign­ment at the time.
But police say that eight of those cas­es in 2021 alone result­ed in arrests where blood tests indi­cat­ed no drugs or alco­hol detect­ed. Police also admit that Haferman was involved in at least one more arrest where no drugs or alco­hol were detect­ed this year.
“People still joke to this day, ‘Don’t Drink and Drive, but even if you’re not drink­ing, you could still get a DUI’” in Larimer County, Matthew Haltzman, an attor­ney rep­re­sent­ing a man whom Haferman arrest­ed in April on a DUI charge that was dis­missed, told The Daily Beast. “It was that bad.” Among his tar­gets was Padilla, who was dri­ving home after spend­ing the day vis­it­ing a friend in Fort Collins when he noticed the flash­ing behind him.
“I saw the lights and imme­di­ate­ly thought it was a plow­er because of all the snow on the ground,” Padilla told The Daily Beast. “Then I real­ized it was a cop car.”

Padilla was no stranger to being pulled over. He was also not inno­cent of dri­ving-relat­ed crimes, hav­ing plead­ed guilty or no con­test to sev­er­al DUIs over the years. But he told The Daily Beast that his­to­ry — and his phys­i­cal state — had left him try­ing hard­er than ever “to do every­thing right on the road.” So he was shocked when Haferman told him he had been swerv­ing while dri­ving and accused him of dri­ving under the influ­ence. Haferman imme­di­ate­ly placed Padilla in hand­cuffs and sent him to the hos­pi­tal for a blood test, which came back clean for alco­hol, accord­ing to a tran­script of a judge’s ruling.
During the trans­port via ambu­lance — at his own request, giv­en he had an infec­tion in his femur — Padilla said his wrist was hurt and his shoul­der knocked out of its sock­et.“At the hos­pi­tal, they sug­gest­ed I stay for a few days because of every­thing wrong with me,” Padilla said. “But instead I was sent to jail. And then I stayed there because I refused to admit I was drunk dri­ving when I wasn’t.” At the end of his bench tri­al, a judge agreed with him that he wasn’t drunk dri­ving. But Padilla was found guilty of pos­sess­ing an open mar­i­jua­na con­tain­er in his car and acknowl­edged that he had THC in his sys­tem — though the blood test result showed it was below the state lim­it for dri­ving, and he said it was pur­chased with his med­ical mar­i­jua­na card. For his part, Elias saw every charge against him dis­missed. But get­ting there was a struggle.

Haferman stat­ed in a police report that he stopped Elias after the dri­ver did not have his “head­lamps acti­vat­ed at night… failed to yield the right of way to the pedes­tri­ans and made a wide turn to get around the pedes­tri­ans.” The offi­cer also said that he turned into the wrong lane with­out using his right turn sig­nal. Haferman also not­ed that Elias refused to par­tic­i­pate in road­side tests to deter­mine his sobri­ety; Elias told The Daily Beast he refused to do so because he “shut down” and didn’t want any­thing he said to be mis­in­ter­pret­ed lat­er. “It took me longer to find my car insur­ance and reg­is­tra­tion than it did for him to con­duct his drunk dri­ving inves­ti­ga­tion and arrest me,” Elias said. Body-cam footage of the arrest obtained by The Daily Beast shows Elias remain­ing calm but refus­ing to answer Haferman’s ques­tions as he searched for his license and insur­ance. Eventually get­ting out of the car, Elias says in the footage that he refus­es to par­tic­i­pate in his sobri­ety tri­als and asks for him to “write him a tick­et and let him go.” Haferman refused and con­tin­ued to ask him whether he con­sumed alco­hol — in response to which Elias insist­ed on speak­ing to his attor­ney. In the footage, Elias is heard telling Haferman that the hand­cuffs were hurt­ing him. “It was a vio­lent arrest,” Elias said. “He quick­ly came behind me and grabbed my left wrist and put it in a painful wrist lock. It imme­di­ate­ly sent me into a panic.”

As Haferman was clos­ing the squad door behind him, Elias said, the cop “slammed the door on my knee” — a move that prompt­ed him to scream out “fuck, Jesus Christ!” in the body-cam footage. In the arrest report, Haferman wrote that he felt “some restric­tion when the door was almost closed.” After he was even­tu­al­ly released from jail, Elias said, he faced ran­dom drug tests that forced him to pee in front of a stranger — and a mir­ror — and lost mon­ey pay­ing an inde­pen­dent lab and a lawyer to clear his name. While it’s been months since the dis­trict attor­ney dis­missed charges against Elias, he stressed that the “prob­lem didn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly go away.” In addi­tion to what he claims is emo­tion­al dis­tress from the arrest, he said he has lost his for­mer sense of safe­ty and secu­ri­ty in his com­mu­ni­ty that has him “con­stant­ly look­ing over my shoul­der.” “It’s hard to even think about it again,” he added. And the knowl­edge that Haferman was able to resign “feels like less than a slap on the wrist.” “It’s over­whelm­ing,” he said. “He got off scot-free.” The Fort Collins Police Department’s inter­nal affairs depart­ment offi­cial­ly began to look into alle­ga­tions of wrong­do­ing by Haferman in April. By then, Carly Zimmerman had already been arrest­ed after being stopped for alleged­ly dri­ving reck­less­ly past Haferman as he was exe­cut­ing anoth­er traf­fic stop.
In body-cam­era footage obtained by KDVR, Haferman asks Zimmerman how much she has had to drink — to which she replies that she had not had any, but has “been cry­ing for about three hours” because she had just gone through a breakup. Zimmerman’s charge was even­tu­al­ly dis­missed and her driver’s license was rein­stat­ed after a hear­ing, accord­ing to the out­let. (Zimmerman and her lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.)

Around the same time, Derrick Groves was arrest­ed, too. According to an April 7 arrest report obtained by The Daily Beast, Haferman stopped Groves after the man alleged­ly lost con­trol of his car and drove down an embank­ment. Noting that Groves was on pro­ba­tion for a pri­or DUI offense, Haferman said he quick­ly con­clud­ed that he had “blood­shot, glassy eyes, his pupils appeared to be dif­fer­ent sizes, and he [his] speech was slow and raspy at times,” the report states. Groves insist­ed that he “does not use alco­hol and drugs because he was on probation…[and] stat­ed that he was 100 per­cent sober.” Groves was even­tu­al­ly arrest­ed and forced to go to the hos­pi­tal to get a blood test before even­tu­al­ly get­ting placed in a jail cell for a day. The dis­trict attor­ney even­tu­al­ly dis­missed his DUI in June — and his care­less dri­ving charge two months lat­er. A Colorado Bureau of Investigation Forensic Services lab report said no drugs or alco­hol were detected.
“I can’t diag­nose PTSD, but he cer­tain­ly has all the symp­toms of being some­one who is trau­ma­tized,” Matthew Haltzman, his lawyer, told The Daily Beast.
The Larimer County District Attorney’s Office told The Daily Beast they were first made aware of the sus­pi­cious cas­es this sum­mer. That’s when the District Attorney’s office was informed by Fort Collins Police that they had already start­ed con­duct­ing an inter­nal review.
Matt Maillaro, an assis­tant dis­trict attor­ney, told The Daily Beast that by August — after going through case files and find­ing “more prob­lem­at­ic cas­es” — his office con­tact­ed the police depart­ment with the news. They would “no longer be pros­e­cut­ing cas­es in which for­mer offi­cer Haferman was an essen­tial wit­ness,” the pros­e­cu­tor said.

Maillaro added that the DA’s office con­clud­ed that sev­er­al of Haferman’s arrests were “made based on poor judg­ment, dis­re­gard for the prop­er pro­ce­dures and train­ing, and a mis­un­der­stand­ing or dis­re­gard of the legal require­ments regard­ing prob­a­ble cause.” But they did not find any­thing to sup­port crim­i­nal charges against him. “Through our review, it was appar­ent this had already been done on most of the cas­es by virtue of each pros­e­cu­tor dis­miss­ing Haferman’s bad cas­es when they saw the evi­dence didn’t sup­port a pros­e­cu­tion,” Maillaro added. It remains to be seen if Haferman can walk away com­plete­ly unscathed. Elias’ lawyer, Sarah Schielke, told The Daily Beast that she plans to file a law­suit against the Fort Collins Police Department and Haferman on behalf of Elias and sev­er­al oth­er clients who were also false­ly arrest­ed on DUI charges. Matthew Haltzman said he plans to file a sim­i­lar law­suit next year. “I think that Jason Haferman had an innate desire to be the best DUI cop out here or on his force, no mat­ter the cost. No mat­ter who was left in his wake,” Haltzman said. “But while he was just see­ing prey, he was not real­iz­ing he was leav­ing people’s lives for­ev­er changed.” “But that’s over now. His reign of ter­ror is over and it’s time to get justice.”