Jesse Cunningham was just trying to help. In July 2021, the military veteran was driving through Fort Collins, Colorado with his family when they came upon a serious motorcycle crash. Cunningham, who has medical training from his time as a military police officer, jumped out of his car and helped stabilize an injured rider’s leg while waiting for paramedics to arrive.
That good deed turned into a nightmare. Once officers showed up and Cunningham gave his witness statement, one of them, Officer Jason Haferman, decided Cunningham smelled like alcohol. Cunningham admitted he’d had two beers hours earlier, well before he ever got behind the wheel, and repeatedly asked for a breathalyzer to clear things up on the spot.
That request was denied. Haferman claimed Cunningham’s prescription for Adderall would mess with a breath test, even though Cunningham explained he hadn’t taken any on the trip. Instead, Haferman ran him through field sobriety tests and reported that Cunningham failed them, a conclusion his own attorney later called flatly contradicted by the body camera footage. Cunningham was arrested for DUI, and because his daughters were in the car, he was also booked on suspicion of child abuse.
A blood test eventually came back clean. No alcohol, no drugs. It took months for the charges to be fully dismissed, and nearly five years for the case to reach a resolution. This month, the city of Fort Collins agreed to pay Cunningham $500,000 to settle his lawsuit, a figure his attorney, Sarah Schielke, believes is the largest wrongful DUI settlement in the country.
This Wasn’t A One-Off Mistake
Cunningham wasn’t alone. Schielke also represents four other people arrested by Haferman under similar circumstances, all of whom saw their cases dismissed after clean blood tests. A Fort Collins Police Department internal investigation found at least nine instances where Haferman arrested someone for DUI and the blood work showed nothing.
Court documents from a related civil rights case reportedly indicate Haferman accounted for nearly 40 percent of the department’s total DUI arrests in 2021.
What Happened To The Officer
Haferman resigned from the department in 2022, reportedly one day before he was set to be fired. Colorado records show he’s no longer certified as a peace officer in the state.
As part of the settlement, Cunningham isn’t permitted to say anything disparaging about the police department, though he’s been candid that no dollar amount undoes what his family went through that night.
Our Take
Most of us have pulled over to help at an accident scene at some point, or hope we would if the moment called for it. It’s supposed to be one of the more universally decent things a driver can do. Reading that doing exactly that got a sober guy arrested in front of his kids is the kind of story that makes you want to double-check your own dashcam is charged before every road trip.
The blood test doing the actual job here, clearing an innocent man when the paperwork didn’t, is a good reminder of why those tests exist in the first place. Glad Cunningham’s family finally gets to close this chapter.