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Aurora officer fired for failing to report colleague who pistol-whipped, choked man

By August 12, 2021 | updated 4 years ago

Former Aurora Officer Francine Martinez
Francine Martinez.
Photo courtesy of Arapahoe County District Court

The Aurora police officer who didn’t intervene or report when her colleague beat an unarmed man has been fired, the police department announced Thursday.

The department said former Officer Francine Martinez was fired after an internal investigation concluded she violated the department’s duty to intervene, conformance to law and performance standards.

The violations stem from body camera footage showing former Officer John Haubert beating a suspect with his gun and choking him while Haubert and Martinez were responding to a trespassing call. 

The suspect, later identified as Kyle Vinson, had not resisted the officers’ orders to get on his stomach when Haubert began hitting him, and the footage shows him gasping for air and repeatedly crying, “You’re killing me.”

Haubert resigned from the police force on July 29, days after the body camera footage of the incident went public. The internal investigation into Haubert’s actions is ongoing despite his resignation, the department said.

Haubert, 39, faces criminal charges of attempted first-degree assault, second-degree assault, felony menacing, official oppression and first-degree official misconduct. He had been a patrol officer with Aurora for three years.

Vinson says he thought officer was going to kill him

Martinez, 40, faces misdemeanor charges of failure to intervene and failure to report use of force by an officer.

Officials with the police department have declined to make additional comments about the incident but, in a news conference last month, Chief Vanessa Wilson denounced the actions, saying the department is “disgusted” and “angry.”

“This is not police work. This is not police work. … This is not the Aurora Police Department. This was criminal,” Wilson said.

Hannah Metzger hannah.metzger@gazette.com

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