Previous posts:
- [CO] Officer Crooks admits and arrested for "physical harassment" of his wife after excellent investigating by Mesa Co. Sheriff's Department - ...According to the arrest affidavit this is not the first time an incident like this has occurred... OFFICER CROOKS HAS ALLEGEDLY BEEN IN SEVERAL OTHER RELATED ALTERCATIONS DATING BACK AS FAR AS FEBRUARY 2008, but the victim never reported it... [It appears that Officer Crooks knocked a hole in the wall with his wife's head... left his preschooler son crying after bowling him over with an object he swung in anger... shoved his wife (again) from a neck grip while she was holding their infant son... reportedly told his own mother to mind her own business, and did his best to lie to investigators... [His wife] asked her husband if he was about to choke her - to kill her in front of the children, and ended up teary eyed slipping their children one at a time to a neighbor's home to keep them safe the night of the last incident (assault)...]
- [CO] Police Officer Crook's wife: “I never wanted this to happen and my husband does not deserve this.” - ...[Grand Junction City Attorney John] Shaver claimed to have no knowledge or involvement on the question of whether Crooks was fired or resigned... Police spokeswoman Kate Porras said only that Crooks’ employment “ended this week.” AS A RESULT, SHE SAID THE DEPARTMENT HAS CLOSED TWO SEPARATE INTERNAL INVESTIGATIONS focused on Crooks... In a letter recently sent to the District Attorney’s Office, Crooks’ wife asked prosecutors to drop the case and expressed fears her husband would lose his job...
Grand Junction Sentinel
By Paul Shockley
Friday, February 26, 2010
[Excerpts] A jury needed just 15 minutes of deliberation Thursday before returning a not guilty verdict in the trial of a former Grand Junction Police Department officer accused of harassment. Courtney Crooks, 24, who resigned from the department in September after his arrest on domestic violence allegations involving his wife, was acquitted on a lone count of misdemeanor harassment... “If touching someone were a crime, we’d all be in a lot of trouble,” [Crook's attorney, Martha] Kent told jurors in closing arguments. “There has to be bad intent.” Both sides were largely in agreement about what happened on the night of Aug. 18, 2009, in the Crooks’ home, where months of tension over money exploded in a heated argument between husband and wife, briefly turning physical... The woman testified that while she was standing at a doorway, her husband took a “firm” grip to the back of her neck and redirected her several steps back inside the home. “He wasn’t hurting me in any way,” she said. “He was just wondering where I was going, asking where I was taking the kids”... In a series of questions asked by the jury, she testified she and Crooks remain married and she never wanted him prosecuted. When asked if she resisted when her husband grabbed her at the back at the neck, she laughed as she gave her response. “He wasn’t hurting me, so there was no reason to,” she said. In closing arguments, Miller suggested the woman had “minimized” the events of Aug. 18... “I would submit she was scared and alarmed,” he said. “Why did she leave with her kids and not return that night?” According to testimony, a neighbor, who at the time was a Grand Junction police colleague of Crooks’, ended up reporting the incident to Crooks’ immediate superior officer,, spurring the investigation that led to Crooks’ arrest Aug. 28. Sheriff’s Deputy Mike Dillon testified that he met with Crooks on Aug. 22 at Crooks’ home and asked the fellow officer about what had happened days earlier. In a demonstration that was suggested by Crooks, he acted out what he said were the events of Aug. 18, placing his hand on Dillon’s left shoulder. Dillon wrote in a report that Crooks “lightly grabbed” his wife at the shoulder. [Full article here]
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