Jun 29, 2008 3:41 pm US/Mountain
Larimer Co. DA Takes Greeley Mayor's Case
GREELEY, Colo. (CBS4) ―
The Larimer County's district attorney will decide if charges should be filed against the mayor of Greeley.
A teenage boy claimed Mayor Ed Clark threw him to the ground Monday night. The boy said it happened after Clark confronted him about riding his motor-bike illegally.
Clark is a former police officer and works as a part time special investigator for the Weld County district attorney. So the case was handed over to Larimer County's district attorney, Larry Abrahamson.
"He should have been charged with assault on a minor," said Tim Stitt, the teen's father. "That's what he did."
Stitt said Clark assaulted his 15-year-old son by throwing him to the ground several times during a confrontation over a mini-bike.
"You have to have an injury if there's an assault. If there's an unlawful physical contact, that's considered harassment," Abrahamson said. "If it's something where self defense in involved, obviously that's not a crime."
Abrahamson says cases like Clark's are often not clear cut as to whether charges should be filed.
"If I come up to you and push you in the chest, you may not have been inviting that, but at the same time, it may not be something where you say, 'Hey, a crime has been committed,'" Abrahamson said.
The prosecutor says as he decides whether to file charges in the mayor's case, he'll look at what led up to the physical contact.
"So there is some subjectivity involved in some of these cases and we have to look at whether or not there's really a crime committed that justifies the involvement of the criminal justice system," he said.
Meantime, there's a restraining order against Clark to stay at least 100 yards away from the teenager.
The district attorney says he expects to make a decision about charges pretty quickly once he gets all the information he needs.
Clark told CBS4 he didn't want to make any comments about the case, but earlier in the week he said he wasn't trying to hurt the teenager and was just trying to get him off of the illegal mini-bike.
Clark and the teenager are neighbors and both say they've had several conflicts in recent years, but they each blame the other for the problems.
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