A Denver sheriff’s deputy accused of punching a man in a wheelchair while on duty in 2019 — in a lawsuit the city has now settled — was also arrested on accusations he punched another man in a wheelchair in December.
The Denver City Council approved the $325,000 settlement in the case over the 2019 incident involving Deputy Jason Gentempo, now 44, during a meeting Monday.
Gentempo, who has been a sheriff’s deputy since 2005, is now on investigatory leave from the sheriff’s department following his arrest in the newer matter in December. Both of his cases also involved allegations that other law enforcement officers attempted to cover up or change the factual records of the events.
During the incident in 2019, Gentempo was transporting inmate Serafin Finn from a Denver hospital to the jail when Finn spit at him. Gentempo then punched Finn, who was handcuffed and in a wheelchair, in the face, knocking over his wheelchair, a video of the incident shows.
Gentempo was cleared of any wrongdoing in the incident, according to internal investigation documents.
In December, the Denver Police Department arrested Gentempo and his wife, Sgt. Carla Gentempo, after they were accused of assaulting another man in a wheelchair while they were off duty. The couple learned that a 17-year-old they knew was at a Denver apartment where they believed there was a “sexual torture chamber,” according to affidavits filed in that case.
Jason Gentempo told investigators that he believed the man in the wheelchair met the teen in a chatroom and took the teen to his home, where he showed them “sexual bondage items” and put some of the items on the teen with their consent, an affidavit says.
When the Gentempos drove to pick up the teen, the man in a wheelchair, who is paraplegic, met them in front of his apartment building. The Gentempos then beat the man in an attack that was captured on surveillance footage, the documents say. They were arrested on suspicion of third-degree assault.
The man in the wheelchair, whose identity was redacted in court records, told The Denver Post in December that he didn’t do anything sexual with the teenager and refuted the deputies’ characterization of a “sexual torture chamber.”
A Denver police officer is accused of trying to cover up that assault. Officer Henry Soni, 26, was the responding officer who reviewed surveillance video of the attack and gave the man in the wheelchair a case number, according to an affidavit. He then failed to file a report or enter the surveillance video as evidence in the case.
In official records, Soni wrote that the man in the wheelchair “does not want to file a report at this time.” The officer’s body-worn camera footage of his response to the man’s home was automatically logged into the police evidence storage system as being connected to an assault call, but Soni manually changed the footage the next day to be classified as “All Other/Non-event,” according to an affidavit.
Soni was arrested on suspicion of attempting to influence a public servant, forgery, evidence tampering and misconduct. He was also accused of on-duty sexual assault in an unrelated case. In December, he was suspended without pay, pending the outcome of the criminal investigation.
Internal investigators found Gentempo improperly stored his firearm in 2021 and that he disobeyed rules related to his body-worn camera in 2024, disciplinary records show.
A former city employee also accused the city of altering factual reports related to the 2019 incident involving Gentempo to support lesser discipline than what was recommended by the Public Integrity Division. The employee, Brittany Iriart, had investigated Gentempo’s case while working as an investigator in the division’s administrative investigations unit.
Staff writer Shelly Bradbury contributed to this story.