PARKER, Colo. — The U.S. Center for SafeSport hired a former police officer a year after she quit the force while subject of a malicious prosecution lawsuit that resulted in a $24 million verdict against her department.The case alleged that detective Shannon Brukbacher wrongfully arrested a man, Robert Dial, on charges of evidence tampering and being an accessory in a fatal shooting involving his son.Brukbacher’s hiring at the center was announced Oct. 27, 2025, a year after she had retired from the force in Parker, Colorado — not far from the headquarters of the Denver-based center, which investigates sex-abuse cases involving Olympic sports.The hiring also came about a year after Dial filed the lawsuit in which he alleged false arrest and malicious prosecution in a case that stemmed from his son’s fatal shooting of a roommate. Dial won the $24 million verdict in May. Her lawyers appealed the verdict last week.“She’s led numerous high-profile investigations, involving Sexual Assault (child and adult victims), and crimes against children,” the center’s deputy vice president of investigations, Eric Williams, wrote in a letter to staff announcing Brukbacher’s hire, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press. “Furthermore, she served as a trusted witness in Colorado’s 18th Judicial District.”Though it had revamped its hiring practices in the wake of the hiring and firing of a Pennsylvania vice cop — an episode that led to the ouster of the center’s CEO and drew scrutiny from U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa — the center told the AP its search “yielded no information about the pending litigation.”The center said it has since added civil litigation to its lis …
