—Vanessa Edwards, B1Daily

Courtney “CW” and Nicole Mallery say they wanted to raise livestock, build something for their family and operate Freedom Acres Ranch in rural El Paso County, Colorado.

Instead, the Black ranchers say they found themselves fighting something much uglier: racial slurs, threats, trespassing, damaged property, dead animals and people they believed wanted them gone.

Then came perhaps the most disturbing part of their story.

The Mallerys say they repeatedly sought help from law enforcement.

Eventually, they were the ones arrested.

The couple has accused members of the predominantly white community surrounding their ranch of years of racially motivated harassment. They have also accused the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office, particularly Sgt. Emery “Ray” Gerhart, of treating them unfairly and failing to adequately protect them. The Sheriff’s Office has strongly denied racial discrimination and maintains that its deputies acted appropriately.

But what happened next makes those accusations impossible to casually brush aside.

The criminal case against the Mallerys ultimately collapsed.

A Black Ranch Surrounded by Allegations of Terror

The Mallerys’ allegations are horrifying.

They told Ark Republic that after purchasing their ranch, they encountered trespassers, damaged fences and surveillance equipment, stolen livestock and animals they said had been poisoned or mutilated. Courtney said he was chased while working near his fence. The couple also described people driving slowly past their property, photographing them and, in some instances, allegedly displaying firearms.

Colorado Public Radio later reported that the Mallerys had complained about people pointing guns at them, calling them racial slurs, releasing dogs on them, damaging cameras and ranch gates, harming animals and encouraging violence against them on social media.

Some of the social-media material reported by KOAA was particularly disturbing.

Screenshots supplied by the Mallerys reportedly included complaints about Black Lives Matter material displayed on their property and references to “pitchforks and fire sticks.” The Mallerys described the atmosphere as a “modern-day KKK assault.”

Those are allegations, not judicial findings.

But when a Black family says it is receiving racial threats while its property and animals are being attacked, law enforcement should investigate with extraordinary seriousness.

Instead, the relationship between the Mallerys and local law enforcement deteriorated into something extraordinary.

They Accused a Sheriff’s Sergeant of Targeting Them

The Mallerys specifically accused Sgt. Gerhart of participating in discriminatory treatment.

Courtney told Ark Republic that Gerhart had repeatedly appeared around the ranch and claimed the sergeant had threatened to arrest him if he continued calling police. The Mallerys launched a petition seeking Gerhart’s removal and accused him of siding with their neighbors.

Then Gerhart became directly involved in the criminal investigation against them.

According to CPR’s review of the affidavit, Gerhart filed a sworn affidavit charging Courtney with felony stalking after consulting with the local district attorney’s office. Gerhart acknowledged in that affidavit that he himself had been the subject of four complaints filed by the Mallerys against sheriff’s deputies.

Think about how poisonous that situation had become.

The Black ranchers were accusing a particular law-enforcement officer of mistreating them.

That officer was simultaneously investigating allegations against the ranchers.

Whatever one’s conclusion about Gerhart’s conduct, that overlap alone created an obvious appearance problem.

Even CPR noted at the time that it was unclear why someone else wasn’t assigned to investigate given the Mallerys’ complaints about Gerhart.

Then the People Asking for Help Were Arrested

In February 2023, Courtney was arrested.

Nicole had also faced felony stalking charges.

Courtney additionally faced allegations involving utility-meter tampering and petty theft.

The couple who had spent years publicly saying they were being harassed now found themselves transformed from complainants into criminal defendants.

Courtney’s bond was initially requested at $2,000 by prosecutors.

A magistrate set it at $6,000 instead.

The symbolism was brutal.

A Black rancher says his family is being terrorized.

He complains about law enforcement.

He accuses a sheriff’s sergeant of mistreatment.

That same sergeant participates in the investigation.

And the rancher ends up behind bars.

But then the criminal justice system encountered a rather inconvenient problem.

Every Charge Was Dropped

In May 2023, all criminal charges against Courtney and Nicole Mallery were dismissed.

Not reduced.

Not resolved through guilty pleas.

Dismissed.

The Fourth Judicial District Attorney’s Office said there was “no likelihood for success at trial.”

The prosecutor’s dismissal specifically referenced the available evidence and the credibility of witnesses.

That does not legally prove that the Sheriff’s Office acted out of racism.

It does, however, raise serious questions about how matters reached felony arrests in the first place.

Nicole’s attorney, Jeremy Loew, subsequently blasted the Sheriff’s Office’s handling of the case, accusing it of conducting an unprecedented public misinformation campaign and violating his clients’ due-process rights.

Courtney’s attorney, Tyrone Glover, placed responsibility for what he called an injustice directly on the Sheriff’s Office and others in the community.

The Sheriff’s Office said after dismissal that it could not comment because the case was sealed.

The Sheriff’s Office Says the Racism Allegations Are False

Fairness requires acknowledging the other side.

El Paso County Sheriff Joseph Roybal denied that his office discriminated against the Mallerys.

The department said deputies had responded to more than 170 calls for service involving the Mallerys and their neighbors and investigated numerous complaints. Roybal said he would take action if evidence showed that an employee was acting on racial bias.

The Mallerys’ neighbor also accused them of harassment and said she feared for herself and her mother. Court records documented allegations and restraining-order disputes from both sides.

Those facts matter.

But they don’t erase the racial allegations, and they certainly don’t erase the eventual dismissal of every criminal charge against the Mallerys.

Nor does answering a large number of calls automatically establish that each complaint was handled properly.

That’s precisely why independent scrutiny matters.

And Three Years Later, the Mallerys Say It Still Isn’t Over

This story didn’t disappear in 2023.

In April 2026, Capital B reported that the Mallerys said shots had been fired at their ranch during Easter weekend.

The couple told the publication that they continued to experience harassment and attributed the danger partly to what they characterized as years of inadequate response from the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office.

So after national attention, arrests, protests, dismissed charges and years of controversy, Freedom Acres Ranch still wasn’t describing itself as safe.

That is an extraordinary failure somewhere in the system.

At minimum, a family should not spend years wondering whether somebody is going to attack them on their own land.

America’s History Makes This Story Particularly Ugly

There is another reason Freedom Acres Ranch strikes such a nerve.

Black landownership in America has a brutal history.

Black farmers once owned millions more acres of farmland than they do today. Discrimination, violence, discriminatory lending, partition sales and other economic pressures contributed to enormous Black land loss across the twentieth century.

So when Black ranchers say people are intimidating them, interfering with their property and trying to force them from their land, that allegation lands on historical scar tissue.

The Mallerys have explicitly said they believe some of the hostility surrounding Freedom Acres Ranch was intended to push them off their property.

That allegation has not been proven in court.

But given America’s history, it deserves investigation, not ridicule.

Protect the Ranchers, Investigate the Allegations

Freedom Acres Ranch should never have become a place where ranching required surveillance cameras, lawyers, restraining orders and national civil-rights attention.

The Mallerys’ allegations against Sgt. Gerhart and the Sheriff’s Office deserve to be evaluated on evidence, and accusations of racism against an individual officer should not be declared proven without such a finding.

But the same standard cuts both ways.

The Mallerys were accused of serious crimes.

Those charges were ultimately dismissed because prosecutors concluded there was no likelihood of success at trial.

They deserve the same presumption against reckless conclusions that everyone else demands.

And the larger questions remain.

Why did a dispute involving Black ranchers alleging racial harassment escalate until they faced felony prosecution?

Why was an officer they had complained about involved in investigating allegations against them?

Why did that prosecution ultimately collapse?

Why do the Mallerys say they still feel endangered years later?

And what will it take before a Black family can own a ranch in rural America without having to turn defending its property into a second full-time occupation?

Freedom Acres Ranch shouldn’t have to prove that Black people belong on American farmland.

They bought the land.

That should have been enough.

—Vanessa Edwards, B1Daily