A Denver civil service hearing panel has reinstated two police officers who were fired more than three years ago for their involvement in the beating of a 16-year-old boy.

Cameron Moerman and Luis Rivera were fired for failing to immediately report a third officer, Charles Porter, for stomping the handcuffed teen during his arrest in April 2008. Porter was acquitted of felony assault, but he did not appeal his firing. The other officers were fired in 2010 but were not charged with crimes.

The panel’s ruling, announced this week, orders the city to reinstate Moerman and Rivera with back pay but does not necessarily put an end to the labyrinthine disciplinary case. The city plans to appeal the three-member panel’s decision to the full commission, City Attorney Scott Martinez said Thursday.

The officers chased the teen, Juan Vasquez, through an alley after they said they saw him drinking a beer on a porch in northwest Denver, according to an account contained in the panel’s order. Once caught, Porter stomped Vasquez repeatedly, leaving him with a lacerated liver, injured kidneys and broken ribs.

Denver eventually paid Vasquez $885,000 in a civil settlement.

The hearing panel said it found no evidence that Moerman or Rivera used excessive force against Vasquez, nor did it find that they were “accessories to Porter’s assault of Vasquez.” The panel wrote that the officers had no time to protect Vasquez from “Porter’s stomping actions.”

Moerman and Rivera were fired for failing to immediately report that Porter jumped on Vasquez’s back.

But the panel said they should not have been fired for omitting that detail from their reports because they did so before tougher disciplinary rules took effect. The new rules — put in place in October 2008, six months after the incident — would have made such “deceptive acts” a fireable offense.

Sadie Gurman: 303-954-1661, sgurman@denverpost.com or twitter.com/sgurman