The police chief in Aurora, Colorado, apologized to a Black family after a Sunday incident in which officers pulled up behind their parked SUV and with guns drawn ordered a woman and four girls to lie facedown after mistakenly matching the vehicle’s license plate to a stolen motorcycle.
Video of the officers surrounding the family in a parking lot at an Aurora strip mall has since gone viral on social media and has been viewed more than 1.4 million times on Twitter as of early Tuesday, according to The Washington Post.
The children involved range in age from 6 to 17 years old, and two of them were also handcuffed during the traumatizing experience.
Brittney Gilliam, the driver and mother, was taking the carload of girls to the salon to get their nails done Sunday morning when the confrontation happened about 11 a.m., according to reports.
Along for the ride was Gilliam’s 6-year-old daughter, her 12-year-old sister, and two nieces, ages 14 and 17.
After arriving at the salon, Gilliam parked and turned off the car as one of her nieces checked to see if the business had opened yet.
Moments later, officers arrived with guns already brandished, commanding the family to put their hands out the windows and exit the vehicle, according to reports.
Once the entire family was on the ground, one of the children was heard sobbing while trying to catch her breath.
"I want my mother," she said. "Can't I have my sister next to me?"
After a moment, one of the officers kneeled down and asked the children, “Can I get you guys off the ground?”
“Yes, I want to get off,” one of the girls responded tearfully.
That’s when the officer helped the 17- and 12-year-old sit up, but kept the cuffs on their wrists.
Gilliam said she has since filed a complaint, adding that police never told her why she was being detained until after she and two of her other relatives were handcuffed.
“If you wanted to place me in handcuffs at that point, I would have gladly agreed to that because you had a job to do and you did it under the right protocol, but you pointed a gun at four kids and then you proceeded to start handcuffing the kids,” Gilliam said after the incident, according to reports. “That’s police brutality,” she told KUSA. “There’s no excuse why you didn’t handle it a different type of way. ... You could have even told them, ‘Step off to the side, let me ask your mom or your auntie a few questions so we can get this cleared up.’”
As she lay with her arms clasped behind her back, Gilliam explained to the officers that her vehicle had been stolen in February but offered to provide the paperwork to prove her innocence.
The officers soon realized their mix-up — the tag on the SUV had the same information but was registered in a different state.
“The confusion may have been due, in part, to the fact that the stopped car was reported stolen earlier in the year,” according to the statement. “After realizing the mistake, officers immediately unhandcuffed everyone involved, explained what happened and apologized.”
In the statement, Vanessa Wilson, a 23-year veteran of the Aurora Police Department who was voted in Monday night as the department’s first female chief, promised support for the family along with a full internal investigation into the incident.
"I have called (Gilliam's) family to apologize and to offer any help we can provide, especially for the children who may have been traumatized by yesterday's events," Wilson said late Monday. "I have reached out to our victim advocates so we can offer age-appropriate therapy that the city will cover."
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Wilson said in the same statement that new training would be looked at, but that it was also department policy for police to immediately draw their weapons when they believe a car has been stolen.
"We have been training our officers that when they contact a suspected stolen car, they should do what is called a high-risk stop. This involves drawing their weapons and ordering all occupants to exit the car and lie prone on the ground. But we must allow our officers to have discretion and to deviate from this process when different scenarios present themselves," Wilson said. "I have already directed my team to look at new practices and training."
Public uproar about Sunday’s incident comes nearly a year after the controversial case of 23-year-old Elijah McClain, the massage therapist who died after an encounter with officers of the same unit.
McClain was placed in a chokehold and briefly lost consciousness, according to a police report. When paramedics arrived, they gave McClain an injection of the drug ketamine to sedate him.
Three officers involved in McClain’s arrest have been fired, while a fourth officer resigned before a pre-disciplinary hearing.
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis has ordered an independent review of his death.
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