The 6-year-old cried in horror as police accused her mother of car theft.
By Kalyn Womack
The city of Aurora, Colorado has reached a settlement of over $1 million with a Black mother and a group of young girls after police officers held them at gunpoint after a traffic stop three years ago.
In August of 2020, a video went viral showing Brittney Gilliam face down on the hot pavement of a parking lot with her 12-year-old sister, 6-year-old daughter, as well as her two teenage nieces. Above them stood a group of Aurora police officers who had their guns drawn. The department previously said they were conducting a “high-risk” traffic stop, which calls for them to have their guns drawn and to order the subjects of the stop to get on the ground. The officers said the reason for the stop was because Gilliam’s vehicle had a license plate that matched a stolen car.
According to Gilliam’s lawsuit, she was having a girl’s day out with her young passengers, and they had just come from the nail salon when things went left. Per the body camera footage on the Aurora police officers, each girl was placed in handcuffs. The officers also attempted to detain the 6-year-old whose screams rang the loudest above the other girls as she pleaded, “Mommy, no!” in the video as she watched her mother being taken to a patrol car.
Turns out Gilliam and the girls weren’t the ones the cops were looking for. The police ended up falsely identifying their license plate as the one belonging to the stolen car. The digits were right, but it was the wrong state. Now the city is paying a $1.9 million in settlement to Gilliam and the girls.
Over three years later, the Denver suburb of Aurora has agreed to a $1.9 million settlement with Gilliam and the girls to resolve a lawsuit that claimed the police officers’ actions were evidence of “profound and systematic” racism, a lawyer for the family, David Lane, announced Monday.
The settlement saved the girls the trauma of having to relive what happened during a trial, Lane said. The money will be evenly divided among Gilliam and the four girls, with the girls’ portions being placed into annuities so the money will grow by the time they access it when they turn 18, Lane said.
An investigation by prosecutors found no evidence the officers committed any crimes, in part because they found they were following their training for conducting a high-risk stop of what they suspected was a stolen vehicle. However, they said the incident was “unacceptable and preventable” and urged police to review their policies to ensure nothing like it happens again.
In addition to the settlement, former police chief Vanessa Wilson offered an apology to Gilliam along with city-paid counseling for the girls, per CBS. The four were placed in therapy following the incident after suffering nightmares, tormented by each other’s screams, per Gilliam’s lawsuit.
Yes, Aurora is the same city whose officers and paramedics were put on trial in connection to the killing of Elijah McClain a year prior to Gilliam’s traffic stop.
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