On Sunday, police in Aurora, Colorado spotted a car with a license plate number that matched a stolen motorcycle, so they sprang into action. Guns drawn, the white cops forced the occupants — a young black mother and four girls (one just 6 years old) — to lie on their stomachs in a parking lot. Two of the girls were handcuffed. In a video shot by a bystander, the children, clearly in terror, can be heard crying and screaming.
Aurora's police chief said the incident was a "misunderstanding."
From The Washington Post:
The department's interim chief, Vanessa Wilson, said police officers must be allowed to deviate from the written procedure depending on the different scenarios they face in the field.
In a statement on Twitter Monday, she publicly apologized to the Gilliam family and offered age-appropriate therapy to the children involved in the incident. Her agency would examine new practices and training around high-risk stops, she added.
Yet Teriana Thomas, Gilliam's 14-year-old niece and one of the girls who had been pinned down, said there was little the police could do to regain her trust.
"It's like they don't care," she told KUSA. "Who am I going to call when my life is in danger?"
