AURORA, COLORADO (AUGUST 2020) Read the full article Black Girls Wrongly Handcuffed at Gunpoint in Colorado File Suit
A video of four Black girls, ranging in age from from 6 to 17, being held on the ground with guns trained on them by police went viral back in August 2020. On the video, the girls are heard crying and screaming as officers stand with their backs to the camera in a parking lot in the Denver suburb of Aurora.
The 17-year-old and the 12-year-old lie on their stomachs on the pavement with their hands cuffed behind their backs, the video shows. The 14-year-old girl lies next to the 6-year-old.
According to the lawsuit, one of the officers tried to handcuff the 6-year-old, who was wearing a tiara for what was supposed to be a girls’ day out with her relatives — but the officer could not because the handcuffs were too big for the girl.
Aurora’s police chief, Vanessa Wilson, is listed as a defendant. Although these children were innocent of any crime, Wilson said at the time that the officers acted in keeping with department policy for suspected stolen car cases. A prosecutor announced earlier this month that he did not think there was evidence that the officers broke the law but called their actions “disturbing.”
