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Yet Another Abuse of Black People by Aurora PD

Aurora (CO) – Aurora Police Department, the department whose officers killed Elijah McClain and in a later incident, whose officers took photos mocking the killing of Elijah McClain, is now embroiled in a new scandal.

On Monday, a black woman, Brittney Gilliam, took several minors with her to a nail salon to get the girls’ nails done. When they parked, police pulled up behind them, got out of the car and ordered everyone to lie on the ground at gun point, then handcuffed the children. According to the police the car’s license plate came back as belonging to a stolen vehilce. Ms. Gilliam explained to them that the vehicle had been stolen in February but that they, the Aurora Police Department, had retrieved it and returned it the day after it was reported stolen. She offered to show them the registration.

You are probably thinking that this was a mix up and someone forgot to remove it as being a stolen vehicle but that’s not what happened. It turns out a motorcycle was stolen in another state and that motorcycle had the same license plate number as the one on Ms. Gilliam’s SUV. They pulled over a SUV when they were looking for a motorcycle.

According to The Denver Channel,

“The car the family was driving was not stolen. Police used a license plate scanner to gather information on vehicles in the area. They should have been looking for a motorcycle with the same plate from another state.

Aurora Police Chief Vanessa Wilson said she blames the license plate reader but could not explain why the dozens of officers who responded did not confirm the vehicle description.”

Police Chief Blames License Plate Reader

Vanessa Wilson has been acting as an interim police chief and will likely be appointed to the position. While she has made some good calls, she is also making poor ones. To blame what happened with the Gilliam family on the license plate reader is to deny the culpability of the officers involved. Checking the description of the vehicle is so basic that I don’t even know how to convey the stupidity of not doing it. Yet, they didn’t check the description. The incompetence is mindboggling. Those children were traumatized because the Aurora Police Department can’t seem to get it across to their officers that being Black does not automatically make someone a criminal.

Protocol Superseding Common Sense

Another thing Chief Wilson said was that the officers followed protocol. That may be but if we just want someone to follow a set of rules we should replace the officers with robots. The value in having a person do the job is that the person can make judgment calls. They can decide that pointing guns at children who pose no threat is a bad idea even if the protocol for a stolen vehicle stop is to pull your weapon. They can choose not to place handcuffs on terrified children. I have to wonder what protocol was in place to handcuff them.

But the reality is Aurora police officers have shown us that they are not bound by protocol. If protocol was so prevalent for them they would have checked the vehicle description before any of this happened. No, what they did was see a Black woman driving a nice looking SUV so naturally they decided to run her plates. Black to them meant a possible criminal. No one has asked why they ran her plates in the first place. While it may be valid since the plates are out in plain view, no reasonable expectation of privacy (I’m just guessing here, I don’t know for sure. I’m not an attorney), I have to wonder how often those checks are run on Black people and Hispanics of either race as opposed to Anglo people.

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Tags: Aurora Police Department, Black children handcuffed, stolen vehicle