A Black Colorado mother, her daughter, sister and two nieces who endured a traumatizing ordeal of mistaken identity at the hands of the Aurora Police Department in the parking lot of a nail salon in August 2020, have reached a $1.9 million settlement following a lawsuit against the suburban Denver city and its officers.
Brittney Gilliam and her young relatives were enjoying a family outing with plans to get their nails done and eat ice cream when they were forced out of their SUV, handcuffed and held at gunpoint by Aurora police officers who had mistakenly identified Gilliam’s car as stolen, according to the lawsuit filed in January of 2021.
The lawyer for Gilliam’s family, David Lane, announced the settlement on Monday, the Associated Press reported.
“Hopefully, this settlement will lead to changes in how police departments handle situations like this in the future,” Lane told Atlanta Black Star in an email.
Gilliam’s daughter was 6, her sister was 17 and her nieces were 12 and 14 at the time of the Aug. 2, 2020, incident, during which officers forced them to lie on their fronts on the parking lot’s pavement, body camera footage obtained by Atlanta Black Star shows. The high temperature in Aurora that day was 85 degrees Fahrenheit, Weather Underground’s historical data showed.
Gilliam and two of the teenage girls were handcuffed behind their backs, and the family was detained for over two hours.
The Aurora Police Department said after the Aug. 2, 2020, incident, which was captured on video, that a license plate scanner indicated Gilliam’s Colorado plate matched a stolen vehicle, but the allegedly stolen vehicle was a motorcycle with Montana plates, the lawsuit stated.
“Ms. Gilliam repeatedly asked to show Officer Defendants her registration which would have immediately revealed that her vehicle was not stolen, yet none of the officers permitted her to undertake this simple action,” according to the…
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