A Black woman and a group of young girls who were wrongfully forced out of their car, held at gunpoint and handcuffed by police in suburban Denver in 2020 have reached a $1.9 million legal settlement.

The 6-year-old Lovely watched as her mother, Brittney Gilliam, was led to a patrol car in handcuffs after she shouted in frustration at the police, who mistakenly believed the car she was driving was stolen.

Three years later, Gilliam has agreed to a $1.9 million settlement with city officials in the Denver suburb of Aurora 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.

One of the officers who stopped the car, Darian Dasko, was suspended for 160 hours. He and the other officer, Madisen Moen, still work for the department.

This settlement also marks the latest Aurora has been forced to pay out over police misconduct. The city settled for $15 million in 2021 with the parents of Elijah McClain. He was a 23-year-old Black man who was killed in 2019 after he was stopped as he walked down the street, placed in a neck hold and injected with a sedative. One police officer also was convicted in his death and two others were acquitted. Two paramedics were also convicted.

A state civil rights investigation — launched amid outrage over McClain’s death and released after Gilliam’s lawsuit was filed — found there was a deeply engrained culture of racially biased policing in the department.

  • thantik@lemmy.worldEnglish
    251·
    9 months ago

    Next up, laws passed to limit police liability in Denver so that payouts can’t be this large anymore, and then Denver PD operate the same as they always have.

    • Empricorn@feddit.nlEnglish
      141·
      9 months ago

      Why would they care? They aren’t paying for it, taxpaying citizens are.

    • jonne@infosec.pub
      10·
      9 months ago

      Those settlements don’t come out of the police budget, so they don’t care. The city will end up cutting more social services to pay for the police’s fuckups.

      • thantik@lemmy.worldEnglish
        52·
        9 months ago

        Many places consider Aurora a suburb of Denver. Which is what the article says it is too. It calls it “The Denver Suburb of Aurora”. Thus…Denver.

        • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
          5·
          9 months ago

          You do understand that when the topic is specifically about the local government of a particular jurisdiction, the distinction between different local governments actually matters, right?