Family of girls handcuffed by police reach $1.9M deal
Mistaken charge led to girls being held at gunpoint
DENVER — The four Black girls lay facedown in a parking lot, crying “no” and “mommy” as a police officer who had pointed her gun at them then bent down to handcuff two of their wrists. The youngest wore a pink tiara as she held onto her teenage cousin’s hand.
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.
More than three years later, the Denver suburb of Aurora has agreed to a $1.9 million settlement with Gilliam and the girls 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.
The settlement saved the girls the trauma of having to relive what happened during a trial, Lane said. The money will be evenly divided among Gilliam and the four girls, with the girls’ portions being placed into annuities so the money will grow by the time they access it when they turn 18, Lane said.
“All parties are very satisfied with this settlement,” he said.
A spokesperson for the city of Aurora city did not immediately comment on the settlement.
That summer day in 2020 was supposed to be a fun girls’ day out for Gilliam, her daughter, her sister and two nieces. It instead became a traumatic ordeal.
An investigation by prosecutors found there was no evidence the officers committed any crimes, in part because they found they were following their training for conducting a high-risk stop of what they suspected was a stolen vehicle. However, they said the incident was “unacceptable and preventable” and urged police to review their policies to ensure nothing like it happens again.
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.
The settlement 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.