Colorado officers won’t be charged for detaining Black girls

DENVER — Suburban Denver police officers won’t be charged after detaining four Black girls by gunpoint this summer and handcuffing two of them after wrongly suspecting they were riding in a stolen car, prosecutors said Friday. However, Chief Deputy District Attorney Clinton McKinzie called it “disturbing” and urged the Police Department to review its policies to ensure something similar doesn’t happen again. “You could have even told them, ‘Step off to the side, let me ask your mom or your auntie a few questions so we can get this cleared up.’ There was different ways to handle it.” Police are instructed to draw their guns and put people on the ground when dealing with a suspected stolen car, but Police Chief Vanessa Wilson has said they should have changed course after Gilliam said the car was not stolen and that she had children inside. Meanwhile, Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser opened a grand jury investigation into McClain’s death as part of his probe of the case that started last summer. “If the grand jury in Elijah McClain’s case doesn’t indict the officers and medics responsible for killing him, it will be because the attorney general’s office did not want charges to be brought,” she said.