Aurora, Colorado: police ordered a woman and four children to the ground at gunpoint in August 2020 after a license plate reader alert matched her car's plate number to a stolen Montana motorcycle; the city settled the family's lawsuit for $1.9 million
The Denver Post reported that on 2 August 2020 Aurora police officers stopped a blue SUV they believed to be stolen and ordered the woman driving it and four children, aged 6, 12, 14 and 17, to lie on the ground at gunpoint. The 12-year-old and the 17-year-old were handcuffed. According to the newspaper, a license plate reader at an Aurora intersection had alerted police because the SUV had the same plate number as a stolen motorcycle from Montana, and officers did not check the reading or the vehicle description. Prosecutors declined to charge the officers in January 2021 and called what happened unacceptable and preventable. The department said all officers were repeating training on license plate scanners. Sentinel Colorado reported that the City of Aurora agreed in February 2024 to pay $1.9 million to settle the family's lawsuit, and that one of the officers was suspended for 160 hours. The woman said the stop destroyed her mentally and that her daughter became withdrawn.
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources · Added 05/10/2026