Denver: According to a settlement announced on Tuesday, the parents of a 22-year-old Colorado man killed by a sheriff's deputy while experiencing a mental health crisis will receive $19 million from federal, state, and local agencies and changes to how officers are trained.
The shooting of Christian Glass last year in the mountain town of Silver Plume after his SUV got stuck attracted national attention and sparked calls for changes in how authorities handle those with mental health issues.
Sally and Simon Glass also negotiated changes as part of the settlement in an effort to stop another family from going through the same loss. According to documents made available by their attorneys, Clear Creek County will set up a crisis response team and its sheriff's office will train and certify all deputies in crisis intervention.
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The Colorado State Patrol will use a virtual reality training scenario based on the shooting to train its members on how to defuse stressful situations involving officers from various agencies, according to the state of Colorado, which sent three officers to the scene of Glass' death on June 11, 2022, in addition to those from local agencies.
At the start of their active bystander training, state troopers and Division of Gaming officers will also see a video message from Simon and Sally Glass. The program's main goal is to persuade officers to step in and stop a fellow officer from going too far or staying too long at an incident.
The body camera footage did not show any signs that officers from other agencies tried to stop the vehicle break-in before Christian Glass was shot.
Siddhartha H. Rathod, an attorney for the Glasses, stated that they hoped officers would be inspired to take appropriate action after hearing their story. Any of the seven officers present could have put a stop to this by simply speaking up. He said of the shooting, "They want to give law enforcement this courage.
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According to Rathod, the settlement, to which the towns of Georgetown and Idaho Springs also contributed, is the largest for a police killing in Colorado, surpassing the $15 million agreement reached in 2021 for Elijah McClain's death. It also ranks among the highest in the country.
The mother of McClain, a 23-year-old Black man who passed away in 2019, after police in the Denver suburb of Aurora restrained him against his will and administered the potent sedative ketamine, was also represented by his law firm, Rathod Mohamedbhai LLC.
Both former constable Andrew Buen and his boss, former sergeant Kyle Gould, are facing charges in relation to the shooting death of Glass. After he dialled 911 for assistance, a grand jury found that they needlessly escalated the standoff. According to court documents, Gould authorised officers to remove Glass from his vehicle while he was not present but was viewing the scene on body camera footage.
Both officers' solicitors made unsuccessful attempts to have the charges against them dropped. Gould's attorney argued that Glass needed to be evaluated for drug, alcohol, and mental health issues and could not simply be allowed to leave while Buen's attorney objected to how information was presented to the grand jury.
Reformers have pushed for crisis intervention and de-escalation training for police and even alternative policing programmes where mental health responders are sent to some emergency calls instead of law enforcement in response to police killings of people in mental distress.
EMTs and mental health professionals can be dispatched instead of police in some cities, including Denver. However, at the time Glass was killed, that option was not available in the region, which was about an hour's drive from Denver.
When Glass's car got stuck on a dirt road, he initially told the dispatcher that he was being followed. He also made other statements, according to the indictment, that indicated he was having a mental health crisis and was paranoid, hallucinating, or delusional.
When officers approached him, Glass made heart shapes with his hands, prayed, "Dear Lord, please don't let them break the window," and refused to get out of the car.
Even though there was no evidence that Glass was in danger or was under suspicion of a crime, officers decided to break into the car after about an hour of discussions, according to the grand jury.
After the window was broken, officers peppered Glass with bean bag rounds before tasing him, according to body camera footage. According to the grand jury, Glass brandished a knife in "a state of complete panic and self-defense" before turning in his seat and aiming it at an officer. Then Buen shot Glass five times with his gun.
According to the grand jury, the other officer was never in "imminent danger of being stabbed by Mr. Glass."
The indictment stated: "There is no reason to believe that Mr. Glass would have been a danger to any law enforcement personnel, to himself, or to any member of the public, but for the decision by Gould to remove Mr. Glass from the vehicle."
The Colorado State Patrol, the gaming division, and the police from the nearby towns of Idaho Springs and Georgetown are among the law enforcement agencies that are not visible in the body camera footage attempting to stop the vehicle breach.
Christian Glass was "petrified" the night he was killed, according to Sally Glass, whose parents' first public call for accountability for their son's death came last year. She also claimed that the officers showed no remorse for Christian. She requested prayers for both structural change in policing and for their son.
She declared, "They ought to be defending us, not attacking us."
