The parents of a Christchurch man killed by US police while suffering a mental health crisis say a government settlement proves their son wasn’t responsible for his death.
Christian Glass, 22, last year called 911 for help after his SUV became stuck in the Colorado mountain town of Silver Plume.
However, he ended up being shot five times by a policeman who responded to his call.
Critics say rather than de-escalating the situation, police actions escalated it fatally. Two officers have been charged over the killing.
Glass’ shooting drew US national attention and prompted calls to reform how authorities respond to people with mental health problems.
That was reflected when state and local agencies agreed to pay US$19 million ($30m) to Glass’ parents - the largest police killing settlement in Colorado’s history - and to change how officers are trained.
Sally Glass told Colorado news outlet 9News everyone who watched the video of her son’s killing said he had been the “victim of a terrible crime”.
“This is a vindication of Christian,” she said.
“Christian is not responsible for his own murder.”
She said a weight had been lifted from her and husband Simon’s shoulders after striving to clear their son’s name.
“Particularly because of the completely inaccurate false statement that was put out at the beginning that he was responsible for his own killing,” she said.
“I really feel with everything that has happened his name is totally cleared. He was murdered, he did nothing wrong.”
“And our beautiful boy now I feel he is resting knowing that ... his name has been cleared.”
Speaking to RNZ this morning, Simon and Sally Glass said it had been an awful year since Christian’s killing, saying authorities initially put out “lies” about what had happened.
“We’re pleased that the body-cam footage that was available has shown the truth and that the agencies involved have for the most part come clean and said, ‘This was wrong, this was murder’,” Simon said.
As part of the settlement, Sally and Simon Glass also negotiated for changes they hope will prevent another family from suffering a loss like theirs.
Clear Creek County will establish a crisis response team and its sheriff’s office will train and certify all deputies in crisis intervention, according to documents released by their attorneys.
The state of Colorado, which had three officers on the scene of Glass’ June 11, 2022 killing, in addition to those from local agencies, will create a virtual reality training scenario for the Colorado State Patrol.
Based on Glass’ shooting, it will focus on de-escalating stressful situations where officers from different agencies are present.
A video message from Simon and Sally Glass will also be shown to state troopers and Division of Gaming officers at the beginning of their active bystander training. The programme focuses on encouraging officers to intervene if they think a fellow officer is going too far or needs to step away.
Sally Glass told RNZ it is important officers hear from the families of people who die in police killings.
“That’s such an important piece because victims need to be part of this so that the police can see their actions cause utter loss of devastation for us that we have to live,” she said.
She said maybe that will make officers pause and step in to intervene when one of their colleagues is “acting horrendously and unlawfully”.
“They will step in to say, ‘Stop, stand down, what are you doing’,” she said.
“A rogue cop is a dangerous cop.”
She said it will be comforting if it means another “family will never have to stand in our shoes”.
The Glass’ lawyer Siddhartha H Rathod said any of the seven officers at Christian’s shooting could have intervened by saying something. The family wanted to “empower law enforcement to have this courage”, he said.
The settlement, which the communities of Georgetown and Idaho Springs also joined, is the largest for a police killing in Colorado, topping the US$15m settlement reached in 2021 for the death of Elijah McClain, and also ranks among the top in the United States, Rathod said.
Former Clear Creek County sheriff’s deputy Andrew Buen, who shot Glass, and his supervisor, former Sergeant Kyle Gould, are both being prosecuted in Glass’ death.
A grand jury found they needlessly escalated the standoff after he called 911 for help.
Gould was not at the scene but was watching events unfold on body camera footage and authorised officers to remove Glass from his vehicle, according to court documents.
Sally Glass told 9News police lacked humanity on the night of her son’s killing.
“I wonder when the police are there, they stop seeing this scared human being,” she said.
“Let’s have some humanity and compassion because humanity and compassion was non-existent that night.”
Lawyers for both officers unsuccessfully tried to get the charges against them thrown out.
While Buen’s lawyer objected to how information was presented to the grand jury, Gould’s lawyer argued that Glass needed to be evaluated for drugs, alcohol and mental health problems and could not just be allowed to leave.
In response to police killings of people in mental distress, 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.
Some cities, including Denver, have programmes where EMTs and mental health clinicians can be dispatched instead of police. But the area where Glass was killed, about an hour’s drive away from Denver, did not have that option at the time.
Glass, whose car became stuck on a dirt road, initially told the dispatcher that he was being followed and made other statements which the indictment said showed he was paranoid, hallucinating or delusional and experiencing a mental health crisis.
Officers’ body camera footage showed Glass refusing to get out of his car, making heart shapes with his hands to officers and praying: “Dear Lord, please, don’t let them break the window.”
After roughly an hour of negotiations, officers decided to breach the car even though there was no indication that Glass posed a danger or was suspected of a crime, according to the grand jury.
Once the window was smashed, body camera footage shows officers peppering Glass with bean bag rounds, then tasing him.
Glass brandished a knife in “a state of complete panic and self-defence” before twisting in his seat to thrust a knife in an officer’s direction, according to the grand jury. Buen then fired his gun five times into Glass.
The grand jury found that at no point was the other officer in “imminent danger of being stabbed by Mr Glass”.
“But for the decision by Gould to remove Mr Glass from the vehicle 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,” the indictment said.
Body camera footage doesn’t show officers from other agencies — including the Colorado State Patrol, gaming division, and police from the nearby towns of Idaho Springs and Georgetown — attempting to stop the breach of the vehicle.
When Glass’ parents first publicly called for accountability for their son’s death last year, Sally Glass said Christian was “petrified” the night he was killed and the officers had no empathy for him. She asked for people to pray for their son and for structural change in policing.
“They should be protecting us, not attacking us,” she said.
- with AP
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