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You did not misread that.
AURORA — Aurora police apologized after a group of Black girls were detained and at least two handcuffed during a weekend investigation of a stolen car. Officers later determined that the vehicle they were seeking had the same license plate number but was from out of state. A video taken Sunday by a bystander shows the children, ranging in age from 6 to 17 years old, in a parking lot in Aurora, where there have recently been protests over the death of a 23-year-old Black man, Elijah McClain, who was stopped by police last year, KUSA-TV reported. The video shows the 17-year-old and 12-year-old lying on their stomachs with their hands cuffed behind their backs and a 14-year-old girl lying next to the 6-year-old, also on their stomachs, in a parking lot next to the car. They can be heard crying and screaming as officers stand with their back to the camera. A woman on the other side of the car is shown being led away in handcuffs. An officer eventually helps the handcuffed 17-year-old and 12-year-old sit up but leaves them sitting with their hands behind their backs.
Police then determined they had stopped the wrong car. It had Colorado license plates but a motorcycle with the same license plate number from Montana was the vehicle that had been reported as stolen on Sunday. . . . Jennifer Wurtz, who shot the video, said on camera that the police drew guns as they initially approached the car. After she told the officers that the children were scared and asked to be able to speak to them, she was told to back up 25 feet because she was interfering in their investigation.
[cont]
[FONT="]Aurora police apologize after Black children were detained, handcuffed in stolen car mixup
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[FONT="]Wait what? - Album on Imgur
Now before anyone latches onto this to defend them - [/FONT][FONT="]"Part of the reason for the mixup may have been that the car was reported as stolen earlier in the year, police said[/FONT][FONT="]" - let me reiterate. They pulled it over because the car had the same license plate number as a motorcycle that was recently reported stolen, but the motorcycle plate was from another state. The "may have" quote is pure speculative bull. What we have here is a family put through a nightmare because nobody bothered to check that the plate was from the right state, and perhaps was not even paying enough attention to have suspected that a plate was swapped from stolen MC to SUV.
I'm also puzzled for a few other reasons:
- At least as I can recall seeing, motorcycle plates are different than other vehicles, having fewer digits. But I'm not sure if that's every state.
- It would be easy to have a national database of plate numbers such that none are duplicated. There are 6 'digits' on modern MA plates. Each 'digit' can be a letter of the alphabet or a number 0-9. Meaning there are 36 possibilities total for each 'digit', meaning 36^9 combinations. That's 2 billion. There are 320 million residents in the states, and about 273ish million registered vehicles. • Number of cars in U.S. | Statista So first of all, this shouldn't even be a thing. Every state should have six digit plates, and none should be duplicated. We'll be good for quite a long time.
But really, you're looking for a stolen motorcycle from one state, and you pull a car/SUV without checking the plate's origin? (And assuming they stole the bike, swapped plates with a car/SUV, and drove around as a happy family of idiots?)
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Thank the God that I do not believe in that nobody got killed over this.
[/FONT]
AURORA — Aurora police apologized after a group of Black girls were detained and at least two handcuffed during a weekend investigation of a stolen car. Officers later determined that the vehicle they were seeking had the same license plate number but was from out of state. A video taken Sunday by a bystander shows the children, ranging in age from 6 to 17 years old, in a parking lot in Aurora, where there have recently been protests over the death of a 23-year-old Black man, Elijah McClain, who was stopped by police last year, KUSA-TV reported. The video shows the 17-year-old and 12-year-old lying on their stomachs with their hands cuffed behind their backs and a 14-year-old girl lying next to the 6-year-old, also on their stomachs, in a parking lot next to the car. They can be heard crying and screaming as officers stand with their back to the camera. A woman on the other side of the car is shown being led away in handcuffs. An officer eventually helps the handcuffed 17-year-old and 12-year-old sit up but leaves them sitting with their hands behind their backs.
Police then determined they had stopped the wrong car. It had Colorado license plates but a motorcycle with the same license plate number from Montana was the vehicle that had been reported as stolen on Sunday. . . . Jennifer Wurtz, who shot the video, said on camera that the police drew guns as they initially approached the car. After she told the officers that the children were scared and asked to be able to speak to them, she was told to back up 25 feet because she was interfering in their investigation.
[cont]
[FONT="]Aurora police apologize after Black children were detained, handcuffed in stolen car mixup
[FONT="]
[/FONT][FONT="]
[/FONT]
[FONT="]Wait what? - Album on Imgur
Now before anyone latches onto this to defend them - [/FONT][FONT="]"Part of the reason for the mixup may have been that the car was reported as stolen earlier in the year, police said[/FONT][FONT="]" - let me reiterate. They pulled it over because the car had the same license plate number as a motorcycle that was recently reported stolen, but the motorcycle plate was from another state. The "may have" quote is pure speculative bull. What we have here is a family put through a nightmare because nobody bothered to check that the plate was from the right state, and perhaps was not even paying enough attention to have suspected that a plate was swapped from stolen MC to SUV.
I'm also puzzled for a few other reasons:
- At least as I can recall seeing, motorcycle plates are different than other vehicles, having fewer digits. But I'm not sure if that's every state.
- It would be easy to have a national database of plate numbers such that none are duplicated. There are 6 'digits' on modern MA plates. Each 'digit' can be a letter of the alphabet or a number 0-9. Meaning there are 36 possibilities total for each 'digit', meaning 36^9 combinations. That's 2 billion. There are 320 million residents in the states, and about 273ish million registered vehicles. • Number of cars in U.S. | Statista So first of all, this shouldn't even be a thing. Every state should have six digit plates, and none should be duplicated. We'll be good for quite a long time.
But really, you're looking for a stolen motorcycle from one state, and you pull a car/SUV without checking the plate's origin? (And assuming they stole the bike, swapped plates with a car/SUV, and drove around as a happy family of idiots?)
[/FONT]
Thank the God that I do not believe in that nobody got killed over this.
[/FONT]
