Charges dropped for 2 of the officers accused in the Colorado death of Christian Glass
Charges have been dropped against two of the officers accused in the death of Christian Glass in Colorado.
Glass was 22 in 2022 when he was shot and killed in Clear Creek County by a sheriff's deputy after he called 911 for help with his car, which had broken down. His family says he was having a mental health crisis. It happened in Silver Plume and officers from several different law enforcement agencies responded.
Colorado Division of Gaming officers Christa Lloyd and Mary Harris were at the scene of the shooting and charged with failing to intervene. But on Monday a judge dismissed those charges, ruling that Divison of Gaming officers are not peace officers and only peace officers are required by law to intervene in the case of excessive force.
Siddhartha Rathod, Attorney at Rathod Mohamedbhai law firm said this is in clear violation of the intent of the Law Enforcement Accountability bill, which has since been signed into law.
"There is a loophole in the statute that these gaming officers exploited," Rathod said. "The conduct of the gaming officers is still criminal; the conduct of the gaming officers is still a violation of what we expect of law enforcement. Yet these officers, two of them, will get off simply because of a glitch or a technicality in the statute."
The attorney for Lloyd, Mallory Revel of Foster Graham Milstein & Calisher, LLP, said in a statement:
"When our elected legislature passes a law, they very thoughtfully select certain definitions to use in the statute. Here, the legislature carefully selected a certain definition for "peace officer" – meaning, they specified who would have a duty to intervene in excessive force. My client does not fit into the legal definition they selected. We filed a Motion to Dismiss on these grounds, and it was granted. This legal definition aside, my client also adamantly maintained her innocence in a factual sense, and we were confidently moving toward trial. While it is regrettable that my client was charged with a crime in the first place, we are grateful that our criminal justice system ultimately worked as it should in this instance."
Your CBS News Colorado Reporter in the Mountains Spencer Wilson spoke with one of the sponsors of the bill Tuesday. Briefly, that sponsor said this is a breach of what they were hoping to do with the bill, and there should be a fix to make sure charges like this are not dropped again.
On the night he was shot Glass told the emergency dispatcher he had two knives, a hammer, and a rubber mallet in his car. His family's attorney says that is because he was an amateur geologist. Over the course of an hour, officers told him he needed to get out of his car and dismissed attempts to drop the weapons out of his window. Glass refused to leave the car, saying he was scared. As things escalated, officers broke a window in an attempt to get him out and Glass grabbed one of the knives. Officers then tased him. The body cam video from an officer then showed Glass beginning to swing the knife wildly with his arm. That's when he was killed.
The trial for the officer who fired the fatal shots ended in a hung jury and he's expected to be tried again next year.
