\u201cWe want the first reaction to be get out of the way versus pull your firearm,\u201d Police Chief Robert White said at a news conference.<\/p>\n
Under the previous guidelines, police could fire on a car if it simply was bearing down on them and there was a chance they could be struck.<\/p>\n
The change specifies that the moving vehicle itself cannot be considered a threat.<\/p>\n
The Colorado chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union welcomed the change, saying it brought Denver in line with other departments across the country.<\/p>\n
Qusair Mohamedbhai, a lawyer representing the family of 17-year-old Jessica Hernandez, who was shot and killed as she drove a car at police, also praised the new guidelines.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Hernandez family commends the Denver police for this much-needed policy change,\u201d Mohamedbhai said. \u201cHowever, the family continues to grieve the loss of Jessica, and the policy change demonstrates that Jessica\u2019s death was completely unnecessary and illegal.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Hernandez shooting prompted small protests in Denver and came at a time of heightened national attention involving police use of force in the wake of the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York.<\/p>\n
Last week, the district attorney decided no charges would be filed against two officers in the January shooting death of the unarmed Hernandez as she drove a stolen car toward them in an alley.<\/p>\n
District Attorney Mitch Morrissey said the decision was made because the life of an officer was threatened.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cWe want the first reaction to be get out of the way versus pull your firearm,\u201d Police Chief Robert White said at a news conference. Under the previous guidelines, police could fire on a car if it simply was bearing down on them and there was a chance they could be struck. The change specifies […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[13,52],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-111822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-law-enforcement"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111822\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111822"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=111822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}