MINNEAPOLIS (AP) – The city of Minneapolis has agreed to a $700,000 settlement with family members who were trapped inside two squad cars when police killed their father after officers refused their offers to try and help calm them down. to him.
A federal judge ruled that the officers were justified in shooting 52-year-old Chiasher Vue after he pointed a rifle at them on the night of December 15, 2019.
Chamee Vue and her sisters Hailee and Nou Vue tried to intervene but they were not allowed in the police cars. And after the shooting, they spent hours being held in interrogation rooms while the police questioned them.
“I couldn’t get out of the car, I couldn’t reassure him that everything was OK,” Chamee said.
A language barrier contributed to the incident because Chiasher Vue spoke little English and some officers there that night spoke Hmong. Hailee Vue said she wants the Hmong community to understand what happened to her family, and for their case to become an instruction for future policing.
“I just don’t want another family to go through what the four of us went through,” he said.
Since this incident, Minneapolis police have changed the department’s policy on handling witnesses to state that they must be treated in a constitutional manner. A police spokesperson told the Minneapolis Star Tribune that the policy change had nothing to do with this case, but the Vue brothers said they were still happy with the change. The new policy clarifies that a person who has not been charged with a crime and is not being held on probable cause is free to leave at any time.
Family members say Chiasher Vue suffered a mental health crisis and suffered from untreated depression the night he was killed.
A night of drinking and karaoke spiraled out of control when after a series of fights Chiasher fired multiple shots into the wall inside the home and another one of his sons called 911. An autopsy later determined that Chiasher Vue had a blood alcohol level of 0.20 at the time he was killed.
“Look, my dad is mentally ill … Just let me and my younger sister talk to him. We can talk him out,” Nou Vue said to an unidentified official, according to footage from the squad car. “You can’t get out of the squad. Don’t ask anymore,” the official replied.
But when Vue came out of the house pointing a rifle, he quickly opened fire on the officers. Investigators have not determined who fired first, but Vue was hit by 13 bullets.
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