Four of six law enforcement officers who were charged with failure to intervene in the death of Christian Glass appeared in a Clear Creek County courtroom Tuesday to hear the charges they face. The two remaining officers are scheduled for a first appearance Jan. 16.

It was the largest number of officers to be charged at one time under Colorado Senate Bill 217, the sweeping police accountability law which went into effect in June 2021, after the murder of George Floyd — a Minnesota man who died beneath the knee of a police officer as other officers stood by and did nothing to stop it.

Glass’ death happened a year after Colorado’s police reform bill was signed into law.

Glass, 22, called 911 for help on the night of June 22, 2021 after his SUV got stuck on a rock near Silverplume. Two Clear Creek County Sheriff’s deputies were the first to respond to the scene, but eventually five others showed up at intermittent times and stayed as Glass got more and more agitated. One supervisor was monitoring the evening by watching his officers’ body-worn cameras.

None of the seven on the scene stepped forward to stop the situation as it escalated out of control. Glass never left his car during the hour-long incident — at times showing heart hands through the driver’s side window —which ended with his shooting death.

“This is what the law was intended to do. It was written to ensure that officers intervene when excessive force is used,” said State Representative Leslie Herod, (D) Denver, a co-sponsor of the landmark bill. “There were many opportunities where they could have de-escalated the situation.”

The incident, which was recorded on various police body-worn cameras, lasted for more than an hour with the most violent end happening within the final two minutes.

Jay Hirokawa, a former police chief and criminal investigator, said that there was plenty of time for one of the officers to sound the alarm to the others that the night was going wrong.

“This isn’t a thirty second decision. You had an hour to de-escalate. You had an hour to pack up and leave.  They used a taser, a bean bag round and then deadly force,” said Hirokawa, who owns Thin Blue Line Consulting.  “From everything I’ve ever written or read in policy, they violated his civil rights as plain as day.”

Still, with a cluster officers from five different jurisdictions thrown together with no mental health specialist on the scene, Hirokawa said that “they were tiptoeing on each other’s policies” in what became a  confusing “who’s on first” situation.

“It could be these other law enforcement officers were afraid of stepping on each other’s toes,” Hirokawa said.

But Herod, whose father is a police officer, said that there is a “unity umbrella” there because the officers were all Post-certified.

“For them to act like they didn’t know is a stretch,” said Herod.

The six officers who were charged by 5^th Judicial District Attorney Heidi McCollum last month are: Georgetown Marshall Randy Williams; Colorado State Patrol Trooper Ryan Bennie; Idaho Springs Police officer Brittany Morrow; Timothy Collins, originally a Clear Creek County deputy, now a Georgetown Police officer, and two officers with the Colorado Limited Gaming Control Commission – Mary Harris and Christa Lloyd.

Harris and Lloyd will be arraigned in January.

Two other officers were indicted by a Clear Creek County grand jury a year ago and one has already pleaded guilty to charges of duty to report use of force and duty to intervene in Glass’ killing. Former Clear Creek Sheriff Sgt. Kyle Gould wasn’t on the scene that night, but he’s the one who gave permission to break Glass’s car windows, escalating the situation. Gould was given a $1,000 fine and two years of unsupervised probation as part of a plea deal.

The second, former Clear Creek County Sheriff Deputy Andy Buen, is awaiting trial for second degree murder. He is the officer who shot Glass with bean bag rounds, tased him and then shot him five times in the chest, killing him. Buen’s next hearing is scheduled for Dec. 20.

Tim Collins and Buen were the first two on the scene that night.

With these additional counts bringing more hearings, the nightmare continues for Glass’s parents.

His father, Simon, was present for Tuesday’s short-but-crowded hearings. He said that he was feeling overwhelmed over the “attack” on his son.

“Not one of them spoke up to stop it. It’s out and out murder. What were they thinking? My kid called 911 for help,” said Glass, who added that police are sworn to protect and did nothing of the sort that night.

Around half-a-dozen friends attended the hearing in support of Simon Glass and hugged him in the cold outside of the courthouse after it was over.

Failure to intervene is a class 1 misdemeanor, which is punishable by up to 364 days in jail, a fine of up to $1,000 or both. Additionally, a state law passed in 2020 requires that, if convicted, the state permanently revoke the person’s police officer certification, which can only be reinstated if they’re exonerated.

There has been vocal disagreement over the counts for two of the six recently-charged officers.

In the case of Trooper Bennie, Chief of Colorado State Patrol Col. Matthew C. Packard said in a statement that Christian Glass should still be alive, and that those who were responsible for his death should be held responsible. However, he added, Bennie was not one of those.

“As the Chief of the Colorado State Patrol, I have had the opportunity to review at length the events that led to the killing of Christian Glass. In my review, I found no indication that Trooper Bennie violated any Colorado State Patrol policy or training. I am shocked by the decision of the District Attorney to pursue charges against Trooper Bennie,” Packard said.

Morrow, of the Idaho Springs Police Department, also had support from her boss, Chief Nathan Buseck. He said she did not violate any of the department’s policies or procedures and continues to work patrol.

The six failure to intervene counts applied to this newly-charged handful of officers was done in a “blanket manner,” Buseck said, regardless of the behavior displayed by all of them. In a statement, he noted that the grand jury that indicted Buen and Gould specifically noted that Morrow was empathetic to Glass, even displaying heart hands at Glass’ window.

Glass’s attorney Siddhartha Rathod was not sympathetic to Morrow, stating after the hearing that the fact that she “showed a few seconds of kindness was not enough. Officers have a duty to stop their fellow officers from violating the law.”

Glass’s family was awarded a $19 million settlement for his death, the largest compensation following a deadly police shooting in state history.

Arraignments for the four officers are scheduled in February.