In Afghanistan, history has a way of repeating itself: Today, much like when the Taliban last seized power in 1996, rugged Panjshir province is the final redoubt standing in the way of their complete domination of the country — and once again, the name of the leader opposing them is Massoud.

“I write from the Panjshir Valley today, ready to follow in my father’s footsteps with mujahideen fighters who are prepared to once again take on the Taliban,” Ahmad Massoud wrote in an opinion piece published in The Washington Post shortly after the Taliban seized Kabul. “We have stores of ammunition and arms that we have patiently collected since my father’s time, because we knew this day might come.”

Massoud’s father was a legend known as the ‘Lion of Panjshir’

His father, Ahmad Shah Massoud, was a larger-than-life figure — seen by many as a military genius and master of guerrilla warfare who helped fight the Soviet Union to a standstill in the 1980s, and eventually mounted a successful defense against repeated efforts by the Taliban to win control of the valley.

Such was his prowess as a rebel commander that Massoud was known by his supporters and enemies alike as the “Lion of Panjshir.”

But two days before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Massoud — who had escaped many close calls on the battlefield — was assassinated by al-Qaida suicide bombers posing as television journalists. His death reverberated worldwide.

The next generation of resistance has coalesced

Fast-forward to 2021: Massoud’s 32-year-old son is picking up from where his legendary father left off. But unlike the Lion of Panjshir, the younger Massoud has no combat experience. He was educated in the United Kingdom — having trained as a foreign cadet at the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, studied at King’s College, and later received a master’s degree in international politics from London’s City University, according to The Spectator. His undergraduate and postgraduate dissertations were on the Taliban.

As the Taliban gained strength in the years before their final assault last month on Kabul, the Afghan capital, Massoud began organizing opposition against a possible return of the hard-line Islamist militia. In the spring, Massoud made the rounds and met with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris — where his father, who studied at a French lycée in Afghanistan, remains a revered figure.

Massoud recently has been joined in the Panjshir Valley by Amrullah Saleh, a former Afghan vice president who declared himself the country’s rightful president after Ashraf Ghani fled ahead of the Taliban victory in Kabul. Saleh has called on his supporters to rally to Panjshir to continue the fight against the Taliban.

It’s difficult to gauge the strength of the self-styled National Resistance Forces led by Massoud. They are reportedly made up of a coalition of militias and remnants of the Afghan army — complete with helicopters and the cached

The ethnically mixed Panjshir is vulnerable

Panjshir province –located about 80 miles northeast of Kabul, past the former U.S.-run Bagram Airfield and across the rugged Hindu Kush mountains — is a natural fortress against invaders. Panjshir’s residents include a mix of ethnic Tajiks — like Massoud himself — along with Hazaras, a Shia Muslim minority, and others.

That diversity stands in contrast with the Taliban, who are dominated by Afghanistan’s majority Pashtuns.It is not “a monolithically Pashtun force,” writes Anatol Lieven, a professor at Georgetown University in Qatar, noting that the militants have “gathered a good deal of support among other ethnicities by appealing to religious conservatism.” But, he writes, the Taliban “leadership is still overwhelmingly Pashtun, and seen as such by most of the other peoples.”

Afghanistan’s Hazaras, in particular, have reason to be fearful of the Taliban and a strong incentive to resist. During the Taliban’s previous years in power, they targeted Hazaras in a campaign of repression and persecution, including mass killings. There’s no indication they’ve moderated since: A recent Amnesty International report outlines recent Taliban atrocities against the minority group.

“These targeted killings are proof that ethnic and religious minorities remain at particular risk under Taliban rule in Afghanistan,” Agnès Callamard, the group’s secretary general, said.

It may be too late for a negotiated settlement

Despite Massoud’s bellicose-sounding Washington Post op-ed, he has also suggested Panjshir might talk its way out of Taliban control. Last week, delegations from the Taliban and the Panjshir resistance reportedly met in the northern Parwan province, but the three-hour meeting seems to have yielded little more than an agreement to keep talking.

“We want to make the Taliban realize that the only way forward is through negotiation,” Massoud told Reuters recently. “We do not want a war to break out.”

In an interview-by-email with Foreign Policy magazine, Massoud elaborated: “If the Taliban are willing to reach a power-sharing deal where power is equally distributed and is decentralized, then we can move toward a settlement that is acceptable to everyone,” he wrote. “Anything less than this will be unacceptable to us, and we will continue our struggle and resistance until we achieve justice, equality, and freedom.”

For the Taliban’s part, one of its senior leaders, Amir Khan Motaqi, called on the Panjshir resistance to lay down its weapons and negotiate peace. “The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan is home for all Afghans,” he said in a speech.

But it may already be too late. With Kabul secure and the Americans finally gone, the Taliban have turned their military attention to the rogue province.

The Taliban say “hundreds” of their fighters are heading toward the Panjshir “after local … officials refused to hand it over,” according to the group’s Arabic Twitter account, Al-Jazeera reports.

And first blood has already been drawn, seemingly dimming the chances for a negotiated settlement. As the last U.S. flights were leaving Kabul on Monday night, at least seven of Taliban soldiers were killed in clashes in Panjshir, Massoud’s resistance group said, according to The Associated Press.

Meanwhile, the Taliban are in a position to surround Massoud’s resistance fighters and cut off their access to supplies. It’s not clear how long they can hold out.

Massoud, for his part, is reaching out for help from a war-weary Washington, as well as the U.K. and France.

“[We] need more weapons, more ammunition and more supplies,” he wrote.

The U.S. Supreme Court late Wednesday night refused to block a Texas law banning abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. The vote was 5-to-4, with three Trump-appointed justices joining two other conservative justices. Dissenting were conservative Chief Justice John Roberts, and the court’s three liberal justices.

The decision left open the option for abortion providers to challenge the Texas law in other ways in the future, leaving open the possibility–even likelihood– that the case will return to the Supreme Court, though not for months or longer.

The opinion was unsigned. It said the abortion providers didn’t properly address “complex and novel antecedent procedural questions” in their case.

“In reaching this conclusion, we stress that we do not purport to resolve definitively any jurisdictional or substantive claim in the applicants’ lawsuit,” the decision said. “In particular, this order is not based on any conclusion about the constitutionality of Texas’s law, and in no way limits other procedurally proper challenges to the Texas law, including in Texas state courts.”

The ban on abortions after six weeks of pregnancy is well before most women even know they are pregnant and is at odds with the Supreme Court’s precedents, which prohibit states from banning abortions prior to fetal viability — usually between 22 and 24 weeks. The Texas bill, however, was structured to insulate the law from being tested quickly in court.

Because the established procedure for challenging a state law is to sue officials charged with enforcement, the Texas state legislature wrote the law instead to put citizens in charge of enforcement. Specifically, the law allows anyone, without establishing any vested personal interest, to sue clinics and individuals alike for “aiding and abetting” abortions performed after six weeks.

That potentially puts in the crosshairs of liability not just clinics, but individuals who staff the clinics, who drive patients to clinics or help finance abortions.

The court’s action came just before midnight on Wednesday, nearly a day after the law went into effect. Reproductive rights advocates late last week filed an emergency appeal with the court after a panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals cancelled a hearing that had been scheduled by a federal trial judge on whether to block the law.

Chief Justice Roberts, in dissent, said he would have temporarily blocked the law from going into effect in order to give the lower courts adequate time to hear and decide “whether a state can avoid responsibility for its laws” by “essentially delegat[ing] enforcement to…the populace at large.”

The case, he acknowledged, does present difficult and novel questions, but none of those questions had been thoroughly considered yet by the lower courts. Nor, Roberts said, had the cases been fully briefed or considered by lower court judges.

Joining Roberts’ opinion were liberal Justices Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan. Each also wrote separately, as did Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

Breyer, citing the famous 1803 case of Marbury v. Madison, said that normally where a legal right is invaded, the law itself “provides a legal remedy by suit,” and this law, he suggested, does the opposite.

Justice Kagan, in her written dissent, said “Texas’s law delegates to private individuals the power to prevent a woman from obtaining an abortion during the first stage of pregnancy. But a woman has a federal constitutional right to obtain an abortion during that first stage,” a right that the Supreme Court has endorsed repeatedly over nearly a half century.

Justice Sotomayor used bolder language than the three other dissenters.

“The court’s order is stunning, ” she wrote. “Presented with an application to enjoin a flagrantly unconstitutional law engineered to prohibit women from exercising their constitutional rights and evade judicial scrutiny, a majority of Justices have opted to bury their heads in the sand….Because the court’s failure to act rewards tactics designed to avoid judicial review and inflicts significant harm on the applicants and on women seeking abortions in Texas, I dissent.”

PORT FOURCHON, La. (AP) — Photos show what appears to be a miles-long oil slick near an offshore rig in the Gulf of Mexico after Hurricane Ida, according to aerial survey imagery released Wednesday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and reviewed by The Associated Press.

The government imagery, along with additional photos taken by the AP from a helicopter Tuesday, also show Louisiana port facilities, oil refineries and shipyards in the storm’s path where the telltale rainbow sheen typical of oil and fuel spills is visible in the water of bays and bayous.

Both state and federal regulators said Wednesday that they had been unable to reach the stricken area, citing challenging conditions in the disaster zone.

The NOAA photos show a black slick floating in the Gulf near a large rig with the name Enterprise Offshore Drilling painted on its helipad. The company, based in Houston, did not respond to requests for comment by phone or email Wednesday.

Aerial photos taken by NOAA on Tuesday also show significant flooding to the massive Phillips 66 Alliance Refinery along the bank of the Mississippi River, just south of New Orleans. In some sections of the refinery, rainbow sheen is visible on the water leading toward the river.

Asked about reports of levee failures near the refinery Monday, Phillips 66 spokesman Bernardo Fallas said there was “some water” in the facility and stressed that operations were shut down in advance of the storm. Asked Tuesday about potential environmental hazards emanating from the facility, Fallas referred a reporter to a statement on the company’s website saying its response is focused “on ensuring the safety and well-being of our employees and our surrounding communities.”

After the AP sent Phillips 66 photos Wednesday showing extensive flooding at its refinery and what appeared to be petroleum in the water, Fallas conceded by email that the company could confirm it had “discovered a sheen of unknown origin in some flooded areas of Alliance Refinery.”

“At this time, the sheen appears to be secured and contained within refinery grounds,” Fallas said Wednesday evening. “Clean-up crews are on site. The incident was reported to the appropriate regulatory agencies upon discovery.”

Fallas did not respond when asked whether the leak was reported after the AP sent the company photos four hours earlier.

Phillips listed the Alliance Refinery for sale last week, before the storm hit, citing poor market conditions.

All told, seven Louisiana refineries remained shuttered Wednesday. Combined, they account for about 9% of all U.S. refining capacity, according to the U.S. Energy Department. Some refineries on the Mississippi River reported damage to their docks from barges that broke loose during the storm.

Jennah Durant, spokesman for the Environmental Protection Agency, said Wednesday that the agency had received no reports of significant spills or other environmental threats after the Category 4 storm made landfall Sunday at Port Fourchon with 150 mph (240 km/h) winds.

Three days after the storm moved through, Durant said Wednesday that no EPA personnel had yet deployed to the devastated region south of New Orleans. Asked if EPA staff had been reviewing the aerial photos taken by federal aircraft over the disaster zone, Durant said the imagery had not been provided to the agency.

The aerial imagery reviewed by the AP is readily available to the public on the NOAA website.

After the AP sent photos of the oil slick to EPA on Wednesday, agency press secretary Nick Conger said the National Response Center hotline operated by the U.S. Coast Guard had received 26 calls reporting leaks or spills in the storm zone but none had warranted an EPA response.

Conger reiterated that any person or organization responsible for a sizable release or spill of pollutants is required to notify the federal government.

The AP also provided photos of the oil slick to the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources, which regulates offshore drilling in state waters. Spokesman Patrick Courreges confirmed the agency had received an informal report of petroleum sheen in the waters south of Port Fourchon but said regulators “currently don’t have capabilities to get out there yet.”

The U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, which regulates offshore oil and gas platforms, announced before the hurricane arrived that about half of the 560 staffed rigs in the Gulf had been evacuated. Those crews had only started to trickle back out by Wednesday and it was unclear whether the Enterprise Offshore rig was staffed.

The bureau’s public affairs staff did not respond Wednesday after the AP sent photos of the black slick in the Gulf and asked if there were any reports of a spill.

Both state and federal environmental regulators said the emergency response to Ida had been hampered by blocked roads, washed-out bridges, electrical outages and a lack of communications. Both telephone landlines and mobile phone service in much of the region remained offline Wednesday.

“I think most agencies are kind of caught up in the whole ‘fog of war’ thing at the moment, with far more places we need to be than we can be,” Courreges wrote in an email. “It’s not as easy to respond to things right now.”

Port Fourchon, which took a direct hit from the storm, is the primary service hub for hundreds of oil and gas rigs offshore. The port also contains oil terminals and pipelines that account for about 90% of the oil and gas production from the Gulf.

Photos taken by the AP from a chartered helicopter Tuesday, as well as the NOAA imagery, show extensive damage to the sprawling facility, including sunken vessels, collapsed structures and more than a dozen large overturned fuel storage tanks.

Ida’s winds, equivalent to an EF3 tornado, peeled the roofs off large steel buildings in the harbor and toppled metal light poles. Trucks, cranes and shipping containers were piled into jumbled heaps.

Chett Chiasson, the executive director of Greater Lafourche Port Commission, told the AP late Tuesday that the companies based at Port Fourchon were entering what would likely be a lengthy recovery phase. A top priority, he said, will be clearing roads and removing sunken vessels so boats can safely navigate the harbor.

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. — Firefighters reported progress Wednesday in the battle to save communities on the south end of Lake Tahoe from an approaching forest fire after the stiff winds they had feared failed to materialize in the California-Nevada alpine region.

“We lucked out a little bit yesterday with some of the winds that didn’t come up quite as hard as we expected them to,” Tim Ernst, an operations section chief, told firefighters in a morning briefing.

An inversion layer, a cap of warm air over cooler air, then developed in the early morning hours “that put a real damper on things, slowed a lot of growth,” Ernst said. “So a lot of opportunity to make a lot of progress last night.”

The Caldor Fire has been burning toward Lake Tahoe from the southwest along California Highway 50, climbing over a high-elevation Sierra Nevada summit and descending into the Tahoe Basin.

“We were fortunate the fire did not make as strong a push into Tahoe as it did the previous day,” Ernst said.

Tourist town of South Lake Tahoe is all but deserted

Despite the positive developments, firefighters were warned that critical weather conditions remained and they would likely face gusty, swirling winds all day.

Thick smoke from the Caldor Fire has enveloped the city of South Lake Tahoe, which is all but deserted at a time when it would normally be swarming with tourists. On Monday, roughly 22,000 residents jammed the city’s main artery for hours after they were ordered to leave.

South Lake Tahoe city officials said only a handful of residents defied Monday’s evacuation order. But nearly everyone was monitoring the winds, which could determine whether flames bypass the city.

Tom O’Connell and his wife, Linda, awaited the fate of their home while anchored on their sailboat in Ventura Harbor. The two-bedroom they’ve owned for 40 years survived the Angora Fire that destroyed about 250 houses in 2007. They didn’t know if they’d be lucky again.

“You worry about the things you can have some control over,” O’Connell said. “We’ve no control over this.”

The fire still threatens tens of thousands of homes

Pushed by strong winds, the Caldor Fire has crossed two major highways and swept down slopes into the Tahoe Basin, where firefighters working in steep terrain were protecting remote cabins. The fire has destroyed at least 700 homes and other structures, but officials say it’s too early for an accurate assessment of the destruction.

The fire, which is threatening at least 33,000 more homes and structures, has scorched nearly 320 square miles (827 square kilometers) since breaking out Aug. 14. It was 20% contained.

The Lake Tahoe area attracts 15 million visitors every year and is beloved by locals and international jet-setters alike as a recreational paradise offering beaches, water sports, hiking, ski resorts and golfing. South Lake Tahoe, which borders a portion of the famous lake, bustles with outdoor activities while just across the state border in Stateline, Nevada tourists can gamble at major casinos.

As flames moved toward the Heavenly ski resort on the California-Nevada border, officials turned on the mountain’s snow-making machines to increase humidity and slow down any flames.

To his wife’s dismay, John Rhodes, 60, did not evacuate but stuck around to defend the couple’s neighborhood in an unincorporated area south of South Lake Tahoe that burned in the 2007 fire.

Rhodes and his neighbors, including several off-duty firefighters from other California agencies, wrapped homes in hoses and ran sprinklers to create a perimeter around the neighborhood to supplement official firefighting work nearby.

As a rookie firefighter, he admitted to butterflies.

“I was anxious about how I would stand up near the hot spot. These guys are trying to get me all coached,” Rhodes said, pointing toward his firefighter friends, who declined to talk to a reporter.

Firefighters are battling dozens of other California blazes

The Caldor Fire not only emptied out South Lake Tahoe, but parts of neighboring Stateline, Nevada. Casinos, however, were excluded from the order and as of Wednesday, were still open. Their hotel rooms were housing evacuees, fire crews and other emergency personnel.

More than 15,000 firefighters, with help from out-of-state crews, were battling dozens of California blazes, including another monstrous blaze in the same area.

The Dixie Fire is the second-largest wildfire in state history at 1,320 square miles (3,415 square kilometers). The weeks-old fire was burning about 65 miles (105 kilometers) north of the Lake Tahoe-area blaze and prompted new evacuation orders and warnings this week.

Climate change has made the West much warmer and drier in the past 30 years and will continue to make weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent, destructive and unpredictable, scientists say. Threat of fire is so widespread that the U.S. Forest Service announced this week that all national forests in California would be closed until Sept. 17.

A firefighter injured while battling the Caldor Fire last weekend was expected to be hospitalized for a month after undergoing skin grafting surgery. Richard Gerety III of Patterson, California, suffered third-degree burns over 20% of his body, the Modesto Bee reported.

Laura Forvilly had planned to stay as long as possible in her Stateline condominium, but her adult children persuaded her to pack up Tuesday and leave in advance of an evacuation order.

Forvilly, who runs boat cruises on the lake, said she took a carload of “all the wrong things — clothes, of course,” as well as keepsake photos, belongings that can’t be replaced and her three dogs. She arrived at her sister’s house in nearby Reno, where the air was clear and blue.

She’s not worried about her yacht or home. But she’s surprised at how close the fire is.

“I’m so sad our beautiful Tahoe is going through this,” Forvilly said. “It’s hard to believe it’s actually happening this close to where we all live and work.”

The U.S. ended its massive evacuations out of Kabul, Afghanistan, by President Biden’s Aug. 31 deadline, but as many as 27 California public school students remain in Afghanistan.

The students, whose grades range from elementary to high school, are from 19 families from the San Juan Unified School District in Sacramento. Most of the students, the school district says, have family members with them.

The Sacramento area is home to one of the United Sates’ largest Afghan American communities. How these students will be able to return to the U.S. in a now Taliban-controlled Afghanistan is unclear.

“These numbers continue to change rapidly. We believe that some of these families may be in transit out of Afghanistan, as we have not been able to reach many of them in the last few days,” Raj Rai, the school district’s director of communications, told NPR in a statement.

“We stand ready to support these students and families in whatever way that we can,” Rai said, adding that the district has been working with state officials and congressional offices.

One of the congressional offices is that of Rep. Ami Bera, a Democrat who represents the district. Bera’s office told NPR it had been in contact with the school district and has “urgently flagged” the situation with the State Department and the Department of Defense.

“We are pushing the DoD and State Department for an update,” Travis Horne, Bera’s communications director, said in an email to NPR.

DENVER — Colorado’s attorney general said Wednesday that a grand jury indicted three officers and two paramedics in the death of Elijah McClain, a Black man who was put in a chokehold and injected with a powerful sedative two years ago in suburban Denver.

The 23-year-old’s death gained widespread attention during last year’s protests against racial injustice and police brutality following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

McClain’s pleading words that were captured on police body camera video — “I’m just different” — have been posted on signs at protests and spoken by celebrities who have joined those calling for the prosecution of the officers who confronted McClain as he walked down the street in the city of Aurora after a 911 caller reported he looked suspicious.

Stories about McClain, a massage therapist family and friends described as a gentle and kind introvert, filled social media, including how he volunteered to play his violin to comfort cats at an animal shelter.

Attorney General Phil Weiser said all five officers and paramedics were charged with manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide, while some also face additional charges.

McClain’s Death Prompted Multiple Investigations

Facing pressure during nationwide protests last year, Democratic Gov. Jared Polis ordered Weiser to open a new criminal investigation. A district attorney had said in 2019 that he could not charge the officers because an autopsy could not determine how McClain died.

In January, Weiser announced that he had opened a grand jury investigation, noting that grand juries have the power to compel testimony and documents that would otherwise be unavailable.

It was one of several investigations prompted at least in part by McClain’s death, including separate reviews of McClain’s arrest commissioned by the city of Aurora and a comprehensive review of the Police Department. The attorney general’s office also is conducting a civil rights investigation into the agency, the first under a new police accountability law in Colorado.

Aurora’s highly critical review did not find any evidence to justify officers stopping McClain as he walked home from the store on Aug. 24, 2019, after a 911 caller had reported a man wearing a ski mask and waving his hands who seemed “sketchy.” His family said McClain wore the mask because he had anemia that caused him to get cold easily.

Body Cams Recorded Key Moments In Police Encounter

Police body camera video shows an officer getting out of his car, approaching McClain on the sidewalk and saying, “Stop right there. Stop. Stop … I have a right to stop you because you’re being suspicious.”

In the video, the officer puts his hand on McClain’s shoulder and turns him around and repeats, “Stop tensing up.” As McClain verbally protests, the officer says, “Relax, or I’m going to have to change this situation.” As the other officers join in to restrain McClain, he asks them to let go and says, “You guys started to arrest me, and I was stopping my music to listen.”

What happened next isn’t clear because all of the officers’ body cameras come off as they move McClain to the grass, but the officers and McClain can still be heard. An officer says McClain grabbed one of their guns. McClain can be heard trying to explain himself and sometimes crying out or sobbing. He says he can’t breathe and was just on his way home.

“I’m just different. I’m just different, that’s all. That’s all I was doing. I’m so sorry. I have no gun. I don’t do that stuff. I don’t do any fighting. Why were you attacking me? I don’t do guns. I don’t even kill flies. I don’t eat meat. … I am a vegetarian,” he said.

One officer eventually retrieves his camera, which shows McClain handcuffed, laying on his side and periodically vomiting as another officer leans on him. An officer who arrived later threatened to get his police dog to bite McClain.

Police Used A Chokehold And Ketamine On McClain

Paramedics arrived and injected the 140-pound (63.5-kilogram) McClain with 500 milligrams of ketamine — more than 1 1/2 times the dose for his weight.

The fire department is allowed to use the drug to sedate combative or aggressive people, but there’s a lack of police training, conflicting medical standards and nonexistent protocols that have resulted in hospitalizations and even deaths when it’s used during police encounters.

Within five minutes, according to a federal lawsuit from McClain’s family, he stopped breathing. He died six days later after being declared brain dead and taken off life support.

A pathologist who conducted an autopsy said a combination of a narrowed coronary artery and physical exertion contributed to McClain’s death. Dr. Stephen Cina found no evidence of a ketamine overdose and said several other possibilities could not be ruled out, including an unexpected reaction to ketamine or the chokehold causing an irregular heartbeat.

The carotid hold that was used on McClain involves applying pressure to the sides of the neck, stopping the flow of blood to the brain to render someone unconscious. It has been banned by police departments and some states, including Colorado, following Floyd’s killing.

A lawsuit from the family alleges that McClain died as a result of a dramatic increase of lactic acid in his blood caused by excessive force used by police over about 18 minutes, combined with the effects of the ketamine. They claim that police continued to “torture” McClain even after he was restrained, treatment they say is a result of the department’s history of “unconstitutional racist brutality.”

Controversy Continues To Surround Aurora Police

The attorney general’s announcement comes after three Aurora officers, including one involved in the encounter with McClain, were fired and one resigned last year over photos mimicking the chokehold used on the 23-year-old.

The department’s new chief, who fired those officers as its interim leader, has vowed to work to rebuild public trust since McClain’s death and other police encounters with people of color.

However, Vanessa Wilson spent her first days as chief last year apologizing after Aurora officers put four Black girls on the ground and handcuffed two of them next to a car that police suspected was stolen but turned out not to be.

A prosecutor later decided there was no evidence the officers committed a crime but urged the Police Department to review its policies to ensure that something similar does not happen again.

In July, an Aurora police officer was charged with assault after being captured on body camera video pistol-whipping and choking a Black man during an arrest. Another officer was charged with not intervening as required under the police accountability passed amid last year’s protests.