SEE IT: Colorado police handcuff Black girls in mistaken traffic stop

Four young Black girls were held at gunpoint Sunday by a group of white Colorado police officers who handcuffed two of them and kept them facedown in a parking lot in what the police chief is now calling a mistaken traffic stop.

Viral video of the incident shows the girls on the ground crying and screaming.

“I want my mother,” one says.

Brittany Gilliam, the driver, told 9News that she had taken the group, all aged between 6 and 17, to get their nails done in Aurora, but realized the salon was closed and went back to her car in the parking lot, which is when police swarmed them.

“He’s like something about the car being reported stolen,” Gilliam said. “And I’m like ‘this happened months ago, you guys cleared it we got to pick up the car the next day the very next day so I’m not understanding what’s going on.’”

Gilliam said she had reported her car missing in February, but it was found a day later.

Aurora Police Chief Vanessa Wilson said in a statement late Monday night that police were searching for a stolen vehicle and that Gilliam’s car matched the license plate number; the stolen vehicle was a motorcycle while Gilliam was driving an SUV.

But the license plate was registered in a different state.

“There’s no excuse why you didn’t handle it a different type of way,” Gilliam told 9News. “You could have even told them ‘step off to the side let me ask your mom or your auntie a few questions so we can get this cleared up.’ There was different ways to handle it.”

Aurora police said an internal investigation and “examination of training and procedures” have been launched.

“We have been training our officers that when they contact a suspected stolen car, they should do what is a called a high-risk stop,” Wilson said in a statement. “But we must allow our officers to have discretion and to deviate from this process when different scenarios present themselves. I have already directed my team to look at new practices and training.”

Wilson said she has called the family “to apologize and to offer any help we can provide, especially for the children who may have been traumatized by yesterday’s events.”

Video of the incident has been viewed more than 3 million times on Twitter as of Tuesday morning.

The Aurora Police Department is already under strict scrutiny after the death of 23-year-old Elijah McCain, who died after police arrested him, put him in a chokehold and administered ketamine to sedate him.