{"id":14802,"date":"2023-09-17T21:30:08","date_gmt":"2023-09-18T04:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=14802"},"modified":"2023-09-18T21:43:26","modified_gmt":"2023-09-19T04:43:26","slug":"the-trials-of-aurora-a-colorado-citys-deep-divide-over-policing-the-new-york-times-magazine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=14802","title":{"rendered":"“The Trials of Aurora: A Colorado City\u2019s Deep Divide Over Policing”, The New York Times Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

After Elijah McClain died in 2019, the case seemed to be closed. The George Floyd protests \u2014 and the backlash to them \u2014 would change everything.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By\u00a0Audra D. S. Burch, Sunday New York Times, Septermber 17, 2023<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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One by one, the five men \u2014 three police officers and two paramedics \u2014 walked up before the judge one afternoon this January. Their lawyers stood beside them, and the wooden benches of the Colorado courtroom were filled with family, friends and fellow police officers and paramedics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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All five faced felony charges of manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide for their roles in the death of Elijah McClain,<\/a> a 23-year-old Black man, in the summer of 2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The men, in muted suits and ties, entered\u00a0their formal pleas<\/a>: \u201cNot guilty.\u201d Then they left the courtroom, staring straight ahead. In the hallway, they were engulfed by their supporters, who embraced them, patting their shoulders and forming a kind of human shield to protect them from the eyes and questions of reporters and onlookers.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The aftermath of McClain\u2019s death must be understood as taking place in two different worlds: before and after the killing of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police in May 2020, which ignited a national racial-justice movement that demanded accountability,<\/a>reform and even the defunding of the police. But that reckoning, as it was often called, was followed by a backlash. No one in Aurora could have foretold how McClain\u2019s death, the officers and paramedics involved and the city itself would all be swept up in that reckoning and the reaction to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt turned the city upside down,\u201d says Angela Lawson, Aurora\u2019s only African American member of the City Council. \u201cIt brought out racial issues. It brought out disparity issues. It brought out the division that we actually have in our city.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Without the political pressure kindled by protests, first in George Floyd\u2019s name and then in McClain\u2019s, the case would have been left behind in 2019. Instead, it was propelled forward, first in the streets, then in the courts. The police officers and the paramedics will be prosecuted in three separate trials in September, October and November, the last chapter in a saga that has exposed deep rifts, with politicians, pastors and ordinary citizens holding starkly different views about their neighbors, their police force and their hometown. \u201cThe folks on the left were saying all police are evil,\u201d says Dave Gruber, a white conservative former member of the City Council. \u201cWe were saying: No, we don\u2019t believe that. You know, we believe that most cops are good.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In nearly three dozen interviews with Aurorans \u2014 including McClain\u2019s family and friends, former and current officials with the Police and Fire Departments, city and state politicians, faith leaders and residents \u2014 along with reviews of police reports, autopsy reports, first-responder protocols, internal memos, independent investigations, lawsuits and video footage, a portrait emerged of Colorado\u2019s third-largest city in the midst of its own public trial.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aurora\u2019s painful, conflicted journey over the past four years would raise uncomfortable questions about the meaning of public safety and illuminate both the promise and the limits of reform. There were real achievements \u2014 new legislation and restrictions from the city and the state, and in both the Police and Fire Departments \u2014 hard-fought and eked out with public pressure, but not always as fast or far-reaching as activists may have wanted. Still, at least a dozen police officers, including the three in this case, and another Aurora officer who failed to intervene in an excessive use of force case, have been charged since Colorado passed broad police-accountability legislation<\/a> in 2020. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Sheneen
Sheneen McClain, Elijah\u2019s mother, started a lonely vigil after his death and pushed for criminal charges in the case.Credit…Clifford Prince King for The New York Times<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The appetite for major changes to policing was loudest in Aurora and across the country immediately after George Floyd\u2019s death and the waves of protests that followed, only to fade as the political winds shifted. (Even the bipartisan federal police-accountability legislation<\/a> for which Tim Scott, the Republican senator from South Carolina and presidential candidate, was a lead negotiator has stalled.) The fundamental question now is what it takes to get policing in America right, and whether incremental steps \u2014 or even a consent decree meant to force change \u2014 can ever cover enough distance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe community wanted justice,\u201d says Ryan Ross, the facilitator of Aurora\u2019s now-disbanded Community Police Task Force, who is Black. \u201cBut more than just justice for what happened, they wanted accountability, a pathway to accountability and some change that would actually eliminate this kind of tragedy from happening in our community.\u201d He continues: \u201cAnd the ability to feel like the notion of \u2018to protect and serve\u2019 actually meant that everybody was going to be protected and served. And I don\u2019t think the community felt that way \u2014 or feels that way.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He almost<\/strong> made it back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The surveillance camera at the convenience store McClain walked to in his neighborhood on the night of Aug. 24, 2019, recorded him buying Arizona iced teas. Although the temperature was in the upper 60s, he wore a jacket and a ski mask (a neck gaiter pulled up over his nose and mouth). His mother would later explain that he was anemic and often cold, so he wore masks to keep his face warm. He was known to offer a \u201cgratitude bow\u201d when he left a room, and the video shows him doing so as he turned from the register. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

McClain left the store and began walking through a neighborhood of low-slung apartment buildings and modest single-family homes, listening to music through earbuds and waving his arms. Though he was an unimposing figure at 5-foot-7, a passing motorist called 911 around 10:30 p.m. to report<\/a> a person behaving strangely. \u201cHe looks sketchy,\u201d the caller said, according to a transcript of the four-minute call. \u201cHe might be a good person or a bad person.\u201d The dispatcher asked a series of questions. He answered that he did not see any weapons and did not feel he was in danger. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Officer Nathan Woodyard, then a 30-year-old who had served as a Marine for five years and with the Police Department for nearly three years, was the first to arrive at 10:43 p.m., followed by Officer Jason Rosenblatt, also 30 at the time, who had been on the force for two years, and Randy Roedema, then 37, who had served eight years as a Marine, six years with the Denver Sheriff\u2019s Department and five years in Aurora. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Woodyard stepped from his police vehicle and repeatedly told McClain to stop. McClain did not. In seconds, Woodyard put his hands on him. \u201cStop right there. Stop. Stop,\u201d he said. \u201cI have the right to stop you because you\u2019re being suspicious.\u201d McClain, who had never been arrested, responded that he was simply trying to go home. \u201cPlease respect the boundaries that I am speaking,\u201d he said, his voice cracking. \u201cThis isn\u2019t going to go well,\u201d one of the officers told him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Much of what happened next would not be seen because all three of the officers\u2019 body cameras dislodged or deactivated, though some audio could still be heard. The exchange rapidly escalated as the three officers forcibly moved McClain to a nearby grassy area. \u201cHe grabbed your gun, dude!\u201d Roedema told Rosenblatt. (According to the indictment, Rosenblatt would later say that he did not feel any contact with his service weapon.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The three officers tackled McClain. Woodyard grasped him from behind in a carotid hold, a controversial law-enforcement maneuver similar to a chokehold in which the officer\u2019s arms, locked around a person\u2019s neck, are used to apply pressure to the carotid artery in order to restrict blood to the brain and render the person unconscious. \u201cIs he out?\u201d an officer could be heard asking. One of them eventually recovered his body camera, which revealed McClain on the ground, lying on his side with his hands cuffed behind his back, moaning. A K-9 officer, Matthew Green, arrived and threatened to unleash his police dog to attack McClain. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe officers\u2019 statements on the scene and in subsequent recorded interviews suggest a violent and relentless struggle,\u201d an investigation by an independent panel<\/a> would later find. \u201cThe limited video and the audio from the body-worn cameras reveal Mr. McClain surrounded by officers, all larger than he, crying out in pain, apologizing, explaining himself and pleading with the officers.\u201d The investigation found that the officers \u201ccan be heard telling Mr. McClain to \u2018stop,\u2019 \u2018stop, dude,\u2019 \u2018stop fighting\u2019 and \u2018dude, just stop fighting.\u2019 They described his behavior as \u2018violent,\u2019 \u2018fight[ing]\u2019 and \u2018struggling\u2019 and repeatedly remarked on his \u2018incredible strength,\u2019 \u2018crazy strength\u2019 and \u2018superior strength.\u2019 The vast majority of this treatment occurred after Mr. McClain was handcuffed and lying on the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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McClain addressed the police in a panicky stream of consciousness recorded in the audio of the body cameras. None of the officers responded to him. \u201cI can\u2019t breathe,\u201d he told them. He said that he had his ID. He told them his name. \u201cI\u2019m an introvert,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m just different. That\u2019s all. I\u2019m so sorry. I have no gun. I don\u2019t do that stuff. I don\u2019t do any fighting. Why are you attacking me? I don\u2019t even kill flies! I don\u2019t eat meat!\u201d He tried desperately to appeal to them. \u201cForgive me. All I was trying to do was become better. I\u2019ll do it. I will do anything. Sacrifice my identity, I\u2019ll do it.\u201d His last words were \u201cPlease help me.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two Aurora Fire Rescue paramedics, Jeremy Cooper, then 44, and Peter Cichuniec, then 46, arrived at 10:53 p.m. in response to a call from the police officers, who told them McClain was \u201con something.\u201d The independent investigation does not note either of them having checked McClain\u2019s vital signs, examining him or speaking to him at all before diagnosing him with \u201cexcited delirium\u201d and determining that ketamine should be used to sedate him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n