DENVER | State Attorney General said Thursday his office will launch a new “independent investigation” into the August 2019 death of Elijah McClain.
“Elijah McClain should be alive today,” Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said in a statement. “His life mattered and his death was tragic. The pain, frustration, and anger that his family and many Coloradans are feeling from his death is understandable and justified. Whenever someone dies after an encounter with law enforcement, the community deserves a thorough investigation. Our investigation will be thorough, guided by the facts, and worthy of public trust and confidence in the criminal justice system.”
Weiser said the investigation comes at the behest of Gov. Jared Polis.
A cascade of calls to reinvestigate the death of McClain spattered social media this week after a steady flood of missives — tens of thousands of them — from across the country bombarded state and local leaders’ inboxes.
A new investigation by the City of Aurora is set to happen, but the details are still being ironed out, now with the Aurora mayor, city council public safety committee.
Polis tweeted Wednesday he would look at intervening in the case.
Photo by Philip B. Poston/The Sentinel
“I am hearing from many Coloradans who have expressed concerns with the investigation of Elijah McClain’s death. As a result, I have instructed my legal council to examine what the state can do and we are assessing next steps,” he said in the post.
17th Judicial District Attorney Dave Young, who cleared the three police officers who detained McClain of any wrongdoing in November, said he will not reopen the case unless new evidence is presented.
Weiser did not detail how his investigation would proceed, but said he would cooperate with Aurora on their endeavor.
Local Aurora lawmakers had already been planning a renewed independent investigation after nixing a contract with a Connecticut-based attorney and former police officer who was hired to further examine the events that led to and followed the death of 23-year-old McClain last summer.
McClain died about a week after a trio of Aurora police officers stopped him in the 1900 block of Billings Street while he was walking home from a nearby convenience store. A person named Juan had called 911 and described McClain as “sketchy” because he was wearing a mask.
The interaction between officers and McClain quickly grew violent and ended in an officer placing McClain in a carotid control hold, a recently outlawed maneuver that cut off blood flow to McClain’s brain and caused him to briefly faint. He repeatedly vomited before paramedics with Aurora Fire Rescue injected him with ketamine and loaded him into an ambulance, where he went into cardiac arrest en route to a nearby hospital. He never regained consciousness. Life support was discontinued after he was declared to be brain dead.
Calls to further investigate McClain’s death were frequent in the months after his death last August, but have exponentially mushroomed following the deaths of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Kentucky this spring.
Members of the Aurora City Council public safety committee — Allison Hiltz, Curtis Gardner and Angela Lawson — asked city manager Jim Twombly to terminate the contract with the previous investigator tasked with looking into McClain’s death, Eric Daigle, June 11. The same group of city lawmakers then announced early Wednesday afternoon that the body was preparing to discuss investigator recommendations at its July 16 meeting.
“At the conclusion of that meeting, we’d like for your final recommendation to be on the agenda for the next regular meeting of the Aurora City Council for a formal vote,” the trio of lawmakers wrote to Twombly in a letter.
A few hours later, that timeline was scrambled by Mayor Mike Coffman, who said he was calling a for a vote on July 6, where all council members would take formal action on whether to move forward with a third-party investigation, although city rules don’t require a council vote for such an investigation. There was no vote when Twombly announced former U.S. Attorney John Walsh would review an incident involving an intoxicated Aurora police officer last year.
Coffman told the Sentinel he feels the scope of the investigation should be discussed by the full city council and voted upon. If the triad of city council members want to discuss the investigation in a public safety meeting setting, Coffman suggested Hiltz, the committee chairperson, should call a special meeting as he has of the city council.
While council members on the public safety committee said staff seemed comfortable with their timeline of presenting recommendations on July 16, Coffman said he’s confident that city management, working with the public safety committee, could be ready to bring forth investigation recommendations to the full council by the next meeting on July 20.
“The governor and I left it at that we seem to be in agreement that whatever the attorney general does will be complementary to the actions that the city takes,” Coffman said. “I welcome that.”
Weiser said the focus on this new probe from this office would focus on accountability.
“We support efforts (by the City of Aurora) and encourage them to take the necessary time so that their effort is truly independent and effective. We look forward to working with them to the extent possible to ensure accountability and so that important lessons are learned from this tragedy.
“In the coming months, we will work with the General Assembly on any resources needed to fulfill the Executive Order. In order to maintain impartiality and integrity in the process, we will not have further comment on this case until we announce our findings.”