When it comes to how Aurora police accosted Elijah McClain, assaulted him and prompted his death, neither the city’s numbers nor your own eyes lie.
Last week, former Aurora police officer Randy Roedema was sentenced to 14 months in jail after being convicted in November of criminally negligent homicide.
The conviction was hard-won. The sentence was incongruous to the crime committed by Roedema.
Two other officers who helped attack McClain were acquitted. Two fire department medics who came at the end of the police assault on McClain, and overdosed him with a deadly injection of ketamine, were convicted last month and await sentencing.
McClain was a 23-year-old Black man who was walking home on a summer night after going for cans of iced tea at a nearby convenience store. He was wearing a runner’s mask, and a motorist passing by called 911 to report that McClain was doing nothing wrong but appeared suspicious.
Another office rolled up first, aggressively accosting and then subduing McClain. Roedema and another officer showed up, also attacking McClain, eventually mortally injuring him with chokeholds and drugs.
During the trials and sentencing, lawyers for police tried to paint the 140-pound McClain as a raging behemoth, warranting the level of assault police inflicted.
Anyone who’s watched the police body cam video of the attack can unequivocally see that McClain is surprised and shocked when Roedema jumps from his police car and charges toward him, for no reason. He’s clearly petrified as Roedema turns on the tough-cop act and tries to bully McClain, who is flustered and scared.
McClain had just been handed the nightmare of almost every Black man in America: being charged by an aggressive armed cop for no reason.
The rolling body cameras captured every shocking, frightening and heart-breaking minute of Roedema’s assault and the events that led to McClain’s death.
Roedema’s defenders argued that he was a nice man who worked hard to help others outside of the police department.
It’s probably true.
But the numbers about Aurora police officers like Roedema don’t lie.
Among police departments in the four largest cities in Colorado, only Aurora officers use force against Black residents more than any other racial or ethnic group, according to analyses by Aurora and state officials, completed in 2020.
Aurora police consistently used force against Black people more than their white or Hispanic counterparts from 2017 through 2019, according to the 2020 analysis.
The data revealed that police in Aurora have used pepper spray, dogs, Tasers and other injurious methods on Black people 75 more times than on whites in 2017, 148 more times in 2018 and 132 more times in 2019.
The disparities are even wider between Black and Hispanic residents subjected to force at the hands of police.
The stark and shocking numbers, and the equally unnerving and unyielding camera videos of the attack on McClain, don’t contradict Roedema’s supporters about his behavior outside of uniform.
The evidence that all of Aurora saw and heard during the trial and during the past few years — as the state’s attorney general imposed a consent decree on Aurora in an effort to end the systemic abuse of people of color — paint a clear picture.
The Aurora Police department has employed officers who either cannot fathom or control irrational racism and subsequent abuse of people of color. Or officers on the force recognize their own racist behavior and indulge it. Or some officers are ill equipped and not trained to recognize their own prejudices and irrational assumptions and address them as they interact with minorities.
We agree with police lawyers who insist that had paramedics not overdosed McClain as he lay nearly comatose from being choked and assaulted by police, he might have survived the attack.
But there is no doubt that had Roedema, and subsequent responding officers, simply asked McClain questions as they would have an elderly white man or young white woman, he would have gotten home alive and unharmed with his cans of iced tea still in a plastic convenience store bag.
Aurora is currently working to prevent more abuse of Black people officers encounter, and they hope to rebuild the public’s trust.
A good place to start would be for police officials to accept and admit the lessons learned through the past four months of McClain trials, and explain, in detail, what has changed since McClain was killed, and what will change to ensure it never happens again.
Roedema didn’t make the initial contact. Get your facts straight. I question the accuracy of the statistics in this article based on your inaccuracies of how this event took place
Elijah was 23 at the time of his death, not 26. Editorial board? Really?
First, who is more likely to kill a black man in America? It is another black man.
Next, why are more black men requiring force in America? Watch all of the videos. They are not stopping, they are running, and they are resisting. Even poor Elijah. All he had to do was stop. Why didn’t he? Does the present hysteria about the police and the exaggerated risk to black men have a positive result or is it more likely to result in more paranoia and resistance? We have come up with body cameras to help address the unprofessional conduct that has been exhibited by police officers. Did that exist? Certainly. I have been with officers who were so nasty that I questioned whether I would help the suspect or the officer if a fight occurred. For the most part, the chiefs were nonexistent. They could say that they had policies, but they showed little leadership. As a supervisor, I tried to exhibit and require professional and fair conduct from my officers. We did not have that type of problem because they knew what I expected and, for the most part, they were decent human beings. At the same time, we knew that the Chief’s office cared little and provided no real support or guidance for proper behavior. We had policies, but they were unevenly used by the Chief. Some in our chain of command had been the most abusive toward citizens during their careers.
There are a number of problems with judging police use of force and conduct toward the public. First, there is a huge gap in understanding and knowledge between the police and the public about both use of force and the acts that are necessary as a police officer. If I pull up “police brutality” on the internet, I find many cases where there is no excessive force. I do not see police abuse in the videos from Elijah McClain. I see officers following their training. The headlines are written in such a way that we are to assume that it was excessive. Now, throwing someone down on the ground is supposed to be excessive, as is putting any weight on their body. All because of George Floyd. Although these things could be excessive in some cases, they are mostly a necessary part of controlling someone. When I was a lieutenant, I received a call from an older black lady who wanted to complain about several of our officers using excessive force on her gang banger grandson who was wanted on a warrant and who had resisted arrest. I asked her to describe what she saw. She said that the officers were treating her grandson “like a dog”. She said that one officer was kneeling on him and another had his foot on his leg. I asked her if anyone was hitting her grandson or choking him? I asked if he was injured. She said no to both. I then asked her how she and her friends would control her grandson if he had been using drugs and started to tear up her house. She then said “oh, I see what you mean”. She was a nice lady, as were many of the god fearing grandparents of gang members. Often, when a gang member lied to us about his identity, we could count on a call to his grand parents to get an honest answer.
Let us look at the statistics idea. So, the studies all show that the black population is statistically more involved in crime, especially violent crime. If you decide to concentrate on the areas where crime is more prevalent, then you will be working a lot in minority areas. If I arrest the bad actors in those areas, the statistics will be disproportionate. A friend of mine was working in Watts and a black woman he stopped for a traffic violation said that he was only stopping her because she was black. He looked around and asked her if she saw any white people he could stop.
There is a reality that people don’t want to face. There are problems in the black community. Call it white guilt or just being naive. Perhaps the past welfare efforts that drove black fathers out of the home are to blame. But, the attitudes that are reinforced in music, film, and social media are not good. Gang life, violence, poor treatment of women, and a host of other negatives are glorified. Black youths who try to succeed in a white society are ridiculed by other black youths. Is this all of the black community? Not at all. We always say that ten percent of the population commit ninety percent of the crime. When I stop that ten percent of a smaller black population, it is disproportionate to when I stop the ten percent of the white population.
When the Attorney General decided to go after Aurora, he grouped together a bunch of incidents where there was nothing to indicate racism other than the fact that the people were black. He ignored that other Colorado cities had more disproportionate arrest statistics than Aurora. If you want to address crime in today’s environment, the statistics will be disproportionate. No way around it. Even in today’s environment where officers are encouraged not to stop anyone, the statistics will still be disproportionate. If the officers simply respond to calls, the statistics will be disproportionate. It is a little like the immigration issue. You can call yourself a sanctuary city and discourage enforcing the laws, but eventually you will be forced to acknowledge that we cannot afford to simply let anyone and everyone into the country.
You can say that policing more in high crime areas is “over policing”. Most of the people in those areas just want to be safe. The key is in how you police. You have to develop trust and relationships in the area. That isn’t accomplished by just having feel good meetings occasionally with the residents. It entails a lot more. I developed the Police Area Representative Program with three key components in mind. They were communication, flexibility and commitment. That meant talking with the area residents on a regular basis, looking at every crime that occurred in the area, developing a feeling that the area and its people were the officer’s people, and the ability to actually address the crime concerns those same people had. That relationship allowed the officer to learn who the bad actors were in the community. That relationship meant fewer stops of innocent people. The officers were supposed to be able to flex their hours, uniform, and equipment to address the problems of the people in the area. The seemingly petty crimes that aggravate everyone were to be more important than the headline crimes that the chiefs care about.
Computerization, although a valuable tool , has also made the police less effective and more isolated from the community. In the past, an officer came out and took a report and saw the misery suffered by crime victims. Further, the officer had an idea of the problems that needed to be addressed. No longer. Make a computer report that is often hardly looked at by a detective supervisor. No one notices that your car has been broken into three times in the last month. The chief is only concerned with what makes the news.
While we keep hearing that Aurora has employed all of these racist officers who cannot control their prejudices, it simply isn’t true. I totally reject the author’s idea that a white person would have been treated differently given the same circumstances. However, I expect that the narrative will continue and the flaws of the police reform bill will continue to be ignored. I find it humorous that the State Patrol ignores the police reform bill stipulations in order to remove protesters from the capital chambers. The legislators who created the bill don’t realize that it prohibits use of force to remove protestors. I guess the law doesn’t matter when it concerns them. The thousands of police officers who left the job were not all racists who were afraid of being caught. They understood that the narrative that has now gone into the legislature, the chiefs, the prosecutors, and the media has made it too dangerous to do the job. The distortions that have been created have manifested a gap between perception and reality. The joy of doing the job is gone. When you have tried to do the job fairly and professionally, and suddenly you are being unfairly attacked as a racist, it is damaging to the soul. When your bosses are looking for any opportunity to fire and discipline you for their political image, it is time to go. The irony is that among the officers who remain will be the lazy ones who are glad that they are no longer expected to do their job.
But where are we now? Aurora will continue to be under the gun. Any contacts with black suspects will be looked at as racist. The City will continue to pursue the goals of the consent decree. For the most part, they have agreed to pay out millions to someone who would not know how to lead a police department but will insure that there are volumes of impressive policies. Have you ever asked yourself how a police officer on the street can run twenty policy considerations through his/her head in a rapidly moving violent situation. It is easy to sit calmly and come up with all the things an officer should consider in these situations. Most of the time, the policy doesn’t give any real guidance, it simply tells you that you have to consider all of these factors. You can’t even memorize all of them. However, when you get into court, the chiefs can say that it was in policy, even it was totally unrealistic. They are covered. It was in policy. It is hard to do police work when the legislature and the department give you vague guidelines like the police reform bill. Knowing that you will be held accountable in court for guidelines that the legislature can’t even understand or explain is a morale killer.
The police cannot change many of their behaviors. Even if you don’t understand them or like them. The police learned many things from the wave of police hatred. The positive is that they learned that they must use more care in who they stop. That did not take much. Police work is constantly reviewing the changes in laws and what the courts approve. Another positive is that police supervisors can now watch body cam videos to see how their officers treat people. What didn’t they learn? They did not learn that they have all these unconscious biases that make them racist. They learned that they are not supported. They learned that the political climate is far more important than the laws and the facts. There can’t be any huge changes and still have a police force. The laws that we now want to ignore to protect the criminals were developed out of a need to control crime and to protect you. Those laws gave officers the right to use force because some people make it necessary. I am sorry that so much of our society cannot accept that there are nasty people out here who only understand force. We must return to a time of personal accountability.
Although, I understand and appreciate, your past and current commentary about APD’s policing and the state of Aurora’s social order, I fear and am convinced there is very little hope for a positive future for Aurora citizens who care to return to a better life.
I concur, we must return to personal responsibility. Aurora’s radicals, socialists, youth and immigrants seem to need conflict and will travel a road that leads away from personal accountability. It’s a real shame and will lead to internal self destruction sometime in the future.
First contact? Age? The man is still dead. Because of his color! Get a grip on what is important! No more needs to be said!
John and Athena, please reread the article and write back accepting that your comments are incorrect.
Why aren’t there links to the videos mentioned. A video is worth a thousand words.
Let’s not forget that this murder was buried by police and there would have been no investigation or trial if some of the public had not protested this murder and demanded (over and over) that it be investigated. APD cared nothing about this death until the public forced them to investigate. The police story was one big lie. That’s who I do not believe these days, the police. Today the head of APD says that the department let the officers involved down, like it let Elijah McClain down. HUH? Can you imagine how his mother feels when she reads that – the brutal unjustified in any way murder of her son is equated to letting the police down too?? With that kind of person leading the APD, we are not going to make progress with what is clearly racist targeting and brutality in one of the most diverse cities in Colorado. He should be fired.
After all these years, multiple trials, innumerous articles and editorials, you Debra, have no more idea of what happened or what should be done about this situation. Give it a rest.