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Justice For Elijah McClain: Independent Investigation Launched Into Death Of Black Man Put Into Police Chokehold

Aurora police, fire department and EMT will be investigated.

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Elijah McClain

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On Monday, the Aurora City Council unanimously voted to adopt a resolution calling for an independent investigation into Elijah McClain‘s death. The investigation will be led by Jonathan Smith of the Washington Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, according to CBSDenver.

From 2010 to 2015, Smith assisted with investigations of civil rights violations by law enforcement for the United States Department of Justice. Smith also assisted with the investigation of the Ferguson, Missouri, police department after the death of Michael Brown.

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A three-member team will lead the investigation into McClain’s death along with at least three additional consultants. Council members said they are searching for panelists with backgrounds in criminal justice, medicine and civil rights.

McClain was stopped on August 24, 2019, by cops who were responding to a report of a “suspicious” person in Aurora, Colorado. According to The Gazette, McClain was on his way home from a gas station where he purchased four cans of Brisk tea. Eventually, the confrontation between the police and McClain, a 23-year-old massage therapist, escalated and cops put him in a chokehold. He was also forced to the ground for 15 minutes, and he eventually started vomiting and saying that he couldn’t breathe.

“There was a physical struggle,” former APD Chief Nick Metz said back in October. “When (police) saw (McClain), they told him to stop. He wouldn’t stop. Again, he was wearing a ski mask, it’s 10:30 p.m. at night in a residential area, so obviously that creates some concern.”

However, according to Elijah’s family, he was anemic and he useably wore a ski mask to keep his face warm while he was outside walking. Metz went on to say that McClain was in an “agitated mental state,” which caused the cops to request backup from Aurora Fire paramedics, who injected McClain with sedative ketamine to respond to his reported anxiety. While in the ambulance vehicle to the hospital, McClain went into cardiac arrest and he eventually died at the hospital on August 30 after being taken off life support.

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By June 2020, Aurora eventually terminated its contract with the attorney selected to helm the McClain death investigation after members of the Aurora City Council voiced their concerns over his neutrality.

The third-party investigation led by Smith will not bring criminal charges. However, the team will submit a written report to the city council with policy recommendations for the police, fire and EMT departments. The investigation will go over policies, including calls for service, calls for medical assistance, police contact with individuals, use of force, ketamine use, and administrative incident reviews.

Along with the independent investigation, Governor Jared Polis has appointed the Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser as a Special Prosecutor to review the case. The Department of Justice is also reviewing the case for a potential civil rights investigation.

The three police officers involved in McClain’s death have not been charged. They were removed from patrol duty back in June.

One of the cops, Jason Rosenblatt, was fired after his response to a photo text message, in which three APD officers posed for a photo reenacting the carotid restraint used on McClain. All three fired officers have appealed their terminations.

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123 Black Men And Boys Killed By Police

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123 Black Men And Boys Killed By Police

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123 Black Men And Boys Killed By Police

UPDATED: 6:45 p.m. ET, Jan. 5, 2022 -- The centuries-old American tradition of police shooting and killing Black males suffered an untraditional jolt in April when former cop Derek Chauvin was found guilty and convicted on all counts for murdering George Floyd by kneeling on the unarmed, handcuffed man's neck for more than nine minutes. But it has been a quick resumption to police normalcy with multiple killings of Black people by law enforcement since the day of Chauvin's verdict. MORE: #SayHerName: Black Women And Girls Killed By Police Thelonious “RaRa” McKnight died on Dec. 29, 2021, after an officer with the Paterson Police Department in New Jersey shot the 25-year-old under questionable circumstances. “A cop car drove by and then came back and stopped,” McKnight's friend and eyewitness Duke Snider told the Bergen Record the day after the shooting. “One of the cops came up and went straight for Thelonius. Then two other cops joined him. They marched Thelonius toward the backyard and made him take his hands out of his pockets.” The Bergen Record reported: "Snider said that he followed and that McKnight was facing police with his hands up when they shot him." McKnight's name joins a long list of too many other Black men and boys killed by the police, including people who have become household names for all the wrong reasons like Tamir Rice, Botham Jean, E.J. Bradford and Michael Brown. But there are plenty of others whose police killings never went "viral," including people like Michael Dean, a 28-year-old father who police shot in the head on Dec. 3, 2019, and Jamee Johnson, a 22-year-old HBCU student who police shot to death after a questionable traffic stop on Dec. 14, 2019. One of the most distressing parts of this seemingly nonstop string of police killings of Black people is the fact that more times than not, the officer involved in the shooting can hide behind the claim that they feared for their lives -- even if the victim was shot in the back, as has become the case for so many deadly episodes involving law enforcement. In a handful of those cases -- such as Antwon Rose, a 13-year-old boy killed in Pittsburgh, and Stephon Clark, a 22-year-old killed in Sacramento, both of whom were unarmed -- the officers either avoided being criminally charged altogether or were acquitted despite damning evidence that the cops' lives were not threatened and there was no cause for them to resort to lethal force or any violence for that matter. Crump, who has been retained in so many of these cases, described the above scenarios in his book, "Open Season," as the "genocide" of Black people. As NewsOne continues covering these shootings that so often go ignored by mainstream media, the below running list (in no certain order) of Black men and boys who have been shot and killed by police under suspicious circumstances can serve as a tragic reminder of the dangers Black and brown citizens face upon being born into a world of hate that has branded them as suspects since birth. Scroll down to learn more about the Black men and boys who have lost their lives to police violence.

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Justice For Elijah McClain: Independent Investigation Launched Into Death Of Black Man Put Into Police Chokehold  was originally published on newsone.com

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