The police had no legal reason to detain Elijah McClain, concluded a new independent review, the first in a series of violent and unjustified actions taken by police officers that led the 23-year-old black man to be strangled and injected with ketamine before to die.
The investigative report, released on Monday after millions of people asked McClain for justice, also raised concerns about Aurora, Colorado, the police department’s own investigation into the use of force by police officers, claiming that police investigators did not do “basic and critical questions” and “failed to present a neutral and objective version of the facts and apparently ignored the contrary evidence.” Although McClain died in August 2019, an independent investigation did not begin until the Black Lives Matter protests took place throughout the country in the summer of 2020.
The new report, commissioned by the Aurora city council, also found that officers had no legal reason to search or put McClain in the controversial stranglehold, pointing out that none of the officers involved suspected McClain of a specific crime at any time before he did. be taken to earth.
McClain was stopped by the police on his way home around 10:30 pm on August 24, 2019.
According to the report, the first officer who contacted McClain, Officer Nathan Woodyard, laid hands on McClain 10 seconds after approaching him for the first time, although there were no visible weapons and McClain had not made threatening gestures in his direction.
“Woodyard’s decision to turn what might have been a consensual meeting with Mr. McClain into an investigative parade – in less than ten seconds – did not appear to be supported by any policeman’s reasonable suspicion that Mr. McClain was involved in criminal activities, “he said to the report. “This decision had ramifications for the rest of the meeting.”
After the violent stop, during which McClain struggled to breathe, he was injected with a powerful dose of the sedative and taken to a hospital. He died there three days later.
While the Aurora Police Department was investigating his death, the authorities did not ask basic questions, the independent review concluded.
“Instead, the questions often seemed designed to elicit specific exonerating ‘magic language’ found in court decisions,” concluded the review’s three-person panel, saying the department’s investigation of McClain’s death “failed to present a version neutral and objective facts and apparently ignored the contrary evidence. “
The performance of the police was also never reviewed by the Internal Affairs Department of the Secretariat, which can only open an investigation at the request of the delegate. A review by the department’s Force Review Committee was, according to the new investigation, “superficial and summary, at best”.
A spokesman for a local Black Lives Matter group said the new report confirmed that McClain should never have been confronted by the police in the first place.
“The results of the independent investigation into Elijah’s murder support what his family and community already knew,” said Apryl Alexander, a community organizer and spokesperson for BLM 5280. “He was a young man who was trying to get home and was confronted without reason. Instead of simply talking to Elijah, physical strength was used in 10 seconds – not enough time for him to even explain that he was going home. The criminalization of blacks for living their lives needs to end. “
McClain’s death sparked huge protests on the streets of Colorado, and more than 5 million signed a Change.org petition demanding that officers involved in the mortal parade be held accountable.
According to officials, McClain was originally stopped after police received a 911 call from someone who said he saw someone wearing a ski mask and “acting weird” and “waving their arms”.
Members of McClain’s family said he wore a ski mask to keep warm because he had anemia.
The audio from the body camera footage revealed that McClain asked police officers to release him. And according to the report released on Monday, although police officers needed to have “reasonable, objective” and “articulable” suspicion to make the stop, none of them offered one during subsequent interviews.
“None of the officers pleaded a crime that they thought Mr. McClain had committed, was committing or was about to commit,” according to the report.
Instead, officers said in interviews that McClain was acting “suspiciously”, pointing at the ski mask and waving his arms in an area they described as having a “high crime rate”.
A police officer, the report said, said McClain’s refusal to stop was in itself suspicious because “it was consistent with someone who ‘or just committed a crime’ or someone who is ‘hiding something, be it a gun or drugs’.
But that is not a legal reason for the police to detain a person, the report noted.
The panel also wrote that it was not possible to find sufficient evidence that the officers had a legal justification for searching McClain, pointing out that one of the officers reported that he “felt safe in approaching” and there was no suggestion that McClain had a gun .
Instead, the officers forced McClain to fall to the ground, and one reported that McClain tried to grab a policeman’s gun. Police officers used carotid restraint to contain McClain shortly before he passed out.
The report also noted that, in their description of the meeting with McClain, the police described the 23-year-old as “fighting” and said he had “incredible strength” or “crazy strength”.
“It is not clear from the records whether Mr. McClain’s movements, interpreted by the police as resistance, were escape attempts or simply an effort, voluntary or involuntary, to avoid the painful force applied to him, to improve his breathing, or to accommodate his vomiting, “the report said.
Instead, the audio of the meeting recorded McClain “screaming in pain, apologizing, vomiting and sometimes looking inconsistent”.
“His words were apologetic and confused, not angry or threatening,” said the report. “He became more and more plaintive and desperate as he struggled to breathe. He told the police that he had his identity, that his name was Elijah McClain and that ‘I was going home’.”
One of the officers called the dispatch saying that McClain “was still fighting”, but the audio at the time of the broadcast shows McClain saying to the officers, “Forgive me” and “You are phenomenal, you are beautiful. Forgive me”.