One by one, the five men — three police officers and two paramedics — 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. |
All five faced felony charges of manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide for their roles in the death of Elijah McClain, a 23-year-old Black man, in the summer of 2019. |
The men, in muted suits and ties, entered their formal pleas: "Not guilty." 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. |
The aftermath of McClain's 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, 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's death, the officers and paramedics involved and the city itself would all be swept up in that reckoning and the reaction to it. |
"It turned the city upside down," says Angela Lawson, Aurora's only African American member of the City Council. "It brought out racial issues. It brought out disparity issues. It brought out the division that we actually have in our city." |
 | | Protesters and police in Aurora, including Vanessa Wilson, then the interim chief of police, kneel together during a peaceful protest following the death of George Floyd in 2020.Philip B. Poston/The Aurora Sentinel, via Associated Press |
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Without the political pressure kindled by protests, first in George Floyd's name and then in McClain's, 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. "The folks on the left were saying all police are evil," says Dave Gruber, a white conservative former member of the City Council. "We were saying: No, we don't believe that. You know, we believe that most cops are good." |
In nearly three dozen interviews with Aurorans — including McClain's family and friends, former and current officials with the Police and Fire Departments, city and state politicians, faith leaders and residents — along with reviews of police reports, autopsy reports, first-responder protocols, internal memos, independent investigations, lawsuits and video footage, a portrait emerged of Colorado's third-largest city in the midst of its own public trial. |
Aurora's 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 — new legislation and restrictions from the city and the state, and in both the Police and Fire Departments — 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 in 2020. |
The appetite for major changes to policing was loudest in Aurora and across the country immediately after George Floyd's death and the waves of protests that followed, only to fade as the political winds shifted. (Even the bipartisan federal police-accountability legislation 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 — or even a consent decree meant to force change — can ever cover enough distance. |
"The community wanted justice," says Ryan Ross, the facilitator of Aurora's now-disbanded Community Police Task Force, who is Black. "But 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." He continues: "And the ability to feel like the notion of 'to protect and serve' actually meant that everybody was going to be protected and served. And I don't think the community felt that way — or feels that way." |
Read the rest of the story here. |
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