Colorado cops fired for mocking death
AURORA, Colo. — One of the white officers who stopped Elijah McClain was fired over photos showing colleagues reenacting the chokehold used on the Black man before he died last year, authorities said Friday. After getting a text message with the images, he replied, “haha.”
Police stopped McClain as he walked down the street in a ski mask last August for “being suspicious.” Aurora Officer Jason Rosenblatt tried to use a chokehold on the 23-year-old but couldn’t because of his position, so another officer did, a report from prosecutors said.
In October, Rosenblatt received the photos from fellow officers who smiled as they mimicked a chokehold near where McClain was stopped, which had become a public memorial. The others were fired or resigned this week.
McClain’s death has become a rallying cry amid a national reckoning over police brutality and racial injustice, with the state reopening the case for possible criminal charges and federal officials looking into a civil rights investigation. In several places, the chokehold has been banned and other police reforms have passed after nationwide protests.
A visibly shaken interim Police Chief Vanessa Wilson assailed the officers involved with the photos, saying their explanation is that they were “trying to cheer up a friend by sending that photo.”
“We are ashamed, we are sickened, and we are angry,” Wilson said. The officers may not have committed a crime, but the photographs are “a crime against humanity and decency,” she added.
After an internal investigation, Wilson fired Rosenblatt and two officers who appeared in the photos, Kyle Dittrich and Erica Marrero, for conduct unbecoming of an officer. Jaron Jones, the officer pictured reenacting the chokehold, resigned this week.
The Aurora Police Assn. called it “a rush to judgment.” The officers union said on Facebook that the investigation took nine days, while a standard internal affairs case takes months.
Facing pressure, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis last week ordered the state attorney general to reopen McClain’s case after prosecutors last year cleared the officers who confronted him. Two of them are still on the force as authorities look into possible criminal charges.