Perspective: Shine more light on the death of Elijah McClain»

Aurora police were in the wrong from the first moment they contacted 23-year-old Elijah McClain until the man’s limp body was loaded onto a gurney and taken to the hospital where he died days later after doctors declared him brain dead and removed him from life support.

A report detailing the truth took 18 months to be released, and investigators found Aurora police officers and other first responders made horrible, inexcusable mistakes that led to McClain’s tragic death. Significant changes must be made in Aurora in response to the report, but police, fire and paramedic departments across the state must change too.

Make no mistake, other reports have been released, but those accounts of McClain’s final moments did not reflect the tragedy of what occurred and importantly didn’t call for changes to police training or operations that could prevent it from happening to someone else. Both Aurora Police and Fire departments investigated and concluded no policy was breached. The Aurora Police Department’s Force Review Board wrote that the force applied complied with departmental policy and training.

Yet, anyone who has watched the police body-camera footage from Aug. 24, 2019, knows instinctively that police were in the wrong. And now an independent review panel commissioned by the Aurora City Council has published their findings that police and first responders erred terribly. In a report released Monday, the panel found:

• Aurora police were not justified in initiating an initial “investigatory stop,” nor were they justified in their decision to pat down or frisk McClain.

• Officers did not have probable cause that a crime had been committed when they began to detain or arrest McClain. McClain’s “tensing up” to the fact that officers were holding his arms was not evidence that a crime had been committed nor was McClain’s desire to keep walking.

• In the audio recording of the encounter, one officer then says McClain tried to grab one of their guns, which then gave the officers the ability to apply the first carotid control hold if they reasonably feared for their lives or safety.

• Once McClain was taken to the ground, by the three officers, the further use of pain compliance techniques and another carotid control hold were not in compliance with police policy, and “the record therefore does not provide evidence of the officers’ perception of a threat that would justify Officer (Nathan) Woodyard’s carotid hold, which caused Mr. McClain to either partially or fully lose consciousness.

•Aurora first responders did not exercise appropriate care to McClain nor did they do their due diligence in deciding to administer ketamine to McClain, including deciding how much of the powerful sedative to give.

The report goes well beyond assessing what went wrong that night, into assessing how for a year and a half those responsible for investigating the events were able to protect the police and first responders involved from discipline or even public criticism. And it goes to a harsher reality that events like this have been occurring for years, but police departments have a well-oiled machine developed to process the flaws of their work and give it the sheen of legitimacy to the public.

The investigation found: “The interviews conducted by Major Crime investigators failed to ask basic, critical questions about the justification for the use of force necessary for any prosecutor to make a determination about whether the use of force was legally justified. Instead the questions frequently appeared designed to elicit specific exonerating ‘magic language’ found in court rulings.”

Other pending investigations and a civil lawsuit must continue to shed light on McClain’s death and on those who should be held responsible for the death of an innocent man at the hands of police and first responders who clearly violated several department policies, laws dictating police conduct and also common sense.

Members of The Denver Post’s editorial board are Megan Schrader, editor of the editorial pages; Lee Ann Colacioppo, editor; Justin Mock, CFO; Bill Reynolds, general manager/ senior vp circulation and production; Bob Kinney, vice president of information technology; and TJ Hutchinson, systems editor.