Officer fired over McClain chokehold photos
AURORA, Colo. — One of the three 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 last August for “being suspicious,” and 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.
Two months later, Rosenblatt received the photos from three fellow officers who smiled as they mimicked a chokehold near where McClain was stopped, which had become a public memorial.
A visibly shaken Interim Police Chief Vanessa Wilson
assailed the four 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 of the officers who appeared in the photos for conduct unbecoming of an officer. The officer who reenacted the chokehold in the photos resigned this week.
McClain’s death got new attention following protests over police brutality and racial injustice.
Democratic 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 officers, including the one who put McClain in a chokehold, are still on the force.