Aurora Police Department Facing Lawsuit For Elijah McClain’s Death And An Investigation For Mistreatment Of Innocent Black Girls

The Aurora police department, located in suburban Denver, is facing a lawsuit in connection to Elijah McClain’s death. McClain died at the hands of Aurora police officers. There are several investigations into Aurora police and their policies, which include the mistreatment of 4 young Black girls.

Elijah McClain was a 23-year-old Black message therapist and Vilonist. He played his violin for cats at shelters to ease their loneliness.

On Aug. 24, 2019, McClain was stop by police after getting a 911 call reporting him as “sketchy.” McClain was wearing a ski mask and headphones at the time. His family said he wore the mask because he had a blood condition that caused him to get extremely cold.

Police body-camera footage shows an officer getting out of his car, approaching McClain and saying, “Stop right there. Stop. Stop. … I have a right to stop you because you’re being suspicious.”

In the video, the officer turns McClain around, who looks startled, and repeats, “Stop tensing up.” As McClain tries to escape his grip, the officer says, “Relax, or I’m going to have to change this situation.”

Other officers join to restrain McClain, and he begs them to let go, saying, “You guys started to arrest me, and I was stopping my music to listen.”

Police put him in a chokehold, and paramedics gave him 500 milligrams of ketamine to calm him down, which the lawsuit argues was too much for someone weighing about 140 pounds (65 kilograms). McClain suffered cardiac arrest and was later taken off life support.

The McClain family attempted to sue the department then but a prosecutor said last year that there wasn’t enough evidence to charge the officers.

Now they’re suing for mistreatment based on the excessive insensitive givens to McClain.

The lawsuit says two officers reported that all three of them put their weight on McClain after a chokehold. One officer estimated the collective weight to be over 700 pounds (320 kilograms).

The police claim McClain was resisting arrest, but the family says he’d never even “swat a fly.”

Wilson, who was interim chief, called McClain’s death “tragic.” After his death she told officer that they will no longer respond to contact a person reported as suspicious if they weren’t actively committing the crime. She quickly fired the three officers involved in the McClain stop.

A week before the lawsuit the same police department was seen putting four black girls, raging 6-17 years-old, on the ground and handcuffing two of them while investigating a suspected stolen car. Which was later discovered never being reported stolen.

Wilson was “angry and disgusted” by the girls’ treatment. She requested an internal investigation on the incident of the four girls. A prosecutor is also reviewing the officers’ actions.

Wilson says that she’s committed to rebuilding trust and wants police to be couscous about when they’re acting on biases.

McClain’s parents is seeking both accountability for the loss of a “beautiful soul” and to send a message that “racism and brutality have no place in American law enforcement.”