Police Shootings / Possible Abuse Threads [merged]

Optimus Prime said
On 24 August 2019, Elijah McClainwas walking home from a convenience store, listening to music and wearing a ski mask, in Aurora, Colorado when a 911 caller reported him as “looking sketchy” — a call that would lead to the death of the 23-year-old and a social uprising against how race plays a role in policing.

Police spotted McClain — who was not armed and had not committed any crime — and put him in a neck hold. Paramedics then arrived at the scene and injected the young man with ketamine.

He died three days later.

Now, just over four years after the incident, jury selection began on Friday for the trial of two Aurora police officers — Randy Roedema and Jason Rosenblatt — who had interacted with McClain.

The trials of a third officer and the two paramedics are also expected to happen later this year……..

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...mcclain-trial-paramedics-police-b2414499.html

BRIGHTON, Colo. (AP) — Jurors convicted a Denver-area police officer Thursday of criminally negligent homicide and third-degree assault and acquitted another in the 2019 death of Elijah McClain, a Black man whose name became a rallying cry in protests over racial injustice in policing.

Aurora police officer Randy Roedema was found guilty by the 12-person jury, and officer Jason Rosenblatt was found not guilty.

McClain died after being put in a neck hold by a third officer and pinned to the ground, then injected by paramedics with an overdose of ketamine. The third officer and two paramedics are awaiting trial.

The case initially did not receive widespread attention, but protests over the killing of George Floyd the following year sparked outrage over McClain’s death. His pleading words captured on body camera footage, “I’m an introvert and I’m different,” struck a chord.

A local prosecutor in 2019 decided against criminal charges because the coroner’s office could not determine exactly how the 23-year-old massage therapist died. But Colorado Gov. Jared Polis ordered state Attorney General Phil Weiser’s office to take another look at the case in 2020, and the officers and paramedics were indicted in 2021 by a grand jury.

The killings of McClain, Floyd and others triggered a wave of legislation that put limits on the use of neck holds in more than two dozen states. Colorado now tells paramedics not to give ketamine to people suspected of having a controversial condition known as excited delirium, which has symptoms including increased strength that has been associated with racial bias against Black men.

Roedema and Rosenblatt did not testify in their defense at trial. Their attorneys blamed McClain’s death on the paramedics for injecting him with ketamine, which doctors said is what ultimately killed him……

https://apnews.com/article/0b6005e56557ae251b5479be29723349