Police officer who placed Elijah McClain in a deadly chokehold is fired along with two of three officers seen laughing in photos as they re-enacted his death at the site…
Written by Sunlight Radio America on July 4, 2020
One of the three Colorado policemen involved in the killing of Elijah McClain in August was fired on Friday, after receiving photos of officers fooling around and re-enacting McClain’s killing, which were shown to McClain’s family.
Jason Rosenblatt was fired on Friday for receiving the photo, to which he responded: ‘Ha ha ha”.
The day before another officer, Jaron Jones resigned from Aurora police for staging the disturbing images. His two co-workers, Erica Marrero and Kyle Dittrich, were fired on Friday for appearing in the photo.
The image shows Jones pretending to choke another officer, while Marrero and Dittrich look on and laugh.
The police union reacted with anger to Rosenblatt’s firing, saying he was only terminated for receiving the photos, which he had no part in making, and saying there had not been sufficient investigation.
McClain, 23, a massage therapist who loved animals and who taught himself to play the guitar and the violin, serenading animals to soothe them, died after police held him in a choke hold on August 24.
An asthmatic, was walking home from a convenience store in Aurora at 10:30pm when someone called 911, saying he ‘looked sketchy’ and was wearing a ski mask and waving his arms.
The police arrived and, after struggling to handcuff McClain, officers brought him to the ground and used a carotid hold, which restricts blood to the brain to render someone unconscious.
When medical responders arrived, after about 15 minutes, paramedics injected him with ketamine, a powerful sedative. He died on the way to hospital.
McClain’s family described the photos, taken some time last summer, as ‘a new low’.
‘Just when we thought the Aurora Police could not be any worse, they somehow find a new low,’ the McClain family said in a statement.
‘This is a department where officers tackled an innocent young black man for no reason, inflicted outrageous force – including two carotid chokeholds – for fifteen minutes as he pled for his life, joked when he vomited, and threatened to set a dog on him for not lying still enough as he was dying.
‘They tampered with their body cameras to hide the evidence. They exonerated the killers.
‘They deployed riot police and spewed pepper gas on peaceful protesters at a vigil of mourners playing the violin. And now this.’
Mike Coffman, mayor of Aurora, said the pictures were deeply troubling.
‘It really reopens wounds in our community,’ he said.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office, the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and the FBI also are looking into the photos to see if they should launch a civil rights investigation.
The three officers who attended the 911 call on August 24 – Nathan Woodyard, Rosenblatt and Randy Roedema – were placed on administrative leave, but they were all reinstated.
On Friday Aurora Police Association condemned the firing of Rosenblatt, without mentioning him by name.
The APA said he had been denied due process.
Source: Daily Mail
