The cops and the district attorneys want people to see what we are going through — the conditions of our arrests, our experiences in jail, and our legal battle — and to think that this is what you risk when you stand up against them. – Lillian House, Aurora Activist and Defendant
by Alan Macleod
Part 2 - An innocent man
On the evening of August 24, 2019, Elijah McClain was on his way home from a convenience store when he was accosted by three officers — Nathan Woodyard, Jason Rosenblatt, and Randy Roedema — who said they were on the lookout for a suspicious person.
McClain was a 5’6”, 140-pound, anemic vegetarian. Yet officers claimed he fought all three of them with “crazy strength,” enough to warrant placing him in a now-banned carotid chokehold, cutting off blood supply to his brain, and injecting him with ketamine, a drug often used to tranquilize horses.
Bodycam footage of the incident tells a different story, however, showing McClain gasping for air, repeatedly saying “I can’t breathe” while the officers ignore his pleas and threaten to unleash their dogs on him if he moves a muscle. Three days after arriving in hospital, McClain was pronounced brain dead.
“The fact that Elijah McClain was someone who played violin to cats at a shelter and was an innocent person who wouldn’t hurt a fly but the police still killed him and are still trying to make it seem as if he were a criminal. It tells us…what we already know, it is a criminalization of blackness in and of itself,” said activist-defendant Northam.
Source, links:
Comments
Post a Comment