The Murder Of Ahmaud Arbery

[MrsSpringsteen]

During his lunch breaks, Elijah McClain sometimes played the violin for animals at the local shelter. He thought they, too, deserved some music in their lives. He was not like other 23-year-olds. He craved space to be himself, and when officers of the Aurora, Colo., police department approached him on the evening of Aug. 24, 2019, that is what Elijah McClain tried to tell them.

“I am an introvert,” he explained to the officers who responded to a 911 call about a black male walking down the street in a ski mask on a night when the temperature was about 66 degrees Fahrenheit. “Please respect my boundaries.”

Fifteen minutes later, McClain was on the cusp of death, having been choked by one of the original responding officers and then injected with the powerful anesthetic drug ketamine by a medic who arrived on the scene later.

“I don’t even kill flies,” McClain said at one point as the officers continued to restrain him. It was a cry for help, an explanation of who he was. It went unheeded, not only by the three officers who first responded to the 911 call but by the many others who arrived later, and who chatted casually as McClain struggled for his final breaths.

“Aurora, Colo., is corrupt,” says Mari Newman, a Denver attorney who is representing McClain’s family. “Aurora, Colo., is trying to cover up its wrongdoing.”

 

[dazzledbylight]

Each incident of murder or serious (or lesser) injury that police commit against Black people must have full justice truely applied.
With that being said...

Between George Floyd and Caulvin's casually depraved murderous racism.... as Mr Floyd pleads for his life...

and now having heard about this incident 3 days ago - the criminal, negligent cruelty of these cops against this sweet soul...

these tear at my spirit.

If you read the whole transcript of Mr McClain's words/pleas to the cops...
These made me cry before I got mad.

 

[MrsSpringsteen]

In August 2019, a 23-year-old unarmed black man died after an encounter with police officers in
On Aug. 24, 2019, a 23-year-old Black man named Elijah McClain was walking home from the store when he was stopped by police officers in Denver, Colorado, after they received a report of a “suspicious person” wearing a ski mask. The encounter escalated, McClain was put in a chokehold, and a few days later he was dead.

The Denver Post reported:

Elijah McClain, 23, was walking home from a store around 10:30 p.m. on a Saturday evening when authorities contacted him near Billings Street and Colfax Avenue in Denver. Someone had called 911 to report a “suspicious person” who was wearing a ski mask and waving his arms.

McClain routinely wore masks when he was outside because he had anemia — a blood condition — and became cold easily, according to his family.


After a struggle, McClain was handcuffed and officers requested medical assistance. Aurora Fire Rescue later injected him with ketamine in an attempt to sedate him, police said. He suffered cardiac arrest during the ambulance ride to a nearby hospital.


The following Friday McClain was declared “brain dead” and was expected to be taken off life support that afternoon, family members said. He died later that day.

McClain’s family called for the police officers involved in his death to be prosecuted, but it was announced in November that they would not face criminal charges. McClain’s case did not receive the same national attention as other similar incidents, but it was thrust back into the spotlight after George Floyd’s death in May 2020, when protests against racial injustice and police violence spread across the United States.

In June 2020, an image of text supposedly relaying McClain’s “last words” started going viral on social media:




This message reads:

I can’t breathe. I have my ID right here. My name is Elijah McClain. That’s my house. I was just going home. I’m an introvert. I’m just different. That’s all. I’m so sorry. I have no gun. I don’t do that stuff. I don’t do any fighting. Why are you attacking me? I don’t even kill flies! I don’t eat meat! But I don’t judge people, I don’t judge people who do eat meat. Forgive me. All I was trying to do was become better. I will do it. I will do anything. Sacrifice my identity, I’ll do it. You all are phenomenal. You are beautiful and I love you. Try to forgive me. I’m a mood Gemini. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Ow, that really hurt. You are all very strong. Teamwork makes the dream work. Oh, I’m sorry I wasn’t trying to do that. I just can’t breathe correctly.

This is a largely accurate transcript of what McClain said in a video recording of his encounter with police in August 2019. These remarks can be heard on the body cam footage of one of the police officers involved in the incident. An official copy of this video from the Aurora Police Department can be seen below (the relevant portion of the video starts at around the 12:30 mark).


The text in the viral transcript has been slightly edited to remove repeated phrases and inaudible moments (McClain says “I’m just different” multiple times), but none of the edits are misleading. The text describing actions in the viral post — at one point noting that McClain was crying, at another noting that he vomited — are also accurate.

This viral transcript does omit at least one phrase uttered by McClain during this encounter. A few moments after the final words of this viral transcript, McClain says “I can’t fix myself” before vomiting again.

NPR reported:

Someone picks up a body camera and McClain can be seen lying on his side with both hands restrained behind his back, and one officer jamming his knee on the man’s torso.

When McClain attempts to roll over to vomit, they shout at him to “stop fighting us.”

“If you keep messing around, I’m going to bring my dog out here and he’s going to bite you,” says an officer standing over McClain.

McClain proceeds to vomit.

“I can’t fix myself,” he says weakly.

McClain’s body goes limp and he passes out.

Eventually one officer asks, “Are you OK?”

But he’s not asking McClain. He’s speaking to the officer on top of him.

“Yeah, I’m good,” the officer says shifting his weight.

When paramedics arrived, McClain was injected with ketamine (described by Aurora Police as “a standard medication routinely utilized to reduce agitation”) and then loaded into an ambulance. On the way to the hospital, McClain suffered cardiac arrest. On August 30, McClain was pronounced brain dead, removed from life support, and died.

On June 25, 2020, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signed an executive order directing the state’s attorney general to reopen the investigation into McClain’s death.

 

[anitram]

What a horrible story. No wonder there are people who want to burn down the system.

 

[MrsSpringsteen]

Police officers are very poorly trained or not trained at all regarding how to deal with anyone who has special needs. Anyone who has certain medical issues that affect behavior. Not to mention mental health issues.

Add racism and brutality on top of that, and it's just beyond any human comprehension. The way they treated him just crushes any normal human heart. What a tragedy.

 

[LuckyNumber7]

I disagree about the notion that training is important. A lot of police officers are well trained.

Well trained on when and how they can take violent or lethal action.

Well trained on how to demand respect and install authority through superiority and domination.

The issue with police is the kind of person it attracts. Not the level of training they receive.

Take away their guns. See how many violent officers sign up for that job. It’s toxic masculinity and chivalristic authority to hate and to dominate. It’s not surprising you have “bad apples.”

 

[MrsSpringsteen]

I agree about the kind of person it attracts. But training the right kind of people for unique situations is still important.

 

[BEAL]

There’s definitely a culture issue within the police. It doesn’t help to turn them into “warriors” and provide military weapons and vehicles.

But compared to police forces around the world, our training is basically a workshop.

You have better training and you’ll weed out the meatheads and assholes. Not all, but most wont have the mental capacity to go through the work that should be required.

And who knows, maybe those that go in with the macho authority issues come out a better person.

 

[anitram]

The problem with the police culture is that it's almost uniformly self-protectionist. They will protect their own regardless of facts or morality. There is really no other comparable profession in my view that is this bad.

 

[LuckyNumber7]

The problem with the police culture is that it's almost uniformly self-protectionist. They will protect their own regardless of facts or morality. There is really no other comparable profession in my view that is this bad.

This type of mentality is developed out of warfare - the most effective unit has unwavering loyalty to one another regardless of differences, like brothers and sisters (in arms).

We witness the same form of malpractice in war settings - soldiers failing to discriminate the true enemy from what they’re fearful can be the enemy. And even when you get the most extreme, like Eddie Gallagher, brotherhood mentality is still present. So is true with police.

 

[Irvine511]

The problem with the police culture is that it's almost uniformly self-protectionist. They will protect their own regardless of facts or morality. There is really no other comparable profession in my view that is this bad.

maybe the priesthood?

yes, to me, this is much more the issue, and the power of the police unions and the FOP, much more so than whatever perceived individual failings or the attraction of thugs into the force. sure, there are some, but they need to be booted much more easily than is presently possible.

the other real conversation to have is the disarming of the population. there's a reason police carry guns and are frequently on a knife's edge.

 

[BEAL]

https://fox5sandiego.com/news/local-news/watch-live-activists-discuss-downtown-police-shooting/

We had a police shooting downtown over the weekend. This is about 8 blocks or so from where i live.

After the shooting, there were immediate protests. My streets were blocked / shutdown again, and a memorial was set up for the victim.

SDPD released the information as quickly as possible, starting with the written explanation and photos of crime scene.

On Sunday we got the body cam footage. Monday we got the above link with street cameras.

This goes to Irvine’s point about a armed society.

The man runs from the cops.
Reaches into his pants and grabs a gun.

I am not sure what else could have been done. Send in social workers to deal with an armed suspect ? Don’t investigate anyone ever???

The man is still in the ICU.

 

[DaveC]

This goes to Irvine’s point about a armed society.

The man runs from the cops.
Reaches into his pants and grabs a gun.

I am not sure what else could have been done. Send in social workers to deal with an armed suspect ? Don’t investigate anyone ever???

i think the counter-argument to that is that people are probably much less likely to try to run away and then pull out a gun on an unarmed (or non-lethally armed) social worker who is there specifically to try to help them than they would be around an armed police officer who has the authority to kill them without warning.

 

[Irvine511]

i think the counter-argument to that is that people are probably much less likely to pull out a gun on an unarmed (or non-lethally armed) social worker who is there specifically to try to help them than they would be around an armed police officer who has the authority to kill them without warning.

i wish this were true. good luck finding unarmed social workers willing to enter situations with armed suspects.

 

[DaveC]

unarmed social workers already regularly deal with people in distress while having no idea whether or not that person is carrying a weapon, and they still perform their jobs admirably.

obviously you would send cops to arrest a guy suspected of armed robbery like what happened in the situation BEAL posted, though. based on the video that one appears justified.

 

[BEAL]

I think any mental health situation that the police should be last line of defense. Drugs, alcohol fit into mental health.

You creep into violent crimes and i don’t know how you send anyone but the cops.

 

[Irvine511]

I think any mental health situation that the police should be last line of defense. Drugs, alcohol fit into mental health.

You creep into violent crimes and i don’t know how you send anyone but the cops.

Yes.

It did not seem like the situation you described was a mental health situation.

 

[DaveC]

yeah i'm thinking about a situation like rayshard brooks, where the call was a guy asleep in his car in a drive-thru. brooks was cooperating fully with the cops for over 40 minutes and didn't even appear to think about resisting or fleeing until the cops decided to put handcuffs on him. i can't help but think the outcome of that situation would have been different if, say, a mental health worker had gone to the scene with the intent to help the man instead of armed police.

that's not to say that we shouldn't punish drunk driving at all but i feel like you can tow the guy's car and drive him home safely and issue him a summons while also providing some advice and resources for rehab and detox options. i don't want to act like i'm an expert on any of this stuff but i do believe fervently (and so does my 30-year RCMP veteran stepmother, for the record) that cops carry way too many guns, even here in canada. you can't disarm the police entirely but the vast majority of police work doesn't require a weapon at all, let alone a gun.

 

[Jerry Dunk]

There have been tons of investments into police training. Not everywhere, but plenty of places have seen a lot of resources put into increased training. It doesn't help. I don't see any solution to this that doesn't involved drastically defunding them and disarming them.

 

[Jerry Dunk]

yeah i'm thinking about a situation like rayshard brooks, where the call was a guy asleep in his car in a drive-thru. brooks was cooperating fully with the cops for over 40 minutes and didn't even appear to think about resisting or fleeing until the cops decided to put handcuffs on him. i can't help but think the outcome of that situation would have been different if, say, a mental health worker had gone to the scene with the intent to help the man instead of armed police.

that's not to say that we shouldn't punish drunk driving at all but i feel like you can tow the guy's car and drive him home safely and issue him a summons while also providing some advice and resources for rehab and detox options. i don't want to act like i'm an expert on any of this stuff but i do believe fervently (and so does my 30-year RCMP veteran stepmother, for the record) that cops carry way too many guns, even here in canada. you can't disarm the police entirely but the vast majority of police work doesn't require a weapon at all, let alone a gun.

He asked them if he could leave the car in the parking lot and walk to his sister's house nearby before they ever tried to put handcuffs on him.

 

[Irvine511]

yeah i'm thinking about a situation like rayshard brooks, where the call was a guy asleep in his car in a drive-thru. brooks was cooperating fully with the cops for over 40 minutes and didn't even appear to think about resisting or fleeing until the cops decided to put handcuffs on him. i can't help but think the outcome of that situation would have been different if, say, a mental health worker had gone to the scene with the intent to help the man instead of armed police.

that's not to say that we shouldn't punish drunk driving at all but i feel like you can tow the guy's car and drive him home safely and issue him a summons while also providing some advice and resources for rehab and detox options. i don't want to act like i'm an expert on any of this stuff but i do believe fervently (and so does my 30-year RCMP veteran stepmother, for the record) that cops carry way too many guns, even here in canada. you can't disarm the police entirely but the vast majority of police work doesn't require a weapon at all, let alone a gun.

Yes. Agreed.

 

[BEAL]

There have been tons of investments into police training. Not everywhere, but plenty of places have seen a lot of resources put into increased training. It doesn't help. I don't see any solution to this that doesn't involved drastically defunding them and disarming them.

Will you also disarm American citizens first ?

There is no way you can have a unarmed police force in this country with 400 million guns in circulation.

Even if sweeping gun reform were to pass i still don’t see how you disarm the police.

I think the more sensible solution is to not send armed police into EVERY situation.

And other countries have police forces and they are just fine.

The issue is what’s been mentioned above. It’s a culture issue that refuses to change. Maybe training doesn’t resolve it initially but it makes sense to break up the network that enables this behavior

 

[Hewson]

He asked them if he could leave the car in the parking lot and walk to his sister's house nearby before they ever tried to put handcuffs on him.

But they can't do that when he was impaired. Could easily have walked back from sister's house 15 minutes later, jumped in the car and killed someone.
Taking him in was the right move, shooting him obviously was not.

 

[Jerry Dunk]

Will you also disarm American citizens first ?

There is no way you can have a unarmed police force in this country with 400 million guns in circulation.

Even if sweeping gun reform were to pass i still don’t see how you disarm the police.

I think the more sensible solution is to not send armed police into EVERY situation.

And other countries have police forces and they are just fine.

The issue is what’s been mentioned above. It’s a culture issue that refuses to change. Maybe training doesn’t resolve it initially but it makes sense to break up the network that enables this behavior

https://qz.com/602682/the-case-for-disarming-americas-police-force/

I'm not going to pretend it's easy. America's gun culture has the whole situation pretty fucked. But I don't think any of this gets off the ground unless you start disarming the police first.

 

[BEAL]

I’m curious how a unarmed force would handle a active shooter ? Say something like the Pulse Nightclub shooting.

Or is there still a swat team for situations like this ?

 

[LuckyNumber7]

I’m curious how a unarmed force would handle a active shooter ? Say something like the Pulse Nightclub shooting.

Or is there still a swat team for situations like this ?

Oh you mean the pulse nightclub shooting where the police waited outside for like five hours as everyone inside bled out? Terrible example.

Unarmed police forces all across the world have armaments and the ability to arm a unit tactically with strategic response times built in. The concept is that the officer would need authority to arm, such as a suspect reported to be armed. Doesn’t have to be SWAT. It just means they leave the weapons secured inside the trunk of select cruisers.

 

[BEAL]

I feel like we’re trying to force a solution to a reality that doesn’t exist.

I get that other countries will authorize firearms when they have problems escalate and I’m jealous that it seems to be few and far between (at least what makes the world news)

Considering the gun violence and crime here in the States, we’d be authorizing weapons all day every day where it’d probably make sense to just give them a gun again.

On CNN two cops were shot, one killed for a traffic stop. Disarming the police doesn’t stop the gun violence here.

I don’t even know if there can be a solution. Our politicians are scared to pass laws to restrict because they’ll get voted out and replaced with people who’ll roll everything back. And the cycle of death continues.

We’re seeing the same thing play out over a virus. How dare you try and regulate my health!
America = kill or be killed if i wanna

 

[LuckyNumber7]

Even “traffic stops” are part of why cops are targets. They’re targets and people learn to hate cops over power trips like “do you know why I pulled you over?”

You can call it wishful thinking, but I’d say it’s simple fact that were the cops unarmed, they would not be targets.

I literally saw this all the time. Shit like a (brown) kid setting off fireworks in the city center in Leicester to intentionally trigger the police, and the cops beginning to chase him before giving up maybe 20 yards down the line because it wasn’t worth it. In this country, that’s how you get tased which leads to being shot when you’re not a fan of being tased. That’s how you get 3 officers bearing down full weight on you and a double dosage of ketamine. It’s simply because they can, they will. But they can’t do these things as willingfully if they’re not armed. Nor would they want to unless they had to.

The point of strategic armament is that officers are liable by protocol for usage of force. Would more situations call for armament? Sure. Does “black guy acting suspicious” call for armament? No. Is an unarmed officer likely to arrest or subdue an unarmed person over a non-threatening crime? No. And as stated before, unarmed civil servants engage mentally unwell people all. The. Time.

And I’m not over your infuriating Pulse comment. You simply underline the most fucking tragic part of it all. The guns aren’t there to protect you. They’re there to protect the police officers. People died because the police were not willing to act immediately, and they were hailed as heroes. People ignored the valid lawsuits.

 

[BEAL]

I’m sorry you’re angry with what i said.

When we have a society that is in love with guns, and a protection force that has to match OR go above and beyond what the risk calls for we will have situations like this.

I don’t know how to resolve a active shooter. My assumption is police train for these situations and make the best judgement with each case.

No one is going to run into a building with an active shooter unarmed. Clearly people won’t do it when they have guns.

 

[LuckyNumber7]

I’m sorry you’re angry with what i said.

When we have a society that is in love with guns, and a protection force that has to match OR go above and beyond what the risk calls for we will have situations like this.

I don’t know how to resolve a active shooter. My assumption is police train for these situations and make the best judgement with each case.

No one is going to run into a building with an active shooter unarmed. Clearly people won’t do it when they have guns.

Let me be clear here... when you bring up an “active shooter” in regards to “disarm the police” you do not seem to understand the concept of strategic response.

All I can do is continue to implore you to do research on other nations that have this issue.

There is a minimum amount of dead people that an active killer can kill regardless of police armament, and that number exists to some value n in unarmed countries, and some number m in armed countries (where m > n). Pulse is a perfect example where m is large, and initial police have absolutely no power over the situation. The armed police fled the perimeter and waited for SWAT to arrive. SWAT waited for hours before breaching the club, out of their own fear.

You seem to think strategic response isn’t a possibility? I don’t know what you’re getting at. But strategic response is proven capable of providing an armed unit to a situation as fast as an unarmed unit, because the guns are still in the freaking cars they drive. They just don’t have the authority to equip them whenever they want.