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A Colorado judge sentenced former Aurora, Colo., police officer Randy Roedema to 14 months in jail on Friday for his role in the 2019 death of Elijah McClain, a 23-year-old Black man whose death helped spur calls for law enforcement accountability.
A jury convicted Roedema in October of criminally negligent homicide and third-degree assault, the only officer found guilty in a case that became a rallying cry following the murder of George Floyd. McClain’s death fueled state and local policy changes regarding how paramedics can administer ketamine and how police can use chokehold restraints.
“Randy Roedema stole my son’s life,” said Sheneen McClain, Elijah’s mother, before the sentencing. “All the belated apologies in the world cannot remove my son’s blood from Randy’s hands.”
Roedema acknowledged that time would not make up for the loss of McClain when he addressed the young man’s family at the sentencing hearing Friday.
“I cannot help but contemplate all the scenarios that could have taken place that evening that may have resulted in a different outcome,” Roedema said in front of the judge Friday. “I wish that a bystander would not have made that call. Unfortunately, the call was made, and we all responded to the incident in the way we were all trained to do. Needless to say, the situation had a horrible outcome.”
He added that he hoped steps would be taken to train first responders to change how they handle situations like McClain’s, but did not take personal responsibility for the killing. Roedema faced anywhere from probation to several years behind bars.
During the closing arguments of the October trial, prosecutors alleged that Roedema and other officers continually used excessive force, violated their training and ignored McClain’s worsening condition after they placed him in a carotid hold, which restricts blood flow to the brain. McClain was leaving a convenience store near his apartment on the night of Aug. 24, 2019, when he was detained by police after a 911 caller reported the young massage therapist as looking “sketchy.”
McClain was wearing a black ski mask at the time because of a medical condition that his family said made him cold. He was also carrying a shopping bag when police approached.
“He walked out of that store, and 19 minutes later, after his initial encounter with the police officers, he would be transported on a gurney to the hospital,” state prosecutor Duane Lyons said in October. “He said to the police officers several times, ‘I can’t breathe.’”
News of McClain’s death didn’t gain widespread national attention until Floyd’s murder in 2020, which brought new scrutiny to the killing of unarmed Black people across the country.
The sentencing comes weeks after a jury found two paramedics responsible for McClain’s death, and convicted them both of criminally negligent homicide. Prosecutors argued that the paramedics delivered a fatal dose of ketamine after McClain was arrested by police, ignoring their training about how to handle patients in distress and how to responsibly administer such sedatives.
Almost a year after McClain’s death, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) signed a police accountability law, banning the type of chokehold used on McClain. The state also limited the use of ketamine by paramedics during arrests, and the city of Aurora settled a civil rights lawsuit with McClain’s family for $15 million in 2021.
Source link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/01/05/elijah-mcclain-officer-sentenced/