I used to live about a 15 minutes drive from the place Elijah McClain was murdered by cops. I’ve been to the intersection where it happened.
On the one year anniversary of his death, I attended a protest of Aurora PD. The protest was in honor of and at the request of Elijah McClain’s mother. It was early pandemic, but I’d managed to score two N95s for my friend and I. The original plan was to march from the intersection where he was was killed to the police department the cops were from. Unfortunately the organizer’s didn’t realize that there’s no walk-able path and it was quite far (they’d have taken I-225, a massive and dangerous highway), so they ended up marching to a closer police station instead. By chance, it was the cops’ day off and only a couple of guys were holding down the fort.
The cops still threatened to use sonic weapons on the protesting crowd, despite the crowd being very peaceful. The crowd distributed ear plugs.
We all recited Elijah McClain’s last words several time. Honestly, I think we were re-traumatizing ourselves more than anything. I didn’t see much press about the event. But after that event, they did finally at least press charged on the responsible cops. Only now I’m learning 2 of them got off.
