A jury will now decide whether Aurora police Officer Matthew Neely murdered Rajon Belt-Stubblefield or whether the shooting was a justified homicide.
We do not envy this jury. But the event — at least the fifth questionable police-involved death in seven years — calls for the police department to reckon with its officer training.
What happened was tragic, and both men made dangerous mistakes that proved deadly. Rajon Belt-Stubblefield was not the innocent victim that his family’s lawyers are trying to portray him as. show him hit the police officer and threaten to attack him – “you ready for this” – repeatedly while urging his nearby son to pick up the gun he had dropped in the grass.
But Neely also hits Belt-Stubblefield once with his fist as the man turns away and at one time appears to attempt to holster his gun. It is hard not to question whether the second and third shots Neely fires are necessary to eliminate the threat Belt-Stubblefield posed.
The question of whether it was a legally justified killing will hang on the balance of far more evidence than we have available to us, including forensic bullet evidence, toxicology reports, testimony from witnesses and possibly even testimony from the shooter himself.
The verdict will hinge on how the men and women on the jury perceive the split-second decision to fire three shots — was it reasonable given how quickly events unfolded and what the officer did and did not know? The legal threshold is whether Neely had a reasonable fear for his safety or the safety of others, and whether he used only the amount of force necessary to eliminate that threat.
While a jury will now decide these questions, the takeaway from this encounter for the Aurora Police Department must be that officers still need more and better training. We would hope Police Chief Todd Chamberlain watched the videos that have been released of the shooting from multiple angles with one question in mind: how do we prevent this from happening again?
Because a son watched his father get shot to death, and now one of Chamberlain’s officers’ freedom rests in the hands of how a jury will consider the evidence at hand.
Chamberlain, who declined an interview given the pending criminal charges, has a compelling interest in protecting his officers from this fate and in protecting the public from officers too quick to rely on deadly force in their day-to-day encounters.
Already, the Aurora Police Department has adopted several types of de-escalation training as part of its officer training academy and voluntary training for existing officers. But no other police department in the state has suffered from as many questionable officer-involved deaths as Aurora in recent years. We’ve written several versions of this editorial before, pleading with the department to change its culture, prioritize de-escalation techniques when officers arrive in volatile situations and rebuild community trust.
Some of our advice has been heeded. Colorado’s lawmakers have responded with laws of their own, and yet still an officer has killed someone in a case that is questionable enough that a grand jury indicted Neely on charges of second-degree murder.
Elijah McClain should still be alive. Richard Gary Black should be alive. Kilyn Lewis should be alive, and Jor’Dell Richardson should be alive. Our editorials after some of these events often sided with police — they made tragic errors but have an impossible job. The officers committed no crimes, although we made it clear training and oversight were needed.
But in all four of those cases, officers made fatal mistakes. While the officers’ actions may have been deemed justifiable, that is a self-defense legal bar that is relatively easy even for regular civilians who shoot people during minor altercations. The officers in many of those cases violated internal policies and made horrific mistakes. Alternative outcomes in all four cases were possible.
McClain was truly innocent, and so was Gary Black. Neither had any intent to harm police officers, nor had they committed a crime. All that was needed to resolve the incidents without tragedy was patience and care. Police officers failed.
Richardson had committed a crime, but his pellet gun (which wasn’t even in his hand) didn’t pose an actual threat of death to the officers who shot and killed him while wrestling him to the ground. Patience again would have saved Richardson’s life without putting the officers in actual danger.
Lewis was wanted in a Denver shooting and was suspected of attempted murder, but he was unarmed and appears in the videos to attempt to comply with police orders just before he is shot and killed.
Officers over-reacted in all four cases and erred on the side of deadly force. In all four cases, the threat was perceived and not real. Something is broken.
Ironically, Neely faced an actual threat, but in the light of these past cases, we can’t help but wonder if a different police officer with different training from a different department could have handled things without using deadly force.
Belt-Stubblefield was out of control, attempting to attack Neely, who held him at gunpoint from the very beginning.
“Get that (expletive) ,” Stubblefield repeatedly tells his nearby son, instructing him to get the gun that he had thrown on the grass.
“I’ll shoot you,” Neely warns.
Belt-Stubblefield’s son gives his father and Neely sage advice.
“Dad, chill. No.”
“Officer, Chill”
“Dad, relax.”
Belt-Stubblefield’s son was engaging in de-escalation techniques whether he knew it or not.
But Stubblefield keeps coming at Neely. Then he turns to point his son to the gun again. Neely punches Stubblefield in the side of the head.
“Aw yeah,” Stubblefield says, coming at Neely again. “You ready for this?”
“Get on the ground.”
“You ready for this?”
Then, with three quick shots, Neely shoots and kills Stubblefield, whose son runs away screaming. Neely calls for help but does not render aid personally or go to secure the gun.
Neely faced a real threat, not just a perceived one. But he also did nothing to de-escalate the situation, and once struck the suspect in a way that provoked him further.
The Aurora Police Department must respond with training, culture changes and a very public reckoning to these cases. Officers on the force need to hear their leaders talking about what went wrong in these cases, explaining mistakes that were made and learning from these deaths. And the department must recognize that one incident is a fluke, two incidents could mean the force is unlucky, but these five events stacked together in seven years indicate something is still wrong.
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