Standing on a street corner in Denver’s historically Black Five Points neighborhood, a group of activists, elected officials and mothers of those slain by police called on the attorney general to commit to retrying the cases and publicly acknowledge the previous convictions.

“What this system told us yesterday was liberty and justice for all — except Elijah McClain and anyone that looks like him,” said MiDian Shofner, CEO of the .

The appeals court on Thursday reversed homicide convictions for Peter Cichuniec and Jeremy Cooper, the former paramedics, ruling that the district court failed to properly instruct the jury on the standard of care applicable to the criminally negligent homicide charge. The three-judge panel upheld Cichuniec’s second-degree assault by drugging conviction.

Attorney General Phil Weiser, in a statement Thursday, said his office would appeal the decision.

McClain, a 23-year-old Black man, died after Aurora police put him in a neck hold and Cooper injected him with an overdose of ketamine, a sedative. He was coming from a convenience store on Aug. 24, 2019, after buying a few cans of iced tea when a 911 caller reported a “sketchy” Black man walking down the street in a ski mask, waving his arms. McClain was unarmed and not suspected of committing any crimes.

His death sparked massive racial justice protests in Colorado in 2020 and spurred state lawmakers to pass a series of criminal justice reform bills. After prosecutors initially declined to file charges against the officers and paramedics, Gov. Jared Polis .

The court’s decision Thursday reaffirmed what Black leaders have long known about America’s justice system, they said during Friday’s news conference. , a 14-year-old Black boy who was lynched in 1955 after offending a white woman in a grocery store, “warned us about what happened to Elijah McClain,” Shofner said. So did , a 15-year-old shot in 1991 in Los Angeles by a convenience store owner.

“Yet we are supposed to believe that we are in a post-racist society,” Shofner said. She recalled the thousands of people who took to the streets in 2020, rallying for racial justice. The problem, Shofner said, “is that we confuse progress for permanence.”

“So I have to ask myself,” she said. “Where did all the good allies go?”

Veronica Seabron knows all too well what McClain’s mother is going through. Her son Jalin, in February 2025, was killed after being shot nine times in the back by a Douglas County deputy. The district attorney declined to file charges against the deputy.

The court’s ruling Thursday “punched me in the stomach,” Seabron said.

“Behind every reopened case is a mother,” she said. “This isn’t just a case number or a headline.”

Seabron wore black, red and white to the news conference — black to remember the lives lost; red to symbolize the bloodshed; and white for the purity of the deceased’s souls.

Shofner said the community stands ready to launch protests once again. The systems, she said, have simply not done enough.

“Our demands are clear; our demands are reasonable,” Shofner said. “We will be watching.”

McClain, a 23-year-old Black man who was unarmed and not suspected of committing any crime, died after Aurora police put him in a neck hold and a paramedic injected him with an overdose of ketamine, a sedative.

Peter Cichuniec was supervising Jeremy Cooper, the paramedic who injected the drug, and both were convicted in 2023 of criminally negligent homicide in McClain’s death. Cichuniec was also convicted on one count of second-degree assault for unlawful administration of drugs.

Now, the Colorado Court of Appeals has ruled that the cases should be retried.

“We conclude that the district court erred by failing to properly instruct the jury on the standard of care applicable to the criminally negligent homicide charge and that the error wasn’t harmless,” wrote in the .

Jones also that reversed Cichuniec’s homicide conviction, but upheld his second-degree assault by drugging conviction.

The jury was told that “a person acts ‘with criminal negligence’ when, through a gross deviation from the standard of care that a reasonable person would exercise, he fails to perceive a substantial and unjustifiable risk that a result will occur or that a circumstance exists,” Jones wrote.

But, when jurors asked for a definition or description of the “standard of care,” the court did not provide one, Jones wrote. When the jury doesn’t understand an element of the charged offense, “the court must clarify the matter concretely and unambiguously,” he wrote.

“The relevant circumstances in this case were that a medical professional provided medical treatment to a person needing medical attention while under law enforcement����ap physical restraint,” Jones wrote. “The standard of care was therefore that which would apply in a civil case involving such a situation — one applicable to a reasonable paramedic in Aurora, Colorado, in 2019 treating a person in Mr. McClain’s condition.

“Indeed, it wouldn’t make any sense to apply an ordinary reasonable person standard in this context,” Jones continued.

Attorney General Phil Weiser said in a statement that bringing the cases to trial in 2023 was the right thing to do for justice and for McClain and the community.

“A jury convicted two paramedics for the death of Elijah McClain, an innocent Black man who did nothing wrong that tragic night seven years ago,” Weiser said. “The attorney general’s office is committed to defending these convictions through the appeals process. Justice demands it.”

Attorneys for Cichuniec and Cooper did not respond to a request for comment on the court’s ruling. McClain’s mother, Sheneen McClain, and her attorney also did not respond to a request for comment.

Denver-based advocacy group Epitome for Black Excellence and Partnership said in a Thursday statement that the court’s ruling was far more than a legal development.

“For Black communities across Colorado and throughout this nation, it is the reopening of a wound that has never fully healed. It is a reminder that even when evidence is seen, even when harm is acknowledged, even when the world bears witness to tragedy, accountability remains painfully fragile,” organizers said.

Elijah McClain walked into a convenience store on Aug. 24, 2019, and bought a few cans of iced tea. The store security cameras showed him wearing a black ski mask and headphones, paying for his tea and dancing with his arms raised in the parking lot.  Family members said that McClain often wore masks when outside because he got cold easily due to his anemia.

Soon after he left the store, a 911 caller reported a “sketchy” Black man walking fast down the street while wearing a black ski mask and waving his arms.

Aurora police officers confronted McClain shortly after 10 p.m. that night and tried to physically restrain him when he continued walking. One officer put McClain in a carotid control hold — applying pressure to the neck with the biceps and forearm — and McClain temporarily lost consciousness. When he regained consciousness, he told the officers he couldn’t breathe and vomited, prompting them to call for paramedics.

Based on the officers’ descriptions of McClain and his actions, Cooper and Cichuniec decided that McClain showed symptoms of “excited delirium” and agreed to inject him with ketamine. Critics say that the condition is unscientific and rooted in racism.

McClain went into cardiac arrest while in the ambulance and stopped breathing. Paramedics restored his pulse with CPR, but McClain was declared brain-dead at the hospital a few days later.

Cichuniec testified during his trial that he and Cooper overestimated McClain’s weight and gave McClain a too-high dose of ketamine. Cooper estimated McClain weighed 220 pounds, and Cichuniec estimated he weighed 187 pounds. McClain’s actual weight was only 143 pounds.

The 17th Judicial District Attorney’s Office initially declined to file charges against Cooper, Cichuniec or any of the police officers, but Gov. Jared Polis issued an executive order directing the Colorado attorney general to investigate and prosecute on the state’s behalf.

Cichuniec’s 5-year prison sentence was wiped away in September 2024 by Adams County District Court Judge Mark Warner, who converted the prison time into four years of probation. Warner had sentenced Cichuniec to the mandatory minimum required under Colorado law for an assault conviction, but reduced the sentence after Cichuniec argued that his case involved “unusual and exceptional” circumstances.

Cooper and former Aurora police officer Randy Roedema, who was also convicted of criminally negligent homicide in McClain’s death, were sentenced to 14 months of work-release. Two other Aurora police officers were indicted in McClain’s death, Jason Rosenblatt and Nathan Woodyard, but both were acquitted.

McClain’s death sparked statewide protests during the summer of 2020. Thousands joined the Colorado marches amid a national wave of protest movements and calls for police reform triggered by the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd.

The city of Aurora also agreed to pay $15 million to McClain’s parents to settle a lawsuit over his death and entered into a consent decree to reform the police and fire departments.

Independent monitor Jeff Schlanger, in a special 12-page report, requested that Aurora officials investigate the broader circumstances surrounding each fatal shooting, including considering each victim’s mental health history, prior warning signs, attempted interventions and prior interactions with the public safety system.

The review should examine systemic gaps and shortcomings in the incidents, and how both Aurora police and other professionals can work to fill those gaps, Schlanger told The Denver Post.

“It is a call for the city to really examine this entire system,” he said.

The special report was prompted by the April 9 shooting of Amare Garlington, Schlanger said. The 23-year-old man and held a butcher’s knife to his own throat before charging at officers and stabbing both Officer Mark Moore and a police dog at an Aurora apartment complex. Moore shot and killed Garlington.

“This was not, on its face, a conventional criminal enforcement encounter. It was a crisis response that became a violent confrontation,” the report reads. “That distinction is important because it directs attention to the broader question of whether the public system surrounding behavioral health intervention is sufficiently robust to reduce the likelihood that such crises culminate in sudden close-range violence.”

That shooting raised the urgency of issues already on the independent monitor’s radar and convinced they could not wait until the next regular report in the fall to address them, Schlanger said.

The report also outlines two other fatal Aurora police shootings that warrant further review; in both cases, the victims were unarmed.

shot and killed 17-year-old Blaze Balle-Mason on Sept. 18 after the boy called 911, claimed to be armed, threatened to start shooting inside a gas station and then .

Officer Brandon Mills killed 32-year-old Rashaud Johnson on May 12, 2025, as he trespassed in a parking lot near Denver International Airport. That officer shot Johnson as the man walked toward him with his hands at his side about 45 seconds after the end of a physical altercation in which he and the officer tussled on the ground.

Schlanger called for Aurora to launch a task force with representatives from the police and fire departments, the city and mental health service providers to identify gaps in the city’s behavioral health safety net and consider how to fix those problems. The review should also involve state and federal systems, he said.

“Breaking down the silos is important, and then understanding, as well as we possibly can, what can be done differently to achieve a better outcome in these situations,” he said.

Ryan Luby, a spokesman for the city, said in a statement Wednesday that Aurora officials agree with the monitor’s recommendations “and welcome deeper conversations about this topic with all community stakeholders.”

The report emphasizes efforts Aurora and the police department have already made to improve their processes and resources, but concludes that more work needs to be done.

The Aurora Police Department has been under a court-monitored consent decree since 2021, following the death of Elijah McClain. The department agreed to change its use-of-force, hiring and training policies as part of the decree, and submit to outside oversight.

Qusair Mohamedbhai, whose Denver law firm brought a lawsuit against Aurora police over Johnson’s killing, said Thursday that the monitor’s report carries little substance.

“Rashaud has been dead for over one year. Aurora continues to stand by its officer and its monitor only now says, ‘Convene a task force,'” he said. “‘Do not call the police in Aurora if your loved one is in acute mental health crisis’ should have been the recommendation of the monitor.”

Proponents of the resolution, which passed 6-4, called it a move that will put an end to what they described as editorializing on social media by the Aurora Police Department, including Chief Todd Chamberlain, that puts potentially innocent people in a bad light.

“If he posted the facts, I would absolutely vote no on this,” Councilwoman Amy Wiles said of the chief.

But other council members pushed back, saying the new rules would stifle the department from posting information about the arrest of potentially dangerous suspects living in Aurora neighborhoods.

“Getting information out to residents right away is transparency,” Councilwoman Francoise Bergan said.

Chamberlain expressed frustration with the council’s resolution in a statement he issued hours ahead of the evening meeting.

“The community deserves timely facts and direct communication from the professionals closest to these incidents and operational realities,” he wrote. “Restricting that communication risks creating confusion, speculation, and managed narratives rather than greater public understanding.”

The chief took a shot at protesters who have frequented Aurora City Council meetings over the past couple of years to demand police reform and seek justice for a Black man who was fatally shot by Aurora police nearly two years ago.

When information and perspectives “do not align with the views of certain groups, the answer is to silence those voices rather than allow open and honest public discussion,” Chamberlain wrote.

“And if I, as a public safety leader, cannot discuss or share concerns without reprisal from the local level, my department and I are unable to effectively be what Aurora needs — candid, forthright and open about how our work impacts the daily lives of those we serve,” he wrote.

The Colorado Association of Chiefs of Police also weighed in on the resolution Monday, saying it would “centralize and restrict law enforcement communications in ways that risk delay, confusion and reduced transparency — the very opposite of what communities deserve.”

But Auon’tai Anderson, a frequent attendee at Aurora City Council meetings and a critic of the city’s police department, said the department publicizing photos and names of suspects who haven’t been found guilty of a crime can gravely impact individuals’ futures.

“Jobs disappear, opportunities disappear, reputations disappear — but APD gets its press cycle,” he said.

Even City Attorney Pete Schulte told the council that the police should be able to post important information for the public safety — “we just don’t need the editorializing.”

Another resident at the meeting said the resolution is the “bare minimum” the city should do to place greater control over a police department that has been on a turbulent ride for the better part of a decade, with several fatal police shootings of unarmed Black men grabbing headlines.

Following the death of 23-year-old Elijah McClain, who in 2019 was stopped by police while walking home and injected by paramedics with a lethal dose of the sedative ketamine, the department entered into a consent decree with the Colorado Attorney General’s office.

The multiyear agreement calls for the police department to change its use-of-force, hiring and training policies. An outside monitor was assigned to send progress reports to the judge overseeing the decree to ensure the city is complying with it.

In the meantime, often boisterous crowds have regularly gathered at council meetings since Kilynn Lewis, an unarmed Black man, was shot and killed by an Aurora SWAT officer on May 23, 2024. The disruption in council chambers spawned a federal lawsuit from a protester alleging the city was limiting her ability to express herself.

The issue was resolved through a settlement between the parties. In March, the city agreed to provide up to one hour for the public to speak at the start of regularly scheduled meetings.

Monday’s resolution specifically states that the city’s communications department “must approve all social media posts and all media releases” before the police department releases them.

The department “shall not post booking photographs (‘mug shots’) and/or suspect names publicly until the subject of the arrest has pled guilty or been convicted of a crime,” unless the city manager OKs publication on a case-by-case basis.

“City Council understands that the police department wants to highlight their good work, which can be done without using names or booking photographs prior to case adjudication,” the resolution reads.

The new rules also forbid members of the police force from posting on official city social media sites about any “pending or enacted city, state or federal legislation” without city approval. They can post about such issues on their personal social media accounts, the new measure says.

Aurora’s city council flipped from a conservative majority to a progressive majority in the November election. Several of the winning candidates campaigned on continuing the city’s efforts at criminal justice reform.

Belt-Stubblefield was 37 when he was shot and killed by an officer during an Aug. 30 traffic stop, and his then 18-year-old son witnessed the shooting. A notice of claim — a legal step necessary before suing the city — was filed on behalf of Belt-Stubblefield’s family and a second notice was filed on behalf of his son, Zion Murphy.

The family, along with their lawyer , held a news conference to announce the filing and then attended the Aurora City Council meeting where they spoke about a lack of transparency surrounding the shooting and a need for accountability for officer Matthew Neely, who fired the fatal shots. Neely’s name had not been released by the police department.

“No child should ever have to witness that,” said Erica Murphy, Zion Murphy’s mother. “No child should have to carry the trauma for the rest of their life. Rajon was more than a headline. He was more than a police report. He was a father. He was loved. He mattered.”

On the night of the shooting, Neely tried to pull over Belt-Stubblefield for speeding and a possible DUI near East Sixth Avenue and Sable Boulevard. Zion Murphy was driving behind his father in another car.

Belt-Stubblefield fled and then rear-ended one car before crossing a median and hitting a second vehicle. He was armed but tossed a handgun into the grass before walking toward the officer, Aurora police Chief Todd Chamberlain said at the time.

Belt-Stubblefield ignored orders to stop and raised his hands, and Neely punched him in an attempt to de-escalate the situation, according to Chamberlain’s account in the days after the shooting. Belt-Stubblefield raised his fist and repeatedly asked if the officer was “ready for this,” Chamberlain said.

The officer shot Belt-Stubblefield as he continued to move toward him, backing Neely into the street, Chamberlain said.

Belt-Stubblefield died at the scene.

But the notices of claim filed by Schwab offer a different perspective on what happened.

Neely pointed his weapon at Belt-Stubblefield as soon as he exited his wrecked car, and Belt-Stubblefield asked the officer not to shoot him as he tossed his gun into the grass. Neely tried to grab Belt-Stubblefield by the neck and take him to the ground, but the officer is the one who fell, according to the notice of claim. Belt-Stubblefield did not take aggressive action and tried to walk away.

Neely then followed Belt-Stubblefield, shoved him in the back and then as Belt-Stubblefield turned to speak to his son Neely “suckerpunched Mr. Belt-Stubblefield in the back of the head, causing Mr. Belt-Stubblefield to put his fists up to protect his head,” the notice of claim stated.

Neely backed into the street with his gun and fired three times. The first two shots struck Belt-Stubblefield in the chest, and he stopped and looked at Neely. Neely then fired the third shot into Belton-Stubblefield’s head, killing him at the scene, the notice of claim said.

Schwab said the city has not communicated with the family in the six months since the shooting, and the officer has not been disciplined for his actions.

“We’ve given it six months,” he said. “We’re done waiting.”

The shooting drew national attention, leading prominent civil rights attorney to visit with Belt-Stubblefield’s widow and to condemn the fatal shooting.

Aurora has been in the spotlight for police brutality multiple times in the past decade, most notably for the 2019 killing of Elijah McClain, an unarmed 23-year-old Black man who died during a violent arrest even though he had not committed a crime. McClain’s name became a rallying cry in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.

Two Aurora paramedics and a police officer were convicted for their roles in McClain’s death. Two others were acquitted, and the city paid $15 million to McClain’s parents to settle a civil rights lawsuit.

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser placed the department under a consent decree after McClain’s death after his investigation found a pattern of racially biased police and excessive force within the department.

In 2015, Aurora paid a $2.6 million settlement — the largest in city history at the time — to the family of Naeschylus Carter-Vinzant, an unarmed Black man who shot by a city police officer. Officers were trying to serve an arrest warrant after Carter-Vinzant had removed a monitoring bracelet from his ankle. That settlement also came with an agreement from the city to improve police oversight and to improve community relations.

The family of Kilyn Lewis, an unarmed Black man killed by Aurora police in 2024, sued the city in May for wrongful death. That case is pending.

Lakewood’s City Council  to “work toward the establishment” of an independent civilian oversight board for the city’s police department. And in Aurora, the city set aside about $330,000 this year to fund an Office of Police Accountability — even as city officials say they are still considering how oversight should be structured.

The creation of an independent oversight board in Lakewood would put the city into the company of just a handful of Front Range cities with such boards, including Denver and Boulder. The push for more oversight came to a head in Lakewood after the death of Jax Gratton, a 34-year-old transgender woman who disappeared in April and was found dead in June.

Lakewood police faced criticism for their handling of the case, including for announcing Gratton’s death by using her deadname and, later, for a lack of transparency about the investigation. Gratton’s case spurred the move toward an oversight committee, but the push is also rooted in wider issues around trust between police and community, Lakewood Councilwoman Isabel Cruz said.

“Although this specific incident really brought this to the fore, and the demands of community activists really pushed us, it is rooted in a lot of different conversations,” she said.

City Council members overwhelmingly voted Jan. 26 to create a 12-month committee to work toward the creation of a permanent oversight board. The temporary committee will have access to police records, completed internal affairs investigations and body-worn camera footage, and will be able to review complaints submitted to the police department.

At the end of the 12-month period, the committee will report to the City Council about how a permanent police oversight committee would be staffed and structured, among other recommendations.

Council members will then have the power to move forward with the permanent board or end the oversight effort.

Lakewood Police Department spokesman John Romero declined to comment on the push for oversight. About three dozen police officers packed last week’s council meeting, where Lakewood police Agent Quinn Pratt-Cordova, an executive board member of the , spoke against independent oversight.

An oversight board would be redundant, he said, and could damage officers’ trust in the city. Such oversight might “deter top talent,” from the police department, Pratt-Cordova said.

“Civilian oversight boards are rare and often follow severe systemic issues like those in other cities, issues that the majority of you don’t agree exist in the local police department,” Pratt-Cordova told council members. “The unnecessary creation of an oversight board attempts to apply an unwarranted national narrative to Lakewood PD.”

Lakewood Mayor Wendi Strom said she hopes any permanent effort will be aimed at improving police-community relations in ways that go beyond traditional independent oversight.

“The oversight word, I think, it is a big sticking point and one that — especially for folks within the public safety realm — has a very specific meaning,” she said in an interview. “So what we end up with, it is hard to tell. But for me, and I think City Council has been pretty clear on this in multiple conversations over the last month, the end goal is ultimately to help our community members feel more comfortable reaching out when there is a need.”

In Denver, city officials created a citizen oversight board in 2004 after a Denver police officer shot and killed Paul Childs, a developmentally disabled 15-year-old boy. Boulder’s citizen oversight panel — — followed a 2019 incident in which an officer pulled a gun on a Black student who was picking up trash outside his home.

In Aurora, the police department entered into a consent decree — court-ordered reforms overseen by an independent monitor — after the 2019 killing of Elijah McClain, a 23-year-old Black man who died after Aurora police officers violently restrained him and paramedics injected him with a too-large dose of a powerful sedative.

McClain’s death was part of a pattern of racial bias and excessive force within the Aurora Police Department, state officials later found.

Aurora City Manager Jason Batchelor hopes the city’s two-person Office of Police Accountability will serve as an independent monitor for the police department when police exit the consent decree and are no longer under the supervision of the . The creation of such a position is a requirement of the consent decree.

The new office would report to the city manager, Batchelor said, but would be created with built-in protections aimed at ensuring its independence, including putting into city ordinance the office’s right to have free and unfettered access to information and budgetary safeguards to ensure it could not be defunded by the city manager. The protections would mirror Aurora’s approach to its , which operates independently and would work in tandem with the new office, Batchelor said.

“I don’t get to tell the internal auditor, ‘That might make me look bad, don’t publish that,'” Batchelor said. “That can’t happen.”

The Office of Police Accountability, which Batchelor hopes to be ready to hire for in a few months, would have “contemporaneous oversight” of any city investigation, he said. The office would not oversee police discipline and would not conduct its own investigations into police misconduct. Instead, the employees would be able to flag problems or concerns about such investigations to Batchelor, the City Council or to the public.

Aurora Councilwoman Amy Wiles, who has helped to organize community meetings to discuss police oversight as recently as this week, said residents need a neutral place to report police misconduct.

“Right now, if you want to report something — you had a poor interaction with a police officer or you feel something wasn’t right — to call and report that is a bit invasive. You have to call the police department,” she said. “…So we are hoping this provides that level of security to community to say, ‘Hey if something went wrong, here is this neutral person you can reach out to.'”

The Office of Police Accountability could receive complaints of police misconduct directly from the public, Batchelor said, and then would “partner with the (police) department to make sure that any complaints are fully investigated.”

That approach concerns , Rocky Mountain state conference president for the NAACP.

“If you are going to have true transparency and true accountability, it can’t be that organization doing the investigation,” he said. “It has to be an independent organization. …If it goes back to the police department, I would have concerns (about whether) that is an independent department that is investigating abuse allegations.”

But he added that the Office of Police Accountability is “a good start,” and noted that it is already funded in a tough budget year.

Batchelor pointed out that some critical incidents, including police shootings, are already investigated by outside agencies. Colorado lawmakers from investigating their own police shootings in 2015. Other types of complaints are handled solely by the police department’s .

The city is still considering what the ultimate structure of the office and oversight will look like, Wiles said. The end design may include an advisory board of residents who work with the Office of Police Accountability in some fashion, though their role is limited by the city’s charter.

Butler, his partner Jayla Houston and their two young children had stopped at the Walmart early on the morning of May 22, 2024, after having visited seeking help for the couple’s 3-year-old son, who was having difficulty breathing.

The couple said they decided to go elsewhere after receiving what they claimed was conflicting medical advice from Children’s Hospital staff and being advised to pursue treatments they didn’t consider in their son’s best interest, according to an excessive-force lawsuit Butler filed against the officers.

Staff at Children’s Hospital called the and reported a child endangerment case. Police tracked the family using their cellphone signals to the Walmart parking lot, blocked in their Chevy Impala and drew their weapons, the lawsuit said.

Butler, who is Black, and his family, who had driven down from Sterling, were napping when they woke up to police surrounding their vehicle, according to the lawsuit.

“What are y’all doing? I’ve got kids in the car!” an unarmed and upset Butler is repeatedly heard asking officers who had their weapons drawn.

As two police officers restrained his arms, Butler pleaded with Adrian Arce-Cerda, who is a named defendant in the case, not to use a Taser on him, at which point the officer did. Butler, later in the footage, told the officers that they had hurt him.

Civil rights attorneys Kevin Mehr and Tyler Jolly from and Jason Kosloski of said in a news release that the case represents the latest excessive force incident involving the Aurora Police Department, which is under a consent decree with the related to the 2019 death of Elijah McClain, a 23-year-old Black man.

McClain died after paramedics, acting on the request of Aurora police officers, administered what turned out to be a lethal dose of ketamine. A passerby had called police after seeing McClain wearing a ski mask and acting “sketchy,” setting off a chain of events that resulted in McClain’s death.

Butler’s lawsuit alleges that rather than calling him or Houston, Aurora police used their cell numbers to track them down and then initiate a “high-risk seizure arrest” that involved drawn weapons. When officers finally disclosed why they were arresting him, Butler explained to them that his child’s life was not at risk and that they were seeking care elsewhere.

“Let����ap be clear. This entire incident could have been resolved with a simple phone call,” Mehr said. “Instead, once again, the Aurora Police Department chose violence with a SWAT-style ambush that risked the lives of a young father and his two children. The simple fact is that LaDarius Butler is lucky to be alive.”

Butler was charged with misdemeanor obstruction, but those charges were later dismissed after a year-long legal battle by Butler to clear his name.

The city of Aurora has stated that its officers were responding to a kidnapping call from the Children’s Hospital and that the city would defend itself in the civil case.

Children’s Hospital didn’t provide a statement on the incident, and a spokeswoman said that the hospital’s “” policies have not changed.

Paramedic Edward McClure, 54, was arrested on suspicion of manslaughter and forgery in the December death of Jesus Lopez Barcenas, two days after he was taken into custody.

The criminal case comes nearly six years after Elijah McClain, a 23-year-old Black man, died after Aurora police restrained him and a paramedic injected him with the sedative ketamine. McClain’s death prompted a new state law that limited the way paramedics could use ketamine during police encounters in an attempt to prevent similar deaths.

McClure used a different drug, , to sedate Barcenas, according to a police affidavit.

Barcenas was arrested by police officers from the Boulder and University of Colorado police departments on Dec. 27, 2024. Campus police officers responded to CU’s Center for Innovation and Creativity, at 1777 Exposition Drive, after a worker there reported that Barcenas was acting strangely.

When campus officers arrived, Barcenas was shouting about people dying inside the building and the building being on fire, according to a 30-page affidavit filed against McClure. Barcenas was hitting a fire alarm with his cellphone. The building was not on fire.

Campus police attempted to arrest Barcenas and put him in handcuffs at 8:26 p.m. A fight ensued, according to the affidavit, and the officers called Boulder police for help. One officer reported that Barcenas tried to grab the officer’s gun during the struggle. Officers eventually were able to handcuff Barcenas, according to the affidavit.

They called for two ambulances — one for an officer who’d hurt his ankle during the arrest, and one for Barcenas, who was still speaking nonsensically and yelling.

When paramedics arrived at 8:34 p.m., McClure spoke to Barcenas from about three feet away as officers continued to restrain the man. He did not touch Barcenas or ask the man how he was feeling. McClure also did not ask officers what happened, according to the affidavit.

After a brief conversation with Barcenas in which the man did not speak coherently, McClure injected Barcenas with 5 mg of Droperidol. Barcenas was handcuffed, restrained by police and lying on his stomach when McClure injected him through a hole in his pants, according to the affidavit.

The officers, McClure and an EMT put Barcenas on a gurney. They laid him on his stomach with his hands cuffed behind his back, then used additional restraints on his ankles and strapped seatbelt-like restraints across his body.

“Now let’s strap the crap out of him,” McClure said, according to the affidavit. He instructed the EMT with him to keep Barcenas in a prone position.

“Just keep him face-down, I don’t care,” McClure said, according to the affidavit.

Transporting a handcuffed patient in that position is dangerous and forbidden by the ambulance company’s policy, according to the affidavit. A person restrained in a prone position is unable to safely exhale, which can cause carbon dioxide to rapidly rise in a person’s blood, which can lead to death.

Barcenas was put in the back of the ambulance at 8:46 p.m. At some point, prosecutors allege McClure placed a “spit sock” covering over Barcenas’ head, even though the man was not spitting on anyone.

By 8:55 p.m., the ambulance crew updated their status to an emergency because Barcenas suffered a heart attack. Two minutes later, McClure can be seen on a body-worn camera doing CPR on Barcenas. He did not recover.

Barcenas died two days later.

‘Tragic and untimely death’

The Boulder County Coroner’s Office found he died from “sudden cardiac arrest following a prolonged physical altercation and struggle, which included prone positioning and the use of restraints and a sedative,” according to the affidavit. The coroner’s office determined that “the toxic effects of methamphetamine contributed to his death.”

McClure was arrested Friday. He was booked into the Boulder County jail and then released after posting bail. He couldn’t be reached for comment.

Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty said in a news release Friday that he found the police officers’ use of force to be within the law during Barcenas’ arrest, but that McClure’s “reckless acts” led to the man’s death.

“The prone positioning, positioning of the gurney, and the use of the restraints and spit sock by Paramedic McClure is alleged to have caused the tragic and untimely death of Mr. Barcenas,” Dougherty wrote in a Friday letter that cleared the police officers of wrongdoing.

McClure is also accused of attempting to change his patient care reports in order to cover up his actions and being dishonest during interviews with his supervisors about the incident. He claimed that he could not take certain care steps in the ambulance because Barcenas was combative, when, in fact, the man was barely moving, according to the affidavit.

McClure was fired by American Medical Response on Dec. 30, 2024, according to the affidavit.

‘Virtually unheard of’

It’s extremely rare but not unprecedented for an emergency medical provider to be charged with crimes related to patient care, said Howard Paul, communications director for the .

“It’s virtually unheard of,” he said. “It’s extraordinarily rare.”

Emergency medical service providers across the country watched closely when two paramedics were charged with crimes in McClain’s 2019 death, he said.

One of the paramedics who handled McClain’s care was convicted of criminally negligent homicide and assault. A judge erased the paramedic’s five-year prison sentence just six months after it started.

McClain’s killing also renewed scrutiny around the term “excited delirium,” a disputed condition that describes someone exhibiting extreme agitation to the point where they are a danger to themselves and others.

McClure underwent training on restraining combative patients in August 2024, according to the affidavit, though he denied going through that training during an interview with his supervisors — until he was shown his signature on a class roster.

“Oh yeah, that is the whole, ‘You can’t say ‘excited delirium’ or whatever training,” he said, according to the affidavit.

As that pattern has played out in Aurora over the last year, the City Council has struggled at times to maintain decorum inside — and occasionally outside — its chamber. Last week brought the latest attempt in Colorado’s third-largest city to tighten its rules for public participation as it tries to manage what has become a highly combustible and disruptive atmosphere, spurred by the 2024 police killing of an unarmed Black man.

The council voted 6-4 on May 5 to limit speakers at the lectern to one at a time, with exceptions for children, those needing interpretive help and people with physical disabilities. A second — and more legally dubious — proposal to forbid photography or the recording of videos in an area close to the dais was withdrawn at the last moment.

Last week’s rule change comes after Aurora’s council already did away with call-in comments last fall. Earlier this year, it moved the general public comment period to a .

Since the fatal shooting of 37-year-old Kilyn Lewis by a SWAT officer with the Aurora Police Department, protesters have regularly come to council meetings demanding accountability. In that May 23, 2024, incident, police were trying to arrest Lewis on suspicion of attempted murder; after a review, the Arapahoe County district attorney last fall declined to file charges against the officer who killed Lewis, Michael Dieck.

In the Aurora council chamber, meetings have descended into chaos as protesters have become loud and unruly, on occasion sending elected leaders behind closed doors to finish business virtually.

Disruption at the most local level of the democratic process is hardly an Aurora-only phenomenon. In late 2023, pro-Palestinian demonstrators took over the Denver City Council chamber to oppose a pro-Israel conference in the city, prompting the council to postpone the second half of its scheduled business.

In Fort Collins last year, three women inside the City Council chamber as part of a pro-Palestinian protest. The incident prompted the council to pass a measure allowing it to go remote in the event of future disruptions.

The ongoing violence in the Middle East has also regularly brought activists to Boulder City Council meetings over the last year, with resulting in the council taking multiple recesses before clearing the chamber of audience members.

Kevin Bommer, the executive director of the Colorado Municipal League, said his organization often gives city leaders around the state advice on “civility in governance” and “how to respond graciously while respecting First Amendment rights and the need to conduct public business.”

But an intensified political atmosphere, along with novel technology that has allowed just about anybody to become a broadcaster, have made the task harder, he said.

“Perhaps political mood has aggravated it, but live-streaming and social media presence likely has had a bigger impact,” Bommer said. “The meeting now provides a greater opportunity for performance by the public, and sometimes by officials.”

Official says rule addresses ‘a safety concern’

Over the last year in Aurora, multiple speakers have sometimes gathered at the lectern to address the council. Councilwoman Francoise Bergan, who proposed the new public participation rule, said she did so for safety reasons.

“It has always been respected that one person is at the podium until recently,” she said. “It is indeed a safety concern for our police as they need to control the environment in our large chamber. Additionally, it allows City Council and the mayor to focus on the speaker, without distractions.”

Alli Jackson, who is running for an at-large Aurora council seat in November and took to the lectern during the May 5 meeting, said the council was going in the wrong direction.

“If council members are serious about easing community tensions, they must respond with compassion and accountability, not more restriction and silencing,” Jackson told the council. “We are not a threat — we are the public.”

Bergan doesn’t believe the measure “takes away the democratic process.”

“We allow for a listening session that precedes our council meeting where we conduct business and have opportunity for the public to speak on agenda items,” she told The Post. “We are available to constituents by email, by phone and in town halls, as well as through social media.”

According to conducted last August, 73% of participating mayors, city council members and city managers reported experiencing harassment as part of their work. Nearly 90% of those who said they were harassed said it happened on social media, while 84% said they were harassed during public meetings.

“Using the (public comment) time for protest, disruption or promotion of personal agendas threatens efficiency, order, decorum — and sometimes even safety,” Bommer said. “We haven’t really seen the latter as an issue in Colorado, but I know my colleagues are dealing with it in other states.”

On the same night Aurora was passing its new rules last week, officials in Decatur, Alabama, announced that all City Council public comment periods after six people were arrested at a meeting amid protests over a police killing there. It’s one of several recent examples across the country of city councils suspending or shutting down public comment.

Jeff Roberts, the executive director of the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition, says public input at city council meetings isn’t actually required by law.

“The open meetings law is silent on that,” he said.

But it has long been a custom for councils to offer it, he said, and an open mic is good for governance. That said, city officials are empowered to take steps to preserve decorum in the chamber and impose time limits on speakers.

What they can’t do, he said, is control the content of what comes out of people’s mouths.

“They can’t discriminate based on what people say,” Roberts said.

That challenge came into full view in the last couple of years, as city councils in Wheat Ridge, Lakewood and Durango were bombarded by callers using antisemitic and other offensive slurs during council proceedings. Aurora experienced its own incident of racist remarks at a meeting last year, resulting in an end to call-in comments at council meetings.

All the recent tumult in Aurora has had the effect of pushing other members of the community away from participating in the process, Bergan said.

“Some have reached out to us to share their concerns about feeling uncomfortable, intimidated and even frightened to the point that they won’t attend our meetings,” the councilwoman said. “Some have been heckled and called names.”

That goes for the members of council, too.

At a , a speaker during public comment wished — in prayer form and with Old Testament language — ill will upon the city’s elected leaders. During the same meeting, a member of the public called in and accused Mayor Mike Coffman of having “a long history of hating Black men,” without providing evidence.

‘There is a huge pain in the community’

Even Councilwoman Alison Coombs, one of four council members to vote against the measure further tightening public participation last week, acknowledged some of what is said from the lectern is inappropriate, even threatening at times.

But Coombs said the closest she had seen to a potential physical altercation at city hall was when , a former Denver school board vice president and a frequent protester at Aurora council meetings, in .

She also thinks the majority of council members disproportionately direct their ire at the advocacy group.

“The council has not been unclear that they are targeting this specific group of people,” Coombs said.

Jackson, the council candidate, said people are coming to city hall to make their voices heard because of a pattern of violence by Aurora police against Black men and teenagers. She cited the death of Elijah McClain in 2019 — after police put him in a neck hold and he was injected with an overdose of ketamine by a paramedic — and the shooting deaths of Jor’Dell Richardson in 2023 and Lewis last year.

Aurora police have been operating under a consent decree since late 2021. The legal agreement with the Colorado Attorney General’s Office is meant to bring about changes in practices at the department, including on use-of-force, hiring and training policies.

“There is a huge pain in the community that is not being resolved,” Jackson said. “Just say, ‘We’re sorry.’ We should be opening doors for people to express their authentic selves.”

She doesn’t like the recent practice of some council members choosing to attend meetings virtually, sometimes from elsewhere inside the municipal building, according to .

“It’s disheartening when you have to speak to an empty chair,” Jackson said. “It sends a message that the public isn’t welcome to be heard.”

“Right there, I swore to myself at that moment that I would never stop fighting until we got justice,” LaRonda Jones, the mother of Kilyn Lewis, said. “I will continue to fight even harder — not only for justice in my son’s death, but for all those other parents, all those other mothers and fathers and grandparents, who have gone through the same thing I’m going through.”

Colorado police officers and sheriff’s deputies shot someone roughly every six days in 2024, according to data compiled by The Denver Post. They killed 39 people, including Lewis, and wounded 22 others, for a total of 61.

That����ap down four shootings from 2023, when law enforcement killed 43 Coloradans and injured another 22. Colorado still ranked eighth in the country last year for fatal police shootings per capita, with , according to national data from Mapping Police Violence.

Lewis, a 37-year-old Black man, was unarmed and holding a cellphone when Aurora police officers shot him in the parking lot of an apartment complex last May. He was shot within six seconds of officers surrounding him and shouting commands.

Lewis was wanted on suspicion of attempted first-degree murder in a separate shooting earlier that month.

“Black people were more likely to be killed by police, more likely to be unarmed and less likely to be threatening someone when killed,” Mapping Police Violence’s  stated. “Police disproportionately kill Black people, year after year.”

Who did Colorado law enforcement shoot?

The majority of people shot and killed by law enforcement in both 2023 and 2024 were white men armed with guns, according to the data compiled by The Post.

However, Black Coloradans were overrepresented in the data, which includes information from law enforcement agencies, coroner’s offices and national databases.

Nearly 13% of people killed by Colorado law enforcement in 2024 were Black, but Black people make up less than 4% of the state’s population, according to the .

The percentage of Black Coloradans shot by law enforcement could be even higher, said , an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University who studies public policy and gun violence, including police shootings.

“When we include both fatal and injury shootings nationally, it appears that racial disparities may actually be worse than we thought,” Ward said. “If we’re only looking at fatal shootings, then we’re disregarding more injuries to Black survivors.”

The Post was unable to run a similar analysis because of the lack of demographic information available on people who were shot by Colorado law enforcement agents but survived.

The federal government has never successfully mandated that law enforcement agencies report use-of-force incidents, leaving many researchers to rely on coverage from local media, said Andrea Borrego, a professor of criminal justice and criminology at Metropolitan State University of Denver.

Some states, including Colorado, have started requiring comprehensive reporting, but that doesn’t always work, she said.

Colorado’s Law Enforcement Integrity Act requires the Division of Criminal Justice’s to report data submitted by state and local law enforcement on citizen contacts and use of force.

However, no data was yet available for 2024, and the office’s  only recorded 20 instances in 2023 in which an officer or deputy fired a gun at a suspect. That����ap a 45-case gap between the state’s data and what The Post recorded in 2023.

“It’s very apparent what is happening to our community, but… it goes beyond the data. It goes beyond the research and the studies,” said MiDian Shofner, CEO of the Denver-based Epitome of Black Excellence and Partnership. “There are things about these stories that are not reported, and that, I think, is where I can say that our community knows that this is a reality.”

She said the data doesn’t show the insults hurled at the families when they try to “be a voice for their loved ones” — including an instance when Aurora City Councilwoman Stephanie Hancock called Lewis’s family and other community organizers “” — or how law enforcement agencies often shut them out.

“Those are data points they don’t have a system for,” Shofner said. “That hurt, that pain, that reality goes beyond any research in any study.”

Frank Powels, 44; Kristin Dock, 32; Everett Shockley, 42; and Kory Dillard, 38, were all Black men also killed in 2024 by law enforcement in Broomfield, Jefferson and Arapahoe counties.

Powels, Dock and Shockley were armed — two with guns and one with a broken broomstick handle — but Dillard was holding a replica airsoft rifle.

“You don’t get a chance to redo this scene and this act over again,” Jones, Lewis’s mother, said. “When you take a life, that’s it. There’s no coming back from that. And that’s what we’re facing and dealing with every day.”

The Douglas and Adams County coroners declined to release victim names and demographic information to The Post, leaving the ages, races and genders of 15% of people killed by law enforcement in 2024 and 14% in 2023 unknown.

Other findings by The Post include:

• Despite making up nearly 70% of Colorado’s population, 50% of people shot and killed by state law enforcement in 2024 were white.
• Three women in 2023 and two women in 2024 were fatally shot by Colorado law enforcement. That’s 7% and 5% of all victims killed in each of those years.
• About 32% of people shot and killed by police in 2023 were Hispanic, though they make up 23% of Colorado’s population. In 2024, 23% of fatal police shooting victims were Hispanic.
• At least three people shot in 2023 and five people shot in 2024 were unarmed or not reported to be armed by law enforcement.
• At least five people shot in 2023 and six in 2024 were suicidal or experiencing a mental health crisis.
• Roughly 67% of those shot and killed by police in 2024 were adults under the age of 45. That age group only makes up 37% of Colorado’s population, according to federal data.
• At least 17 people shot by police in 2024 were fleeing law enforcement in their car or on foot, up from 11 in 2023. Another 10 police shootings stemmed from traffic stops in 2024, more than double the four traffic stop shootings documented in 2023.
• The most common calls that escalated into police shootings were disturbances, fights and reports of suspicious people, accounting for roughly a third of incidents in both 2023 and 2024. Of those calls, eight in 2023 and six in 2024 included allegations of domestic violence.
• More than a dozen shootings each year — at least 17 in 2023 and 13 in 2024 — stemmed from officers trying to serve an arrest warrant or contact a suspect in a crime.

A variety of factors impact police shootings — including specific law enforcement agencies’ training of officers and use of force policies, local crime rates, firearm ownership, community diversity and which agencies are responsible for responding to mental health crises — so numbers are unpredictable from year to year.

Across the country, the most frequent events that escalate into fatal police shootings involve verbal or physical threats, Ward said. That includes assaults, domestic violence incidents and people “verbalizing threats of harm to themselves or others.”

Police shootings escalating from well-being checks or other “social needs” were less common across the country, but more likely to be lethal, she said.

Ward said the data calls attention to an opportunity for a different response, where people should be able to think of police as a last resort when a “better fit” solution isn’t available. She said cities should invest in more targeted responses to these social needs to “reduce exposure to the potential harms from policing.”

Which departments had the most incidents?

Eight Colorado law enforcement agencies saw significant increases in police shootings between 2023 and 2024, ranging from 50% to 250%.

In total, 12 agencies that had zero incidents in 2023 documented at least one police shooting in 2024, according to The Post’s data. On the other hand, 20 departments that had at least one police shooting in 2023 reported no incidents last year.

Thornton police officers shot seven people in 2024, killing six of them. That����ap the highest of any Colorado law enforcement agency last year and a 250% increase from the two people shot in Thornton police in 2023.

One Thornton officer was shot when a 27-year-old man resisted arrest and grabbed the officer’s gun after reportedly assaulting someone at a nearby gas station. Another two officers were injured in an hours-long standoff and shootout that rattled Thornton’s Orchard Farms subdivision and ended with the suspect dead.

In each of Thornton’s six fatal police shootings, the suspects were armed and had fired their weapons, though not necessarily at people, Division Cmdr. Tom Connor said.

“That is completely out of the norm for us, not somebody being armed in an officer-involved shooting, but having six in one year where that was the case. That’s absolutely an anomaly,” Connor said.

Under Colorado law, when possible, officers are required to give suspects a chance to comply and use nonlethal force if available, Connor said. Thornton officers did not attempt to use nonlethal force in any of the six fatal shootings, but Connor said the suspects escalated the situation.

Connor said it can also be more dangerous for officers to use nonlethal force when people are armed because it doesn’t immediately incapacitate them. He said it allows the armed suspect to continue to assault officers or others in the area.

In the end, it comes down to a split-second decision and officers must act to protect themselves or others in danger, Connor said.

Thornton was followed closely in 2024 police shootings by Colorado Springs, where four people were killed and two were wounded; Aurora, where four people were killed and one was wounded; and Denver, where two people were killed and two were wounded. Pueblo and Lakewood police shot another three people in each city.

Thornton’s per-capita rate of 4.8 shootings per 100,000 residents in 2024 quadrupled Aurora’s rate of 1.1 and was more than eight times Denver’s rate of 0.55.

“In Aurora, according to the 2023 Use of Force Report, arrests and use-of-force incidents have risen every year since 2021, even as calls for service have steadily declined,” Cat Moring from the Denver Justice Project said in an emailed statement to The Post. “This trend reflects internal policy decisions and a department culture that continues to prioritize force over community trust.”

The Aurora Police Department was placed under a consent decree by state officials in 2021 after a Colorado Attorney General’s Office investigation into Elijah McClain’s killing found a pattern of racially biased policing and excessive force.

“Despite these reforms, the department has failed to rebuild trust, as evidenced by the decline in calls for police service,” Moring said. “People are calling the police less because they fear dangerous encounters.”

Leaving victims’ families in the lurch

“Language is extremely important,” Shofner, the Epitome of Black Excellence and Partnership CEO, said. “Oftentimes, when this story is told and the narrative is put out, we’ll say that the Black community doesn’t trust the police. I don’t think that’s saying it the right way. It’s that the police have lost the trust of the Black community.”

Jones said the lack of trust also stems from the lack of information and communication from law enforcement agencies. She said the shortage of answers was one of the most difficult things to deal with after her son’s shooting.

As soon as Jones could after finding out about the shooting, she was on a plane from her home in Georgia to Colorado. Aurora officials called her while she was at the airport, but they could only direct her to the hospital and didn’t know Lewis’ status.

“It was really frustrating because I had a lot of questions that were unanswered,” Jones said. “Questions like, ‘Who was the officer who killed my son?’ and ‘What����ap going to be done about this?’ So a lot of anger was building up as I couldn’t get my questions answered.”

Connor said investigators from Colorado’s various Critical Incident Response Teams don’t release information to the involved departments during the investigations into police shootings. At least for Thornton, whatever the department releases publicly after the shooting — including body camera footage — is all officials outside of the investigation know, he said.

“Any officer-involved shooting can affect public trust,” Connor said. “There’s the potential that it looks like (law enforcement) is hiding information from the public when, in reality, the majority of the time we’re not entitled to the information.”

But Jones said her struggle with the Aurora Police Department continued even after the investigation was closed and no charges were filed against SWAT officer Michael Dieck, who shot and killed her son. She said she was still continuously dismissed by the police department.

What happened to the officers who shot people?

Despite recent reforms, such as ending qualified immunity in state court, requiring body-worn cameras and mandating decertification for officers who engage in misconduct, the threshold for what counts as “misconduct” remains extraordinarily high, Moring said.

Moring said officers are rarely held accountable, and the families of police shooting victims are often left to pursue justice on their own.

“Families are still forced to choose between fighting for criminal charges or seeking civil remedies — rarely with the resources, support or capacity to do both,” she said.

All but one of the 43 police shootings in 2023 for which The Post was able to obtain decision letters were ruled justified.

La Salle police Officer Erik Hernandez in January to manslaughter after shooting and killing 38-year-old Juston Reffel in his car outside of a dollar store on May 3, 2023.

No charges have been filed in any of the 2024 police shootings for which The Post has obtained copies of district attorneys’ decision letters.

Jones said she was not surprised when Arapahoe County District Attorney John Kellner decided not to file charges against Dieck, who shot and killed her son.

Kellner said Dieck “reasonably believed there was an imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury,” which justified the officer’s use of force under Colorado law, according to Kellner’s decision letter to the police department.

“There’s no healing,” Jones said. “Until we get justice, it won’t even begin.”