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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Matthew Neely, 54, shot and killed Rajon Belt-Stubblefield during a traffic stop in Aurora on Aug. 30, 2025, after the officer tried to pull Belt-Stubblefield over for speeding and a possible DUI near East Sixth Avenue and Sable Boulevard around 7:30 p.m. that night.

Belt-Stubblefield, who was under the influence of alcohol, did not pull over and instead drove away. He rear-ended one car before crossing a median and hitting a second vehicle, according to the indictment filed Friday. He crashed at the intersection of Sixth Avenue and Billings Street.

Neely pulled up on the crash and pointed his gun at Belt-Stubblefield. He ordered the man not to get out of the vehicle. Belt-Stubblefield did not follow the officer’s order, according to the indictment. Instead, he appeared to be reaching down toward the floorboard of his vehicle. Belt-Stubblefield then exited the car and told Neely, “Don’t shoot me,” according to the indictment.

Neely approached Belt-Stubblefield with his gun still in his right hand. He grabbed Belt-Stubblefield’s upper body with his left hand, according to the indictment. Belt-Stubblefield then threw a gun to the ground nearby. Neely was not aware the man had a gun until Belt-Stubblefield threw it into the grass, according to the indictment.

The officer then “engaged physically” with Belt-Stubblefield, according to the indictment. The officer fell to the ground, and Belt-Stubblefield got up and walked away. Neely stood, pointed his gun at Belt-Stubblefield and demanded he get on the ground.

“I’ll shoot you,” Neely told the man, according to the indictment. The officer then spent 7 seconds trying to holster his gun in order to use a less-lethal weapon, but he was not able to get his gun holstered, according to the indictment. He was not carrying a Taser but did have a baton and pepper spray.

Belt-Stubblefield’s son, Zion Murphy, who had been driving in a separate vehicle, stood nearby during this exchange, according to the indictment. Belt-Stubblefield several times asked his son to get the gun in the grass and remove it from the scene, according to the indictment.

Belt-Stubblefield, with his back to the officer, then turned toward the area where he’d earlier thrown the gun, according to the indictment. The officer punched Belt-Stubblefield in the face.

“After this strike, Mr. Belt-Stubblefield turned around towards defendant and raised both fists in front of him and asked the defendant, ‘Are you ready for this? I’m ready for this,’ and started walking towards the defendant in a ‘boxer’s stance,'” the indictment reads.

The officer walked backwards as Belt-Stubblefield walked toward him. He did not tell Belt-Stubblefield he was under arrest or warn him that he would shoot him, “because he wanted to maintain an ‘element of surprise,'” the indictment states. Belt-Stubblefield did not threaten the officer or try to retrieve the gun in the grass.

Neely then shot Belt-Stubblefield twice in the chest and once in the head, killing the man. He later said he did so because he feared getting into a fight with Belt-Stubblefield, because he felt “he would lose,” according to the indictment.

“Defendant stated he fired the first two shots in attempt to ‘stop the threat,'” the indictment reads. “He stated they appeared to have no effect, so he made the decision to ‘change the target.’ He stated he chose to fire the next round at Mr. Belt-Stubblefield’s head because of that decision.”

The indictment notes that while Neely called for backup, he did not report on the radio that Belt-Stubblefield had eluded the traffic stop and crashed, that he was holding the man at gunpoint, that Belt-Stubblefield had thrown a gun down or that Belt-Stubblefield was not listening to the officer.

Aurora police Chief Todd Chamberlain defended the officer immediately after the killing and placed blame on Belt-Stubblefield. In a statement Monday, the chief said he respects the judicial process and that it would be inappropriate for him to comment “on the merits of the case.”

“I will say this: Police officers are routinely called on to address — sometimes in seconds — dangerous and rapidly evolving situations they did not create,” he said. “I am confident that all the facts will be fully examined through due process. As with any case, these filing charges are not a determination of guilt.”

The killing drew national attention, and prominent civil rights attorney Ben Crump visited with Belt-Stubblefield’s widow and condemned the fatal shooting. The family in February said they were pursuing a lawsuit against the police department.

‘He’s going to have to answer for this’

Tandra Blankson, Belt-Stubblefield’s widow, joined about 15 other family and community members in front of the Arapahoe County Justice Center in the midday sun Monday to discuss the indictment. Voice heavy with emotion, she said her husband’s death was “too much,” but that she felt some solace in knowing that Neely would have to answer to multiple criminal charges.

“He doesn’t just get to take away my future plans and go home and sleep at night and go back to his career,” she said. “He’s going to have to answer for this.”

Asked what she might say to Neely if he were standing in front of her, Blankson said: “Do you care because you’re being charged or do you care because you took my other half?”

Erica Murphy, the mother of the oldest of Belt-Stubblefield’s eight children, said she was excited, happy and sad at the grand jury’s indictment.

“I was grateful somebody listened,” she said. “I know justice is due, and I know that justice will be served.”

Milo Schwab, an attorney representing Belt-Stubblefield’s family in their civil action, said that the grand jury indictment is an example of “the process working,” and that it was “a long time coming.”

“District Attorney (Amy) Padden showed great courage in trusting a grand jury, trusting the community to make the decision,” he said. “And my hope is that we see this happen more and more. That instead of one DA making a decision on whether an officer committed a crime, we put it in the hands of — and trust — the community. That is what happened here. This is the beginning, the first important step on that path toward accountability.”

Padden said in a brief news conference Monday that she presented the case to a grand jury after a months-long investigation by the 18th Judicial District’s and that she consulted with police use-of-force experts before taking the case to the grand jury.

“The grand jury determined there was probable cause to support these criminal charges,” she said.

Neely is on unpaid administrative leave from the Aurora Police Department, spokeswoman Gabby Easterwood said. The officer turned himself in over the weekend and was released on a $200,000 bail, Padden said. He is next due in court on Aug. 17.

Pattern of racial bias, excessive force

The Aurora Police Department has a history of violence against Black people.

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.

The police department paid $15 million to settle a lawsuit brought by McClain’s family. Five first responders faced criminal charges in McClain’s death; three were convicted, including two paramedics and an Aurora police officer. The Colorado Court of Appeals overturned the paramedics’ convictions in June.

The Aurora Police Department also paid out $1.9 million to settle a lawsuit after officers in 2020 forced Black girls to lie on the ground when they mistook the vehicle the girls were in as stolen.

The department is also facing lawsuits over the killing of Kilyn Lewis, an unarmed Black man who was shot and killed during an arrest in 2024, and was criticized in 2023 when an officer shot and killed a 14-year-old Black boy who ran from police while carrying a pellet gun. Jor’Dell Richardson was lying face up on the ground with two officers restraining at least one of his hands when another officer shot him in the stomach.

The City Council voted to establish the Office of Public Safety Accountability at Monday night’s meeting. It could be up and running by the fall, City Attorney Pete Schulte told The Denver Post.

“We will start the recruitment process this summer and hope to have the manager hired soon thereafter,” he said.

The creation of the office comes after a series of high-profile fatal encounters between police and unarmed Black men. It also builds on a consent decree the city entered with the Colorado Attorney General’s Office in 2021, following a yearlong investigation that found a pattern of racially biased policing and use of excessive force by Aurora officers that routinely violated state and federal law.

The impetus for the state’s investigation of police practices was the death of 23-year-old Elijah McClain. In 2019, he was stopped by police while walking home and injected by paramedics with a lethal dose of the sedative ketamine.

Police officers have killed other unarmed Black men in Aurora since then.

The new office will perform oversight of Aurora’s police and fire departments, along with its 911 dispatch center and detention facilities. Any critical incident involving those agencies, defined as an incident “resulting in death or serious bodily injury,” must be reported to the accountability office within 30 minutes.

Aurora’s accountability manager, who will be chosen by the city manager, will have access to all personnel and information involved in the incident and will be responsible for issuing a report, according to the ordinance passed Monday night. The measure passed unanimously as part of a block vote.

The office will assign a liaison to the family of the person killed or injured in a critical incident within 48 hours, with the duty to keep the family updated on the progress of any investigation that ensues. The accountability manager will hold at least two community listening sessions per year on critical incidents that occur in the city, the ordinance states.

MiDian Shofner, a regular attendee at Aurora council meetings since police shot and killed Kilyn Lewis in May 2024, told The Post that the new office’s effectiveness “will ultimately be determined by its independence, transparency and willingness to engage directly with impacted families and communities.”

“An accountability office cannot be measured by the number of reports it produces,” she said. “It should be measured by whether families receive timely information, whether community concerns influence decision-making and whether recommendations lead to tangible changes in policy and practice.”

Aurora’s move this week puts the city in the company of just a handful of Front Range cities with independent oversight boards or monitors, including Denver and Boulder. Earlier this year, Lakewood’s City Council voted to “work toward the establishment” of an independent civilian oversight board for that city’s police department.

Aurora set aside $329,000 in its 2026 budget to pay for the new office.

In a statement, Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, said he called on Aurora to establish an independent police monitor to take over once the consent decree with his office ends.

“A permanent structure for independent review of the police department will help ensure that reform, accountability and transparency continue, and that the city is responsive to community concerns,” he said.

In the 10th report of the , released in April, Aurora was reported to be in “substantial compliance” with 63 of the 78 mandates — or 81% — laid out in the consent decree.

The report says the consent decree is scheduled to expire in February. But Weiser’s office says the city must be in compliance with the consent decree’s requirements for three years before it can be terminated.

“So there is no end date at this time,” the attorney general’s spokesman, Lawrence Pacheco, said Monday.

Shofner, who heads up the nonprofit group Epitome of Black Excellence and Partnership, said the establishment of the accountability office was an important step in a city where policing practices had “deeply affected public trust.”

“The most encouraging aspect is that the city is formally recognizing that public safety accountability deserves dedicated resources, staffing and attention,” she said. “That is a significant step forward from relying solely on existing structures that many residents felt were inaccessible or ineffective.”

In other action Monday, the council voted to place three issues on the November ballot that aim to raise $264.5 million through bond sales to pay for 65 projects across the city.

Dubbed the bond issue is split into three buckets: transportation infrastructure, public safety and community facilities. It¶¶Òőap been 33 years since Aurora voters last agreed to raise the city’s sales tax to pay for city services or projects.

But the isn’t part of a traditional true-crime production. It’s a video created by the to promote the agency’s new podcast, a four-episode look into an unsolved 2016 homicide that investigators hope will spur new tips in the cold case.

Aurora’s foray into the true-crime genre is an unusual approach for Colorado police departments — while a handful of agencies have produced podcasts, the shows typically include straightforward sessions designed to on the basics of policing or offer .

The Aurora police podcast is intentionally framed to feel like a true-crime show, said Joe Moylan, spokesman for the department. The genre is known for retelling the stories of real violent crimes and packaging the evidence and facts of the case in an air of mystery, relying on sensationalism, morbid curiosity and storytelling techniques to keep listeners engaged.

“We’re trying to tap into that audience,” Moylan said. “It¶¶Òőap a very popular genre; there have been a lot of instances recently where a tip from a podcast has helped solve a case.”

The police-produced podcast is, in some ways, part of a long tradition of law enforcement seeking to connect directly with residents, particularly on social media. But the reality of the true-crime genre also means a police-produced podcast raises questions about ethics and the use of public resources, said Kelly McBride, senior vice president at , a Florida nonprofit focused on media ethics.

“Most of the time when a true-crime podcast jumps in to solve a cold case, it¶¶Òőap because the police have failed,” she said. “They are the police. They have all the investigative tools available to them, including the ability to just tell their story. So why create a form of entertainment around it?”

Moylan said the hope is that the unusual approach will generate more attention on the case than traditional methods of sharing information. The police department has for years sought tips on the 2016 killing of Chelsea Yasser, but none have yet panned out.

“My best days at work are when I push out a news release or we kick something out on social media and we find out after the fact that a member of the public saw it, we got a good tip on it, we made an arrest and we solved the case,” he said. “If doing something a little bit different generates some interest, and we are able to get that final piece of the puzzle and solve this case, it would definitely be a cool thing to be a small part of that.”

A criticism of the true-crime genre — and mainstream media — has been the tendency for podcasters and journalists to focus on sensational, high-profile murder cases, often with white female victims, said Michael Tracey, professor emeritus in the at the .

“Whenever I lecture about JonBenĂ©t Ramsey, I point out that 804 children under the age of 12 were murdered in America in 1996 and you heard about just one,” he said, adding later that it remains to be seen how Aurora police handle their podcast.

“Is it done professionally and ethically with a real aim at solving a crime?” he asked. “If it is only the dead white girl syndrome, that raises some serious issues.”

‘Just a unique homicide’

Aurora’s podcast will focus on the 2016 killing of 21-year-old Yasser, who was stabbed to death in the parking lot of a Burlington Coat Factory. The case was chosen for the podcast because investigators think it is solvable, Moylan said.

Yasser was stabbed inside a minivan in the store’s parking lot, and the attack was captured on . Police have long focused on identifying the driver of that van and hope the podcast will bring in new tips, Moylan said.

“We decided on this one because it is just a unique homicide in the fact it was captured on video, for the most part, and we still don’t have any idea who did it,” he said.

The episodes will cover the day of the killing, the victim, early investigative efforts and more recent cold-case investigative efforts, Moylan said.

Tracey said the police department’s approach is a “clever idea.”

“Podcasts are just an emergent form of communicating. It’s how the technology has evolved and is being used,” he said, adding that the video trailer for the podcast suggests police are on the right track. “The Aurora podcast is clearly an effort to use this new medium to engage with this new world with a legitimate end of solving a really nasty crime. To me, that is laudable.”

Listeners of all podcasts — including podcasts produced by police — should consider the source and think critically about what motivated the podcaster, McBride said. She noted that the Aurora Police Department has a “horrible” reputation nationwide in the wake of high-profile use-of-force incidents like the death of Elijah McClain.

The podcast, she said, is a “roundabout” and labor-intensive way of investigating the cold case.

“It makes me wonder if that is what their real motivation is, or if they are trying to change the narrative about the department, which is nationally known for a couple of notorious incidents,” she said.

She noted that investigative material made public through the podcast should also be made public to anyone who wants it.

“Officials are not supposed to play favorites with public records requests,” she said. “If they are making something public, they are supposed to make it public — and they can’t make it public just for themselves.”

Moylan expected the department would release additional materials about the Yasser case. He noted that the podcast — “The White Whale — The Chelsea Yasser Story,” launching June 29 — relied on staff time and resources and did not have any extra production budget.

‘The podcast got them hooked’

Police agencies producing their own true-crime podcasts is not unprecedented.

The New York Police Department has published a , exploring both notorious closed cases and unsolved homicides. The Newport Beach Police Department, in California, published a true-crime podcast in 2018 to try to track down a fugitive who was wanted for murder.

That podcast, dubbed included six 15-minute episodes. The police department launched it alongside a website where podcast listeners could leave tips about the fugitive and photos related to the case.

“The podcast got them hooked on it, and then they would go to the website and they could see what he looked like,” said Jennifer Manzella, a longtime employee at Newport Beach Police Department who spearheaded the project.

That received 1.2 million views between the podcast’s launch in September 2018 and the end of the year, she said. The man was arrested in 2019 after someone tipped off police that he was in Mexico, Manzella said.

She couldn’t say for sure that the podcast reached the tipster, but credited the effort for boosting publicity around the case and generating mainstream media coverage.

“The podcast worked hugely in their favor in that (the fugitive) knew we were actively looking for him,” she said. “He was in the news again, all the sudden. And his face was all over the place. He had to move more frequently.”

Manzella said her team intentionally gave the podcast a generic name so that they could use it on other cases in the future, but the agency has not yet produced another season. No other case has been the right fit, she said.

“It is much easier to justify spending a lot of staff time and resources on doing something that can’t be accomplished in any other way, or was an extraordinary need for the department,” she said. “In this case, finding (the suspect) was worth that additional push… There hasn’t been a parallel case where the assistance of the community would have had the same impact for us.”

The Denver Police Department has rolled out a over the last several months to try to educate Spanish-speaking residents on policing after discovering that some residents were afraid to attend police educational and outreach events in person during the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, spokesman Doug Schepman said.

The agency also publishes that feature interviews with investigators and victims’ families, though the series lacks the hallmarks of the true-crime genre.

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¶¶Òőap 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.