Elijah McClain

This is how it started.  Elijah was walking home from the store:

Elijah McClain walking home from the store. He's wrapped up in a heavy coat because he was very slight/slender (5'6" tall and about 140#) and, on this particular night, very cold.  He IS wearing a face covering to keep warm

At the time, Elijah worked as a massage therapist in Aurora, Colorado.  On this particular night, he'd gone to a local convenience store to pick up an ice tea for his brother.  At 10:30 PM, Mountain Time, August 19, 2019, someone called 911 to report a suspicious person, "wearing a mask and waving his hands."  

Likely, he was waving his hands to keep warm... just a hunch.  The mask, again, to keep his face warm.
His sister later told the local news station there, he, "had anemia and would sometimes get cold."  Makes sense.
Police body-cam footage of the event didn't surface until late November 2019. Why?

On the footage, Elijah can be heard asking officers about why he is being stopped. He's in a choke-hold (a carotid hold - in order to cut off blood to the brain), tells them his house is right there.  He sobs, vomits and apologizes, saying, "I just can't breathe correctly."

These were the final moments of young Elijah McClain's brief life here on Earth.

Paramedics arrive, take Elijah to the hospital.  

En route, Elijah goes into cardiac arrest and he dies three days later.  

How does a walk to a convenience store on a chilly night in August turn into the death of another Black person? How does that happen?

 And this is how we will remember our young Elijah McClain:

Mural by Thomas Detour Evans

Nationwide Law Enforcement Excessive-Force Database

It sounds very “official” and important, right?  Even overdue.  Many policing organizations and jurisdictions already utilize this tool and the information contained therein.

Sounds great.  Sounds like a positive point at which to start.

But… it’s not enough.  It will never be enough. 

How many African-Americans, Black people, people of any color have to give their lives in order for law enforcement officers, police officers, state troopers, county sheriffs to do the right thing?   

Rayshard Brooks is the latest.  Just a few weeks ago it was George Floyd.

Banning one single move, a chokehold, is a start, but right now those moves require mandates and suggestions.

That’s a frame from the police bodycam of the Atlanta officer administering a breathalyzer test on Mr. Brooks, after that same officer already knew who he was dealing with.  He was patted down and no weapons were found, so, Mr. Brooks was unarmed.

The ensuing moments resulted in Rayshard being tased and subsequently shot in the back. He died on scene.

These are the two officers, now charged with murder and aggravated assault:

Neither officer was ever in any imminent danger, as scene in bodycam or surveillance videos, so, they got to go home to their respective families.

Rayshard Brooks was denied that.

The charges came rather quickly within a few days, and hopefully justice will not be displaced or lost on these two – Mr. Brooks deserves justice.  His family and friends deserve justice.  Moving forward, we, as a nation, deserve justice.

Are policing reforms needed and long overdue?  Absolutely.

George Floyd wasn’t placed in a chokehold, but he was pinned down, with a knee on his neck for almost 9 minutes.  EMTs arrived after those 9 minutes, and Mr. Floyd was pronounced dead while en route to the hospital.

Derek Chauvin, who pressed his knee on Floyd's neck for nearly nine minutes, was charged with second-degree murder, and the three other officers on scene -- Thomas Lane, Tou Thao and J. Alexander Kueng -- have been charged with aiding and abetting second-degree murder.

Officer Thao, it should be noted, stood by, actually keeping bystanders from interfering with a police investigation.  

Left to right: Derek Chauvin, J. Alexander Kueng, Thomas Lane and Tou Thao

So, pretty easy to see why, as good as it sounds, that database tracking system just doesn’t begin to scratch the surface of the systemic racism occurring regularly, daily by the men and women in blue.

Solutions?  For starters, reaching out to those overlooked and under-served populations – Latinx, Asians, Indigenous, Blacks, and Hispanics.  Making a concerted effort to recruit them into your ranks.  More foot patrols involving community policing.  Involving communities in your decision making processes. 

We can do this list all day, but for me, bottom line, those changes have to come from within that field and recognize that systemic racism exists, Black Lives Matter.