By Brendan O’Brien
(Reuters) – Colorado’s Attorney General found the police department in the Denver suburb of Aurora has routinely violated state and federal law by engaging in racially biased policing and the use of excessive force, a report released on Wednesday showed.
The Aurora Police Department has been under state and federal investigations after the August 2019 death of Elijah McClain, a 23-year-old Black man who died after three policemen subdued him and paramedics injected him with the sedative ketamine. The officers and paramedics were charged on Sept. 1.
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said in announcing the findings of the 14-month investigation that his office is seeking a consent decree with the police department in Aurora, a city of 369,000 people, 15 miles (24 km) east of Denver.
The investigation found “racial disparities, especially with regard to Black people in nearly every significant facet of police contact with the community,” he said. The department “treated people of color and Black individuals in particular differently than their white counterparts.”
U.S. police departments have come under scrutiny after George Floyd, a Black man, died when a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck in May 2020. That incident fueled one of the largest protest movements ever seen in the United States, with daily demonstrations against police brutality and racism.
Weiser said he strongly encouraged the Aurora Police Department to enter a consent decree, an agreement that will require it to make policing, organizational and cultural changes while under independent oversight. Aurora Police officials were not immediately available for comment.
The report said investigators found Aurora police arrested and used force against Blacks to a much greater extent than the population as a whole. Racially discriminatory policing violates Colorado and U.S. laws.
Investigators also found the department repeatedly engaged in unlawful and unconstitutional uses of force.
(Reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Chicago; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
