Elijah McClain should be alive today, the sound of his violin filling his house with the music he loved to play. Instead, his murder at the hands of police deprived the world of his joy and his friends and family his love. Another trial is coming for the paramedics who injected ketamine into Elijah’s body. His sadly predictable and easily preventable murder adds his name to the already too-long list of Black lives taken by a system that continues to operate from a place of entrenched White supremacy.
The partial guilty verdict of the two officers accused of his murder is yet another miscarriage of justice in a long string of miscarriages of justice. While there is some closure in the conviction of Aurora police officer Randy Roedema, Elijah’s mother, Sheneen McClain, said it best, "[...] Roedema wasn’t alone in what he did to my son. He had accomplices. He had buddies with badges that are all bullies. So it’s not a victory for me. This is not a victory for me at all. This is not a victory for the human race. This is not a victory for justice [...] Right is right, and wrong is wrong. And when you continue to allow the type of injustice that happened to my son, there is so much to work on."
At CPE, we will continue our work to make policing less violent, less deadly, and less omnipresent. Until the day of true Black liberation comes, and people like Elijah can safely walk home from a store, we will not stop in our quest to bring scientific rigor to redesigning systems of harm into systems of true safety. Our prayers remain with the McClain family and all the families who have suffered loss at the hands of a violent system more focused on punishment than care.