David Zalubowski/AP Photo
Demonstrators marched down Interstate 225 on Saturday in Aurora, Colorado, to protest the death last August of 23-year-old Elijah McClain.
In New York and Kentucky last week, black progressives Mondaire Jones, Jamaal Bowman, and possibly even Charles Booker (who is in the lead at time of publication) swung come-from-behind victories, toppling well-funded opponents in the race’s closing weeks. Those campaigns, no doubt, were buoyed by the nationwide protests against police brutality. Jones, Bowman, and Booker all vocally supported the protest movement and participated in local rallies.
In each case, local instances of police brutality—Eric Garner in New York, Breonna Taylor and David McAtee in Louisville—have already played a role in meaningfully swinging the election outcomes. What, then, might be the impact of the case of Elijah McClain, the 23-year-old African American who was killed by police in Aurora, Colorado, last August?
Aurora police apprehended McClain as he was walking home from a convenience store and put him in a chokehold, before first responders injected him with ketamine to subdue him further. He then had a heart attack on the way to the hospital, was declared brain-dead, and died days later. The police were subsequently cleared of wrongdoing; body cam footage from the incident was suppressed for months. McClain’s case is now squarely in the national limelight, with almost four million signatures on a change.org petition demanding the offending officers be taken off the force, and the case investigated fully. His name has become the newest in rallying cries for police reform, exacerbated by the Aurora PD’s decision to bust up an afternoon violin vigil in riot gear on Sunday.
Colorado, meanwhile, has an election on Tuesday, with a tightening U.S. Senate primary between former governor John Hickenlooper and former state House Speaker Andrew Romanoff. It’s possible the McClain case could play a role in a Senate primary that has, to this point, focused little on policing. McClain’s story, and its excruciating details, has quickly turned Denver into the newest urban hub, following Minneapolis, New York City, and Atlanta, in the campaign for police reform and the end of qualified immunity, as national attention on the case escalates.
Of course, both Hickenlooper and Romanoff are white men, breaking from the pattern of those aforementioned races. And both sounded a similar note in response to Gov. Jared Polis’s recent appointment of a special prosecutor to reopen the case. “Elijah McClain should be alive today. Nothing we do now will make that possible, or ease his family’s pain … It requires us to end police brutality, to eradicate discrimination, to remedy centuries of oppression. It requires us not only to say Black Lives Matter but to act that way,” said Romanoff in a statement issued to the Prospect. “Elijah McClain should be alive today. My heart is heavy for him and his family. His case must be reopened. He and his family deserve justice. And we’ve got to work to increase accountability and oversight to end systemic racism in our criminal justice system,” tweeted Hickenlooper, also in support of Polis’s move.
Of the two, the McClain case hits closer to home for Hickenlooper, who served as mayor of Denver from 2003 to 2011, before going on to become the state’s governor. And as a municipal executive, Hickenlooper’s track record with the Denver police has newfound relevance.
As mayor of Denver, Hickenlooper’s reputation on policing is decidedly mixed. As Akela Lacy and Aida Chávez reported in The Intercept, Hickenlooper was, like many Democratic mayors, a zealous expander of the police budget. In fact, he allocated an additional $30 million a year for the Denver Police Department during his first three years in office. But he was also particularly enthusiastic about broken-windows-style policing, an aggressive and often highly racialized approach that long predominated in New York City. In a 2006 city report advocating for that approach, Hickenlooper also praised a for-profit policing model. And he hired criminologist George Kelling, one of the pioneers of broken-windows theory, as a consultant to advise the DPD.
In Hickenlooper’s second term, the Denver police were embroiled in a high-profile brutality scandal. In 2009, Michael DeHerrera and his partner Shawn Johnson were brutally beaten by police, in an incident that was captured on one of the city’s surveillance cameras. Many suspected that DeHerrera and Johnson were targeted because of their sexuality; both are gay men. Police reports claimed that DeHerrera had lunged toward officers, necessitating their violent response, but security footage proved that to be false. And a poll conducted statewide at the time of the incident found that 10 percent of LGBTQ Coloradans had experienced some form of police brutality; for African Americans, and transgender people, the figure was twice that. The situation was damning enough that it necessitated the resignation of Denver Manager of Safety Ron Perea.
Hickenlooper, as mayor, declined to intervene in the brutality case entirely, effectively running out the clock until he vacated the office.
Hickenlooper, as mayor, declined to intervene in the brutality case entirely, effectively running out the clock until he vacated the office. It took until interim mayor Bill Vidal had taken over Hickenlooper’s post for the officers responsible, Randy Murr and Devin Sparks, to be fired. Incredibly, after almost a decade of court cases over their termination, a judge ruled that Murr and Sparks be reinstated in 2019. When the state’s supreme court refused to hear the case in March, it emerged that Murr and Sparks were eligible not only to return to the force, but to receive almost ten years of back pay.
At one point, Hickenlooper called for an FBI investigation into the case, but even at the time that was perceived by local media and activists as an empty and evasive gesture. According to Anthony DeHerrera, Michael’s father, Hickenlooper had no interest in the case. “We tried to talk to Hickenlooper right away, right after the incident [in 2009]. [The administration] just continually ignored us, never called us back, and he continually ignored us until he could use our situation for his own political gain, running for governor,” he told local news. DeHerrera’s father was a 20-year law enforcement veteran in nearby Pueblo at the time of the incident.
As governor, Hickenlooper’s record was slightly better on criminal justice, if not on policing. In 2012, he signed into law a bipartisan measure passed by the state legislature to require judicial hearings before any juvenile case can be moved to adult court. But even then, he did so with misgivings. “This is about as close as I’ve come to a veto without vetoing,” he told The Denver Post at the time.
By the time he ran for president this past year, criminal justice reform had become part of his platform. So Hickenlooper, like many Democrats, has moved at least slightly off the proactive crime and policing bent that was a defining feature of the Clinton-era Democratic Party. But his comments on the campaign trail, especially in recent weeks, have managed to stumble into awkwardness. He said “every life matters,” in response to a recent debate question about Black Lives Matter, for which he had to apologize. Then, a 2014 video surfaced in which he compared working with political staffers to being whipped aboard “an ancient slave ship,” eventually apologizing for that remark, too. Hickenlooper declined to respond to a request for comment as to his past advocacy for broken-windows policing and increasing Denver’s police budgets.
For the most part, the Colorado Senate race has been waged over climate, a high-priority issue for Democrats in the state and the issue on which the two candidates differ most greatly. Still, the fast-growing calls for action on the McClain case could play an increasing role as voters go to the polls on Tuesday.
