The Police Killed Elijah McClain: What Can BLM Really Do About It?

and we start with breaking news tonight
at 10:00 newly released body camera video from Aurora police is giving us new insight into the moments before Elijah McLean's August death speaking of video all three of their body cams fall off during the struggle you heard me correctly all three of the officers claimed that their body cameras quotes fall off now someone called police to report McLean as a suspicious man wearing a ski mask in waving his hands the 23 year old was walking home from a convenience store his family said he wore the ski mask because he was an emic and was often cold one of the questions so many people are asking why was Elijah mcclain detained by police in the first place he hadn't committed a crime Elijah McLean was walking on the sidewalk when officers arrived and continued walking as they told him to stop stop stop you because you're being suspicious we got 1,700 voicemails on our main phone number and our server only holds 1,700 voicemail Dave Young is the Adams County prosecutor in the Elijah mcclain case the man who did not file criminal charges against the officers involved in Maclean's death now 10 months later he's hearing about it is it going to have an impact on my decision and the answer is no I think they should have investigated more so you're saying if a pathologist doesn't give you a home run yes you never go forward with a case and by the way there was no injuries to him whatsoever yes but he's dead yeah if you want to say the forensic pathologist doesn't know what he's doing you could say that all you want no that's what you were saying to get away from my question you're saying they're no injuries the guy's dead so clearly things happen to him that were wrong mr. da I don't have any grounds to open up a new investigation but you could and certainly yeah I could I could send investigators out and open an investigation on anything but I've got to have a reason to do that and right now I don't have a reason police stopped him while he was walking they say he was resisting arrest so they put him in a carotid control hold and he passed out and then when paramedics arrived on scene they chose to administer the sedative ketamine something Aurora Fire says is standard protocol around our region a female cop holds an already complied Elijah while the paramedic injects at least 1,400 milligrams of ketamine into his neck which is visible on the coroner's report Steven Cena Chief Coroner says this is a normal dose of ketamine but while researching I found that 680 milligrams of ketamine is potentially lethal for someone who is 132 pounds Elisha weighed 140 pounds and this is why I hold not only row Dima Rosenblatt and Woodyard accountable but also the paramedic jeremy cooper and the female officer who held him down and the female officer who was flirting and laughing with other officers while elisha mclean lay dying on the ground stop stop right stop you because you're being suspicious police say the officers were put on leave and they are back on the job the department is still looking into use of force in this case one of the important roles of the mainstream media of the press is in drawing the public's attention to a problem however politics the sphere of real politics involving real legislation and real amendments to the Constitution are writing all new constitution real politics instead deals with solutions to problems those are two profoundly different things even though they're linked even though you may get them mixed up from time to time Elijah MacLean died on August 24th of 2009 I think it's fair to say that the real journalists were the people investigating the story nine months ago today I see an article from Cosmopolitan magazine was posted and Cosmopolitan magazine is telling you how you can protest his death how you can join in the wave of public outrage now the authors of that article are Cosmopolitan magazine I'm sure they only have good intentions I'm sure they think of themselves as activists and what they're doing in contributing to this wave of outrage resembles most of the commonly perceived activism in the year 2020 I don't think they'd stop to consider how what they're doing in publishing that article is really very different from true journalism and how it's very different from true activism who paid for Alijah McClane's lawyers I Google around for this stuff and I could see a vague mention of local activists sometimes you get mentions of church groups and you don't know I mean I think there were real activists involved in this case nine months ago and six months ago and so on I think there really was a struggle that directly involved his parents and family and those people and their stories are really important to know but because of the popularity of the slogan black lives matter somehow the actual organization of you know resistance on behalf of Elijah MacLean it's attributed to black lives matter the organization you know which is a unique organization founded by three women which has its own bank account and its own form 990 it exists legally and it has his own YouTube channel its own Twitter page and everything else too and googling around I can't find any evidence that black lives matter at the organization those three women that they were involved in this case or even though they knew about it six months ago and and not let's go I'm sure they know about it today for the same reasons that Cosmopolitan magazine knows about it and probably they will now do the same thing Cosmopolitan magazine is then I would expect within the next 48 hours the three co-founders of black lives matter will make public statements quite similar to what Cosmopolitan magazine did calling for donations encouraging you to get involved encouraging you to join the wave of outrage encourage you to join the current protests or quote-unquote activism as it's so cold now I sympathize but I think it's important to point out the gap between expectations and reality with black lives matters an organization many groups of donors have offered to pay millions of dollars in some cases more than ten million dollars in some cases more than a hundred million dollars to build black lives matter in the organization that they in their minds I desire it to be now the three founders of black lives matter that's not what they want and they've made that clear in interviews it's quite interesting what their response is to their newfound fame and in a sense their newfound fortune because they have all these donors offering to support them to support budgets of millions of dollars per year and they've stepped back from that and said no no that's not what they intend to do it okay interesting I think that most people would respond to my video up to this point by saying well these three women who happen to invent this catchphrase black lives matter who created this hashtag on Twitter how can you possibly expect them to know about and care about and get engaged with every single example of police brutality snuffing out a person's life or even narrow it down just noting oedema an african-american a black person's life how could they possibly know about this case in Colorado six months ago or nine months ago how can you expect them to know more than the people at CNN or cosmos magazine you know what happe well it's not that I expected them as individuals to know that it's not that expect more women as individuals the point was precisely that they made the decision to start a movement they made the decision to start an institution and to start receiving donations to build up that institution it's very easy to imagine black lives matter over the last three years having developed into an institution that was on top of all these cases that was directly involved with it was maybe even providing the money for the lawyers and what-have-you but that is today not what black lives matter is at all if you compare a multi-million dollar organization like petaa People for the Ethical Treatment animals to the reality of black lives matter black lives matter is as their own leaders and founders will stay to you a totally decentralized the loose affiliation of local chapters of activists of people who just know each other back and forth over Twitter and a case like Elijah MacLean shows that three years later and four years later after the beginning of this black lives matter hash tag catchphrase movement and institution they're still really is a need for an organization that has the depth as the resources has the lawyers and has the money to respond to an instance like this before Cosmopolitan magazine before CNN before the wave of outrage has started to actually get involved analyze that what the problem is and then to really lobby for to really propel to really be effective activists for the solution I think we're living through a period of history that cannot last long in which people look to the mainstream media for activism and that increasingly their notion of what an activist ought to be is kind of polluted by their contact with this increasingly insincere outraged culture that ultimately is just monetized by that mainstream media then at that time [Music]