Two Colorado paramedics were convicted of criminally negligent homicide in the 2019 death of Elijah McClain, a young unarmed Black man whose case drew national attention and forced public safety reforms in the city where he lived and died.
A mostly white jury found the paramedics, Peter Cichuniec and Jeremy Cooper, guilty of a more serious charge they faced. But the jury split on two lesser assault charges: They cleared Mr. Cooper of both assault charges, but convicted Mr. Cichuniec of one of those charges, second-degree assault for the unlawful administration of drugs.
The men had injected Mr. McClain with the powerful sedative ketamine while he was in police custody in Aurora, Colo., which doctors said left him near death. He died days later in the hospital.
The trial was a rare prosecution of paramedics, and raised the question of the role that medical personnel play in police encounters and whether they could be held criminally responsible for their actions.
In order for you to sedate someone, they must already be under control right? Or do you jump into the dog pile with a syringe full of ketamine?
Furthermore, you’re unlikely to have been there for the initial encounter so who are you to judge whether someone is trying to hurt police versus someone who is being assaulted by the police after having committed no crime and is only trying to protect themselves from a bunch of roided-out criminals? These fights often involve police kneeling on people’s arms and legs, immobilizing them completely, while shouting “give me your hands” or “stop resisting” so that it appears to bystanders that it’s a two-way fight and not just a motionless person getting the shit beat out of them. I can’t count the number of bodycam videos I’ve seen where you can clearly see the ‘suspect’s’ hands pinned down by other police while being punched in the face for not putting their hands behind their back.