By Elise Schmelzer
The Denver Post
DENVER — Three former Aurora police officers failed to persuade the city’s civil service commission that they should be allowed to rejoin the department after posing for smiling pictures at the memorial site for Elijah McClain, re-enacting a chokehold used on McClain in his last conscious moments, and laughing at the selfies.
The officers’ conduct was inappropriate, callous and caused catastrophic harm to the department’s already fraught relationship with marginalized communities, as well as direct pain to McClain’s family, the Aurora Civil Service Commission said in its letters explaining its decision to uphold the officers’ firings.
The photos came to the attention of department leaders and the public in late June, as protests about racist policing and the killings of unarmed Black people by police continued in Denver, Aurora and across the country.
“These events did not occur in a historical vacuum,” the members of the Civil Service Commission wrote in their findings, released Tuesday. “Viewed against the backdrop of tense race relations in Aurora following Elijah McClain’s death ... and the Black Lives Matter movement, the disclosure of the texted photo and Officer (Jason) Rosenblatt’s thoughtless response caused extraordinary harm.”
Two of the officers, Erica Marrero and Kyle Dittrich, posed for photos on Oct. 20, 2019, when they and another officer, Jaron Jones, mimicked a chokehold that was used on McClain before he died in Aurora police custody. The officers, on duty at the time, took the photos near the spot where about two months earlier other Aurora officers violently detained and choked McClain and a paramedic injected the 23-year-old with ketamine.
McClain, who committed no crime, died Aug. 30, 2019, after falling into a coma and being declared braindead.
Dittrich then texted the photos to Rosenblatt, who was one of the officers who detained McClain the night he died. Rosenblatt responded to the text by writing “Ha ha.”
Aurora police Chief Vanessa Wilson in July fired all three of the officers. Jones resigned from the department before he could be fired and therefore could not appeal.
” Aurora police officers are expected to serve our community with dignity, respect and a sense of humanity,” Wilson said in a statement Tuesday. “I am pleased with the Civil Service Commission’s decision to uphold my discipline of Mr. Dittrich, Ms. Marrero and Mr. Rosenblatt.”
Rosenblatt, Dittrich and Marrero quickly appealed their firings to the Aurora Civil Service Commission, which held hearings for the officers over the past few weeks. The hearings were not open to the public. The three officers apologized for their actions at the hearings but did not dispute the facts, instead arguing that the punishment was too harsh and the investigation and disciplinary process too hasty, according to the commission’s findings.
Wilson became aware of the photos and Rosenblatt’s response on June 25 after an officer reported hearing about the photos, according to the commission’s findings. The chief immediately initiated an investigation and eight days later fired all three officers. Despite the unusually fast disciplinary process, the commission found that there were no factual errors that would undermine its findings.
Marrero and Dittrich told the commission that they took the photos to cheer up one of their friends, Nathan Woodyard, who was one of the officers who violently detained McClain. Woodyard did not respond to the text but later told Dittrich that the photos were inappropriate, according to the civil service commission.
“The commission simply does not understand how a photo depicting a chokehold at the Elijah McClain memorial could possibly be expected to help Officer Woodyard,” the decision letter states.
When Rosenblatt received the texted photos, he didn’t even know who sent them but assumed it was someone within the department, he told the commission. He said he responded with a laugh not to encourage the conversation, but the commission said that didn’t make sense.
“The likely interpretation of someone who saw the photo and Officer Rosenblatt’s “Ha ha” response was that Officer Rosenblatt was laughing at Elijah McClain’s death,” the commission wrote.
Rosenblatt is the only police officer involved in the death of McClain to face discipline. The other two officers who detained McClain, Randy Roedema and Woodyard, remain on the force.
Three investigations into McClain’s death are ongoing — one at each level of government. A city-led investigation into police and paramedics’ roles in McClain’s death is expected to be released later this month.
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