Mourners March from Aurora City Hall with Body of Boy Killed by Police

By Max Levy, Sentinel Staff Writer

surviving his encounter with police, but that the next best thing would be holding police accountable for the shooting. He said the group was demanding the release of all footage of the fatal shooting held by police, as well as an apology and letter of resignation from Acevedo.

So far, police have released the body-worn camera footage shot from the perspective of the two officers who confronted Richardson. It’s unclear what other video exists.

“What we can get is accountability,” Rathod said. “(Acevedo) misled you. He lied to you. He lied to this family.” He and others said they were primarily there to support Richardson’s family, who described the void left by Richardson’s death to those present.

saying that he didn’t think police were justified in firing at him, regardless of what the 14year-old had been doing.

Many called on the police chief to resign, including Rev. Thomas Mayes, who said the group could tolerate the discomfort of marching in the rain but not the consequences of more officer-involved shootings. He encouraged those assembled to remember the events of the shooting.

“Sometimes you die twice,” he said. “You die again when your name is no longer called. So, for this community and for this family, let’s never forget Jor’Dell Richardson and never stop calling his name.” gun that looked like a semiautomatic handgun.

Police reform activists marched down Alameda Avenue and demanded the resignation of Aurora’s interim Police Chief Art Acevedo on Friday, June 16, preceded by a hearse transporting the body of Jor’Dell Richardson, 14, who two weeks earlier was shot and killed by an Aurora officer.

The march began with a somber series of speeches on the west steps of city hall as light rain fell. “Clearly the sky is crying today,” said Richardson family attorney Siddhartha Rathod.

Once he was tackled by officer James Snapp, a struggle ensued and Richardson was fatally shot by a second officer, Roch Gruszeczka.

Laurie Littlejohn, the boy’s mother, criticized Acevedo for characterizing Richardson as a “thug” and said she was still struggling with the knowledge that she would never see her son go to prom, graduate from high school or start a family.

The crowd of about 200 people chanted Richardson’s name and other slogans, including “Black lives matter,” “jail all killer cops” and “up with the people, down with the police,” as they marched west from City Hall to Abilene Street, before turning around and marching back the way they came.

A hearse carrying Richardson’s body and a pickup truck full of protest organizers led the procession down Alameda, while police vehicles shadowed the march and blocked traffic to accommodate the procession. Some passing drivers honked to show support, while others gestured angrily at the crowd.

Acevedo, primarily through two news conferences, has painted a picture of a chaotic arrest, where police rushed into the aftermath of an armed robbery. Since then, the chief has been criticized for inaccurately describing events, with critics saying he has tried to manipulate the narrative to justify the shooting. Acevedo has said he was not being deceitful.

Richardson was killed June 1 after police say the boy fled the scene of an armed robbery while in possession of a pellet

Rathod said Friday to those gathered on the steps of city hall that the best outcome would have been Richardson

“I loved my baby with everything in me,” she said. “I have to live with an empty room.”

Signs carried by the group bore the name of the Denver chapter of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, and organizers wore T-shirts with PSL logos. Activist Tim Hernandez told the crowd that the march was organized jointly by a “variety of a coalition of folks.”

Responding to comments made during the march, the police department noted in a statement that there are multiple open investigations concerning the incident, which it described as “tragic.”

Richardson’s older brother, Anton, also spoke and called Richardson a “beautiful soul,”

“The department continues focusing on leaving no stone

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Jor’Dell Richardson

Continued from page 23 unturned to determine the facts surrounding the use of deadly force by a member of our department, and whether or not the force was objectively reasonable and lawful,” the agency wrote in an email Saturday. “Due to these investigations, the department continues to be unable to make additional statements and encourages others to refrain from making further comments as well.”

The march capped off a week of questions from community members and the media concerning the shooting and how it was initially described by Acevedo. For several days after the incident, the chief told the public that Richardson was in possession of a firearm rather than a pellet gun which only resembled a firearm.

He corrected his previous statements June 9, later saying that he identified the item as a gun while looking at it and that he was not told Richardson only had a pellet gun until he asked Investigations Division Chief Mark Hildebrand for an update June 8.

Activists accused the chief of lying to deflect criticism from officers and negatively characterize Richardson. Acevedo has said he would have had “nothing to gain” by lying to the public.

Neither Acevedo nor other police officials previously shared that Gruszeczka was the subject of a lawsuit settled for $100,000 in February. The officer was accused of racially profiling and wrongfully arresting a Black man last year during an arrest in an apartment parking lot.

Police have also said they are limited in the amount of information and evidence they can release while an investigation into the shooting is being conducted by the 18th Judicial District’s Critical Incident Response Team, along with an internal affairs probe led by the department itself and the armed robbery case involving the other youths who were allegedly with Richardson. critically evaluate not only the internal investigation conducted by APD and the use of force itself, but also the Department’s efforts in continuous improve and others at a community meeting June 14, the meeting was postponed at the last minute due to an incident near the start of the event.

Before the meeting began, city officials screened the bodyworn camera footage of the shooting of Richardson while the family of Richardson, who had opted not to watch the footage, were waiting in a nearby room.

During the screening, around the moment in the video when Richardson is shot and starts crying out for help, a child opened the door to the screening room, which led to the family unexpectedly hearing the final words of Richardson, according to Maisha Fields, daughter of state Sen. Rhonda Fields.

Fields said the family became upset and decided to leave, after which most of the officials also left. A few, including Aurora Rev. Reid Hettich, co-chair of the Aurora Community Advisory Council and lead pastor of Mosaic Church of Aurora, stayed behind.

At a community meeting on Wednesday, June 14, some members of the public asked how many independent entities were monitoring the police department’s response to the shooting and questioned the role of IntegrAssure, which was hired last year to monitor the department’s compliance with a list of mandatory reforms drafted following the death of Elijah McClain.

Jeff Schlanger, the founder and president of IntegrAssure, later wrote in an email to the Sentinel that the actions of the police department would be evaluated by the firm as the probes into the shooting were completed.

“Once the investigations into the tragedy of Jor’Dell Richardson’s death are concluded, the Monitor Team will ment and transparency,” he wrote.

“The relevant findings and recommendations will be published in an upcoming report. There will, no doubt, be valuable lessons to learn from this tragic incident that will serve to better the Department as we move forward.”

Schlanger said the department needed to learn as much as possible from the incident and question what could have been done differently to have potentially avoid the shooting. He also said the department needed to “strive for maximum possible transparency” when sharing information about officer-involved shootings.

While representatives of IntegrAssure were scheduled to meet with Richardson’s family as well as local elected officials

The council was created last year to act as a liaison between the community and the police monitoring team, though Hettich said the group has come to see its responsibilities as including evaluating the conduct of police and the monitoring team.

When asked how the council was ensuring that the response to the shooting was being handled transparently, he said the group had met with police department representatives the night before, asked questions about the incident and was “fairly critical” of the response by police.

He also said he viewed the council’s role as helping police communicate information to the public as well as facilitating cooperation between police and city management. However, he described the shooting as “outside of the consent decree,” even though it has generated criticism related to transparency and bias.

“But I know for a fact that the consent decree monitor team has been very engaged in this, and they have identified it as one of the key issues that they will be watching and investigating as this moves forward,” Hettich said.

He said police have told the council that the internal affairs probe could be completed in as little as a few months but pointed out that the official response to other high-profile cases, such as the officerinvolved death of Elijah McClain, is still underway.

Activists who attended the meeting took the opportunity to criticize the response by APD, describing the Richardson shooting as part of a pattern of misconduct by Aurora police.

Jenny Hill, a public health worker active in the Aurora area, said officer Gruszeczka’s agitated behavior during his encounter with Richardson was representative of a culture where officers aren’t encouraged to regulate their emotions.

“On this video, that law enforcement officer was just absolutely over the top, and training isn’t going to fix that,” she said. “And consent decrees don’t fix that. We have law enforcement that is much more likely to shoot you than to get facts and let you live.”

While Acevedo has not explicitly described the shooting as justified, during the department’s June 9 news conference, he showed reporters a still photo from officers’ bodyworn camera footage that he said showed Richardson reaching into his waistband for the pellet gun before he was tackled.

The department did not send a representative to Wednesday’s meeting and police officials did not speak at Friday’s march. . Editor’s note: This story is powered by COLab, the Colorado News Collaborative.