A bill crafted partly in response to the death of Elijah McClain that places limits on when paramedics can sedate people with ketamine is on the desk of Gov. Jared Polis for his consideration. Yet House Bill 1251 faces ongoing opposition from police, fire and emergency services groups. Supporters say it will ban paramedics from using the powerful drug in situations where officers wrongfully seek to subdue people.
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Colorado bill would limit ketamine use by paramedics, police
PATTY NIEBERG, Associated Press/Report for America
May 24, 2021
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DENVER (AP) A Colorado bill aims to limit the use of ketamine in law enforcement encounters, almost two years after the death of Elijah McClain, a Black man who was injected with the drug while under arrest in suburban Denver in 2019.
The bill, which was passed on Monday by the state Senate Judiciary committee, would prohibit paramedics’ use of ketamine to “subdue, sedate, or chemically incapacitate” people in police custody if the situation is “absent a justifiable medical emergency.”
McClain, 23, was stopped by Aurora police officers responding to a 911 call about a suspicious person wearing a ski mask and waving his arms. Police put him in a chokehold and multiple officers pressed their body weight into him.
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Elijah McKnight (left) and Jeremiah Axtell have something in common with Elijah McClain: paramedics in Colorado sedated them with ketamine during altercations with police.
Rep. Leslie Herod’s bill is a response to the death of Elijah McClain and comes after KUNC revealed more than 900 ketamine sedations for excited or agitated people around the state in 2.5 years.
The alleyways of Denver’s River North neighborhood are an explosion of color. Expressions of joy, love and social awareness are painted across the brick walls. Elijah McKnight and Jeremiah Axtell are here searching for a mural, but they can’t find it.
In September, amid swirling political controversy surrounding a death in police custody and other high-profile cases, the city council of Aurora, Colo., did something the EMS community might find bewildering: It banned the prehospital use of ketamine.
The resolution, driven by council member Curtis Gardner but passed unanimously, prevents paramedics with Aurora Fire Rescue and Falck Rocky Mountain from using the drug pending completion of a review prompted by the August 2019 death of Elijah McClain a case that drew intensified scrutiny following the 2020 killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.
Officers in the case responded to a 9-1-1 report of a “sketchy,” possibly agitated subject wearing a ski mask and ended up struggling with McClain, a 23-year-old Black man, ultimately using a carotid hold that knocked him out. When he regained consciousness, paramedics sedated him with ketamine. McClain then went into cardiac arrest on the way to the hospital and died a few days late