Here's a novel use of an undercover police officer: Plant the undercover inside a courtroom during jury selection and spy on prospective jurors. bit.ly/3V0maoX
This happened during Elijah McClain's wrongful death trial last year in Colorado. McClain, a 23-year-old Black man, was killed after being forcibly detained by police and injected with a lethal dose of ketamine. Aurora officer Randy Roedema was found guilty of negligent homicide.
Before opening arguments, Prospective Juror 14 was dismissed. Reporter @allisonsherry of @COPublicRadio found out why after her news org petitioned the judge to unseal transcripts.
It turns out that Aurora planted an undercover cop in the courtroom. That undercover claimed to overhear Juror Number 14 say over the phone, in Spanish: "I hate the police." The jury told the judge he did not recall saying that, but was dismissed as a juror.
McClain's death sparked protests in the Denver area in 2019. After George Floyd's murder in 2020, Denver-area protests called attention to both Floyd's and McClain's deaths. Three police officers and two paramedics were later charged for their alleged roles in McClain's death.
Aurora PD is a central actor in the racial justice protests in Colorado in 2020. An Aurora detective introduced a violent felon named Mickey Windecker to the FBI. Windecker infiltrated the protest groups, became a leader, and encouraged violence. bit.ly/3YGi3gs
With Windecker's help, the FBI tried unsuccessfully to entice a young Black activist into a harebrained conspiracy to assassinate the state's attorney general. @reveal recently excerpted this story from my podcast series "Alphabet Boys." bit.ly/49dboQG
Windecker also provided information that sparked an FBI investigation in Colorado Springs, where a pink-haired undercover cop ran a "honeypot" operation and tried to entice activists into engaging in gun-running conspiracies. bit.ly/40Gq32b