Officer Nathan Woodyard, then a 30-year-old who had served as a Marine for five years and with the Police Department for nearly three years, was the first to arrive at 10:43 p.m., followed by Officer Jason Rosenblatt, also 30 at the time, who had been on the force for two years, and Randy Roedema, then 37, who had served eight years as a Marine, six years with the Denver Sheriff’s Department and five years in Aurora.
Woodyard stepped from his police vehicle and repeatedly told McClain to stop. McClain did not. In seconds, Woodyard put his hands on him. “Stop right there. Stop. Stop,” he said. “I have the right to stop you because you’re being suspicious.” McClain, who had never been arrested, responded that he was simply trying to go home. “Please respect the boundaries that I am speaking,” he said, his voice cracking. “This isn’t going to go well,” one of the officers told him.
Much of what happened next would not be seen because all three of the officers’ body cameras dislodged or deactivated, though some audio could still be heard. The exchange rapidly escalated as the three officers forcibly moved McClain to a nearby grassy area. “He grabbed your gun, dude!” Roedema told Rosenblatt. (According to the indictment, Rosenblatt would later say that he did not feel any contact with his service weapon.)
The three officers tackled McClain. Woodyard grasped him from behind in a carotid hold, a controversial law-enforcement maneuver similar to a chokehold in which the officer’s arms, locked around a person’s neck, are used to apply pressure to the carotid artery in order to restrict blood to the brain and render the person unconscious. “Is he out?” an officer could be heard asking. One of them eventually recovered his body camera, which revealed McClain on the ground, lying on his side with his hands cuffed behind his back, moaning. A K-9 officer, Matthew Green, arrived and threatened to unleash his police dog to attack McClain.
“The officers’ statements on the scene and in subsequent recorded interviews suggest a violent and relentless struggle,” an investigation by an independent panel would later find. “The limited video and the audio from the body-worn cameras reveal Mr. McClain surrounded by officers, all larger than he, crying out in pain, apologizing, explaining himself and pleading with the officers.” The investigation found that the officers “can be heard telling Mr. McClain to ‘stop,’ ‘stop, dude,’ ‘stop fighting’ and ‘dude, just stop fighting.’ They described his behavior as ‘violent,’ ‘fight[ing]’ and ‘struggling’ and repeatedly remarked on his ‘incredible strength,’ ‘crazy strength’ and ‘superior strength.’ The vast majority of this treatment occurred after Mr. McClain was handcuffed and lying on the ground.”