Colorado Gov. Jared Polis has signed off on stronger regulations for law enforcement officers’ use of prone restraint, the controversial but common police hold used on Elijah McClain.
The new law, passed as House Bill 1372, defines prone restraint — when a person is handcuffed or pinned on their stomach — as a use of force in state statute. That means the hold’s misuse by police would open that officer to existing civil and criminal penalties.
The law also requires law enforcement agencies in Colorado to adopt policies on the use of prone restraint by July 1, 2025, and to post them on their websites.
Officers must be then trained on those policies by July 1, 2026; the rules must describe when officers should call for medical assistance and when they should move a person out of the prone restraint position.
The bill’s original version would have banned the use of prone restraint unless officers could also justify the use of deadly force. But opposition from law enforcement, who argued that prone restraint was a necessary and routine tool, sparked a rewrite.
Research indicates that prone restraint can limit breathing and heart function, particularly if an officer puts pressure on a restrained person’s back. The safety of the technique has been criticized amid national scrutiny of law enforcement’s uses of force.
The legislation was sponsored this year by Denver Democratic Reps. Leslie Herod and Steven Woodrow, along with fellow Democratic Sens. Rhonda Fields and Julie Gonzales.
The new law builds on a sweeping police accountability bill passed in June 2020 as demonstrations across the nation protested the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. McClain had died nearly a year earlier in Aurora, after police and paramedics forcibly restrained him and injected him with ketamine.
His mother, Sheneen McClain, testified in favor of the law before it passed the legislature in May.
“My son just wanted to sit up so that he could breathe better, but also to remove the blood and vomit that was filling up in his lungs,” she told lawmakers in April. “All the officers there that night my son was murdered regard their training as the ultimate truth, without a conscience.”
Elijah McClain was one of 14 Coloradans who died between 2012 and 2021 after law enforcement officers held them in a prone restraint position, according to an analysis by the Associated Press. More than 700 Americans died under similar circumstances during that time period, the AP found.
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