By Robert Weller, Associated Press
July 12, 2003

Lawyer Johnnie Cochran vowed Saturday to bring justice to the family of a developmentally disabled 15-year-old boy fatally shot by a policeman.

"We can turn justice right side up and we're going to do that," Cochran said from the pulpit of Denver's Macedonia Baptist Church, where Paul Childs' funeral was held. "We have to make sure there are no other funerals like this."

Moments later, Mayor Wellington Webb, whose city Cochran plans to sue, took the pulpit in the church on Martin Luther King Boulevard to promise a quick and public investigation of the shooting that has angered the black community and civil libertarians.

Webb noted he had worked with the developmentally disabled as a social worker, and grew up in the same neighborhood as Childs. "I met your son at Smith (school)," Webb told Helen Childs.

Mayor praised black leaders for helping contain anger in the community, and avoiding any disturbances.

"Do we need to review what happened, yes. Do we need to do it soon, yes. Do we need to do it openly, yes," said Webb.

Despite his mental challenges, he was in his age class at East High School, where teachers said he always wore a smile. He was voted most popular boy at his elementary school.

Childs had a certificate from police for taking part in the anti-drug DARE program. Webb's wife, who spoke after him, said she supported Cochran and made a thinly veiled reference to the teen having trusted police. She also supported a call for rewriting a Colorado law that gives police considerable discretion to use deadly force when they feel threatened.

Over the past decade, 14 people have died under questionable circumstances at the hands of Denver police and prosecutors have cleared the officers every time.

Childs, who was black, was shot four times July 5 in the doorway of his home after his family called 911 and said the boy was threatening his mother with a knife. Officer James Turney, who fired on him, said the boy refused to drop the knife.

After speaking, Cochran shook hands with Webb, a longtime friend, and both sat in the fourth row next to Mayor-elect John Hickenlooper. The crisis comes as Webb, Denver's first black mayor, is preparing to leave office after three terms.

The Childs family hired Cochran, who said witnesses said the teen never threatened police. Besides winning an acquittal for O.J. Simpson, Cochran won an $18 million judgment from Chicago for the wrongful police shooting of a black woman.

Turney was suspended after the shooting in what officials would only say was an unrelated matter. Newspaper reports said the day before Turney shot Childs his ex-mother-in-law called police to report that he was threatening her.

The call came in during the Fourth of July weekend and went to voice mail.

Turney last year was cleared by the department in the shooting death of an 18-year-old hearing impaired youth, also black, who allegedly was wielding a pocketknife.

Black activists and civil rights groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, have called for an independent investigation.

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