The City of Aurora is trying to regain the public’s trust. How is it doing?

The City of Aurora’s Troubled Past

The report released by Weiser’s office demonstrated, “a consistent pattern of illegal behavior by Aurora Police.” Investigators found that Aurora Police have used force against people of color more than double the number of times than whites. Nearly half of the individuals whom Aurora Police used force against were Black, even though Black residents make up just 15% of the population in Aurora.

Perhaps one of the highest profile cases related to excessive force from Aurora Police is the death of Elijah McClain, a 23-year-old Black man who died in 2019 after the police in Aurora restrained him with a chokehold that has since been banned. The chokehold, known as a carotid hold, restricts blood to the brain and can lead to unconsciousness. Two years after McClain’s death, a grand jury indicted three police officers and two paramedics on charges including manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide.

McClain’s death sparked protests across the country and led to new legislation in Colorado.

In 2020, Colorado legislature passed the Enhance Law Enforcement Integrity bill. It requires local law enforcement to conduct data reporting about certain incidents and contacts with the public. The law also created a duty to report excessive use of force.

The attorney general’s office found that Aurora officers, however, were continuing to make stops without documenting them as the new law required.

[Related: 'This is not police work:' Aurora chief responds to violent video that led to officers' arrest]

When it comes to personnel, the report found that the police department’s hires failed to reflect the diversity of the city. Just 1.1% of Black applicants who met the minimum qualifications were offered a job, compared to 4.2% of white applicants.

“This level of racial winnowing can be observed at every step of the process, suggesting bias in Aurora’s recruitment and hiring process,” the AG’s office said.

Weiser recommended ongoing independent oversight to policies, training, record keeping and hiring.

“We want Aurora to succeed in these improvements,” Weiser said when the report was released.

These changes are not coming fast enough for prominent LGBTQ+ leader Christopher La Fleur. He recently canceled an art festival he was planning for the fall of 2022 because he wasn’t seeing enough deliberate actions to reform the police department.

Costing the Community

“How can we effect positive outcomes, if the very same people who are running a flawed system are the ones funding the so-called reform to the system?” asked La Fleur.

He is a founder of Aurora Pride and the owner of Christopher La Fleur Arts.

The event he had planned was called ARTSEE: Aurora. He was in conversations with two Aurora City Council members about the possibility of leading the festival, but he pulled the event before the city staff became involved.

There are a lot of factors tied to his decision, but he said the biggest issues for him are humanitarian.

“It’s about people,” La Fleur said. “How can I open the doors to the public knowing that so many community members are going to come to my event with existing trauma related to police brutality?”

Rocky Mountain PBS requested an interview with Police Chief Vanessa Wilson but the department declined. Instead, they pointed to “A New Way: Our Plan to Restore Trust.”

Aurora's Attempt to Regain Trust

“A New Way” is a plan the City of Aurora and the Aurora Police Department are working together on to restore trust in the community with a new way of policing.

The plan focuses on five key factors: operating, leadership, service, accountability and engagement.

In building the plan, the city hired a firm of national experts in civil rights and public safety, another firm to investigate the Elijah McClain case and created a community police task force. Each entity provided findings and recommendations.

Jason McBride, who is on the task force, said it took the group more than a year to come up with the list of recommendations it submitted in the summer of 2021. Neither the city nor police department have gotten back to them, McBride said.

“I don't think they took us seriously,” said McBride, “I think the whole idea of setting up the community police task force was to improve public relations between the community and the Aurora police in light of the Elijah McClain story.”

Ryan Luby, a spokesperson with the City of Aurora, told Rocky Mountain PBS that over the last two years, the Aurora Police Department has received several recommendations from different sources.

“APD was already in the process of instituting, or already had implemented, some of the recommended changes,” he said.

Luby provided several examples, including the department’s ban of carotid holds and chokeholds. Currently, Luby said, APD is incorporating community voices into the development of a new use of force policy and creating recruitment strategies that help the agency attract officers with underrepresented backgrounds.

“Diversity, Equity and Inclusion training for officers is also underway,” he said.

Updates on “A New Way” are documented on the city’s website.

The site shows some parts of the plan are completed while others are still in progress. 

One of the updates slotted for 2022 is a Police Monitor Division. The new division will have three staff members: a monitor, an investigator and an administrator. The cost of the new division would be $442,779. Functions include monitoring investigations into complaints, publicly reporting on patterns of complaints and community outreach. The Police Monitor Division will report to city management.

La Fleur is skeptical the new division will make a difference.

“For me, there’s already an inherent conflict of interest there,” said La Fleur. “This office is a city government office and so there’s very little, in my opinion, oversight when the city is the one who controls their funding.”

One initiative that is getting high praise from council members, however, is the Aurora Mobile Response Team.

In 2021, the city launched the Aurora Mobile Response Team. It handles low intensity calls for service and provides a range of resources for people in crisis.

“This pilot program is seeing significant success in providing alternative ways to address crisis intervention and is wholly embraced by the police department,” said Luby. 

2022 Outlook and the City's Budget

For 2022, the City of Aurora is working with a $983.3 million budget, an increase of $63.3 million from the 2021 budget. The growth, the budget read, “provided the city a unique opportunity to fund a variety of items that have historically been underfunded.”

The Aurora Police Department makes up the largest share — about 30% — of the general fund budget with more $136.7 million allocated to the department.

The Aurora Police Department’s public information officer told Rocky Mountain PBS that their budget allocated $338,000 to its psych services, which includes its mental health resources. The weapons budget, meanwhile, is $950,000.

City lawmakers also approved an $8,000 bonus for all uniformed officers, on top of the $2,000 bonus all city workers are receiving. The vote was along ideological lines with conservative and right-leaning members Françoise Bergan, Curtis Gardner, Danielle Jurinsky, Angela Lawson, Steve Sundberg and Dustin Zvonek approving the bonus and left-leaning members Alison Coombs, Juan Marcano, Ruben Medina and Crystal Murillo opposing it.

The $8,000 bonus for the hundreds of police officers is coming from the American Rescue Plan Act, federal money intended to alleviate the impact of COVID-19. There is a section in the ARPA that includes employee retention credit.

During the Jan. 10, 2022 council meeting, Coombs said this additional bonus puts five times more value on the police than everyone else on staff, which would be demoralizing for other departments that were also working overtime due to inadequate staffing.

Coombs also pointed out that although there was flexibility in the ARPA funds, it was intended for COVID-19 and said, “the police were not the most exposed to COVID.” She suggested Aurora Fire and wastewater workers were the most impacted. “So this type of distribution made it appear as though the ARPA funds were a piggy bank to be used for political aims rather than looking at the funding for City-wide needs across the board as a way to ensure a well-managed City,” Coombs said.

Both Jurinsky and Zvonek said the decision wasn’t about police versus other departments, but rather about the needs of the community. Jurinsky reminded the council of the city’s obligation to employ at least two uniformed officers per 1,000 residents, which “the City has yet to meet.” Jurinsky said the bonus money would stop officers from leaving the department and would put the focus on retainment and public health.

During the meeting, Murillo asked if the city had just forgotten and ignored the national spotlight and what happened to Elijah McClain. She said the discussion about funding had not been tied to performance or meeting the agreements of the consent decree.

Political Change in Aurora and What it Might Mean

“It’s unfortunate but also understandable,” Marcano said about La Fleur’s decision to pull his support from Aurora Pride and cancel his own event. 

“We allow things to kind of deteriorate in certain communities,” Marcano added.

He admits council has fault in that too.

“We don’t have the higher quality schools, we don’t have better wages, we don’t have those kinds of economic opportunities that sometimes lead to these social issues where you need to get the law enforcement involved,” he said.

Marcano said he does, however, see the Aurora Police Department making significant changes.

“I remember when I first came on to council, we would find out when things happened through reporters, not through the department. With …Chief [Vanessa] Wilson that culture has changed,” he said.

No matter where people stand on the topic of policing, Marcano said people should pay close attention to what’s happening in their community leadership.

“It’s not just enough to point fingers, justifiably so, at our law enforcement agency. We also need people paying attention to what council is doing on the other side of this equation to address the root causes of a lot of these situations,” he said.

La Fleur agrees; he’d like to see more conversations about how Aurora polices its citizens.

The City of Aurora said they’re on the same page.

“Our goal continues to be community building and we are always open to conversations with anyone on how we can achieve that together,” Luby said.

Sonia Gutierrez is a multimedia journalist at Rocky Mountain PBS. You can reach her at soniagutierrez@rmpbs.org.