AURORA | Aurora lawmakers chose a former reserve sheriff deputy and lifelong Aurora resident to fill a vacancy on the city’s often-controversial civil service commission and also discussed removing a sitting commissioner.
Among four finalists, city council members, in a 9-2 vote, appointed Joshua Reddell to a three-year-term on the commission. Council members Ron Andrews and Gianina Horton voted against the appointment.
Commissioner Barbara Shanon Bannister is retiring from the board.
During nomination and debate during the city’s March 9 council meeting, Councilmember Alison Coombs said she would look into the process of removing a sitting Civil Service Commission and ask fellow council members to select another of the four finalists to take a seat on the five-member board.
Coombs did not say who among the existing commission members she would want to remove, or why. The city’s charter requires eight city council votes to remove a member of the commission.
Other finalists for the post were Thomas Mayes, Rex McKinney and Marcus Moreno.
The commission is responsible primarily for hiring and screening police and firefighter applicants. The panel, independent from police and city management, also acts as an appeals board for police discipline.
The commission has for decades been sometimes controversial. In the 1990s and 2000s, the commission was often criticized for being too lenient when hearing discipline appeals from officers.
In 2018, the commission was lambasted by police administrators for reversing the firing of officer Charles DeShazer, who was caught on police body cam calling Black witnesses to a crime “porch monkeys.”
More recently, the commission has come under fire for lowering hiring standards for police and being accused of weakening the force. Commissioners and supporters said a change in standards improves the police force by providing diversity.
The commission also has a role in the city’s police consent decree. In 2021, the city was forced into the decree after the Colorado attorney general’s office found during an investigation “patterns and practices” of the police regularly using excessive force, especially among people of color.
Two sitting members of the commission were re-appointed to their seats unanimously by the city council last March.
At the same time, the city council appointed former Aurora police officer Judy Gurley-Lutkin to the commission on an 8-2 vote.
Officer Gurley-Lutkin worked for the Aurora Police Department for 27 years before recently retiring. While on the force, she also led the Aurora Police Association, one of two Aurora police unions.
Mayor Mike Coffman and Coombs were opposed to the appointment. They both said they were concerned about a lack of objectivity because of her close ties to the police department and the union.
“My concern is the somewhat polarizing approach that the Aurora Police Association has sometimes taken, including when she was the leader of that association,” Coombs said last year. “I think when we look at history, that does raise a similar concern for me about objectivity.”
Aurora’s police unions have historically supported officers in discipline disputes that come before the commission.
Councilmember Stephanie Hancock and former Councilmember Danielle Jurinsky said Gurley-Lutkin addressed objectivity in her interview and assured city council she could separate personal opinions.
“As far as staying neutral and impartial on the Commission, I did that as an officer going out into the community every day,” Gurley-Lutkin said during her interview Feb. 10, 2025. “Everybody comes into a job like this with their personal beliefs, and you just have to set that aside.”
Aurora Civil Service Commission Chairperson Barb Cleland said the new commission met Tuesday, with Redell, and immediately became cohesive.
“This is the strongest commission I’ve ever seen,” Cleland said, a former city council member. “(Gurley-Lutkin) has been invaluable to us in providing us insight into the police department in light of issues linked to the consent decree.”
Cleland said the board has disagreements about a variety of issues, but the current mix of commissioners provides needed context and understanding.
As for Redell, several city council members this week lauded him as an applicant.
Redell went to high school in Aurora and the Community College of Aurora before attending college out of state, eventually receiving a masters of business administration from Purdue University. He is currently chief growth officer for Synergy ECP, a Washington D.C. based cyber-security and software company.
Reddell has previously sat on the city’s oil and gas commission.
During his city council interview for the post earlier Monday, Reddell said he has waited for an opening on this panel specifically because of his keen interest in law enforcement and accountability to the public.
He said he was formerly a reserve officer for the Jefferson County sheriff department and also sat on the Aurora Police chief’s Independent Review Board, which heard complaints about police behavior and discipline issues.
“For me, I think it’s that transparency,” Reddell said about what he considered his strengths in joining to the commission. “Whenever you begin to go down a road of not being honest and not being forthcoming, of what’s happening within a specific process, and you start to get into real, real big trouble. If you want to get the public to stop trusting, you stop being transparent.”
He said discipline hearings need to be based on the facts made available. He insisted, however, that public safety officials must be held to “that higher standard” because of the nature of their work.
But when hiring new officers, which is part of the commission’s role in city police and fire departments, he said commissioners should balance an applicant’s current life and desire to serve with any past mistakes.
“I think it’s the whole person mentality. You got to look at every person, case by case. And we need people that are willing to serve, and the willingness to serve, I think, to me, is something that should be taken very seriously.”