LETTERS: Conservative members of the Aurora City Council aren’t focusing on real solutions

Editor: The new right-wing bloc of the Aurora city leadership — comprising Mayor Mike Coffman and Councilmembers Dustin Zvonek, Danielle Jurinsky, Francoise Bergan, Curtis Gardner, Steven Sundberg, and sometimes Angela Lawson — is on the move to flood APD with fresh funding and expand their reach into our community.

This “tough on crime” approach to the real issues facing Aurorans — poverty, joblessness, rising rents, housing insecurity, homelessness, youth alienation and violence — substitutes ideology for real solutions. It is clearly a backlash against the mass movement for justice for Elijah McClain which brought down major reform mandates on the Aurora Police Department and criminal charges against the officers and EMTs who killed McClain.

As announced in the Sentinel, Councilmembers Dustin Zvonek and Danielle Jurinsky, chair and vice-chair of the city’s “public safety committee,” have developed a “5-Point Action Plan” which will funnel more money to Aurora police, increase patrols in “key neighborhoods,” expand the practice of police-enforced displacement of homeless people, and invest in the defunct police-centered AGRIP gang “intervention” program. The council has already begun implementing some elements of the plan.

The 5-Point Action Plan is a shallow proposal to use the police as a bludgeon against the communities facing the greatest hardships. Even Aurora Police Chief Vanessa Wilson has expressed open resistance to some of the council’s moves, no doubt understanding that these policies will produce more violent police encounters, thus loading on more controversy for her to manage.

It’s worth noting that the police department the council is so eager to throw money at currently has at least half a dozen former officers in criminal proceedings. It is operating under a consent decree requiring the department to work with an independent monitor for as long as five years to implement reforms addressing the issues found in the state Attorney General’s investigation, including systemic racial bias and excessive force. The city just paid out $4.5 million to a contractor to oversee this process.

The city also paid out $15 million to the family of Elijah McClain to settle the family’s civil rights lawsuit. This followed a September 2020 settlement for $100,000 paid out to a woman who APD officers hog-tied and carried out of her home in front of her children while supposedly performing a child welfare check, and a December 2020 settlement for $285,000 paid out to a man who APD officers brutalized while responding to a noise complaint.

On top of the settlements shelled out at the expense of Aurora taxpayers, the Aurora City Council allocated another nearly $6 million to pay out retention bonuses to Aurora Police officers at the end of last year, a response to the staffing hemorrhage APD has experienced as a result of its newfound scrutiny.

Is this the direction Aurorans voted for? Not really. A whopping 6.9 percent of the 386,261 people in Aurora cast a vote for Mike Coffman, Jurinsky 6.3 percent, and Zvonek 6.9 percent. Yet what they do with their positions will have major consequences for all Aurorans.

Instead of this “Back the Blue,” hands-on-their-hearts performance for their donor base, the council should do some real work to address the needs of their constituents. Let’s get a multi-point plan to address the 7,500-8,500 unit affordable housing shortage. Or a multi-point plan to support the city’s struggling youth and their families.

Community members who believe Aurora’s city leadership should go back to the drawing board on their action plan should come to the city council meeting on Monday, February 28 at 6:30pm at the Aurora Municipal Center, 15151 E Alameda Pkwy. Come a few minutes early to sign up for public comment and make your voice heard.

—Lillian House, via letters@sentinelcolorado.com