AURORA | Aurora City Manager Jim Twombly on Thursday said he is mulling the creation of a new auditor position that would keep tabs on the Aurora Police Department.
At a regular meeting of the city council’s public safety policy committee, Twombly said he is planning to add a new staffer to the city’s internal audit department specifically tasked with overseeing Aurora police policies and procedures.
“In light of some of the questions that have come up about policing and following policy and so on, it would be a good idea for us to have an auditor that is totally dedicated to working in the police area,” Twombly said.
The new staffer would join the city’s current staff of three internal auditors who routinely review a wide range of city policies, including those related to the police department. This year, the group has been tasked with reviewing the department’s use of body-worn cameras and how overtime is granted and dispensed.
The new auditor would report directly to Twombly’s office, as does the current chief auditor for the city. That stipulation peeved Councilperson Angela Lawson, who questioned Twombly’s inherent connection to Aurora police.
“My concern is, number one, this person is reporting directly to you,” Lawson told Twombly during the recent teleconference meeting. “So I have some challenges with you overseeing and what kind of information we’re going to get. Are we truly to get a real report? Because you’re in on it and you’ve been in on a lot of police stuff lately, so that’s why I’m kind of questioning it. How good is the information that we’re going to get?”
Under Aurora’s form of municipal government, the police department reports directly to the city manager’s office. Deputy City Manager Jason Batchelor is the current conduit between department brass and Twombly’s staff.
The department has been the subject of a cascade of scrutiny over the past year, much of which has been fallout from the death of Elijah McClain, the 23-year-old unarmed Black man who died days after Aurora police officers placed him in a now-banned control hold on Aug. 24, 2019.
The local police force is now the target of a carousel of investigations, at least two of which have come at the behest of Twombly. He has tabbed a pair of consultants to individually review how the city handled McCLain’s death and how the department can holistically improve.
He said those investigations and the addition of a new auditor are intended to improve transparency for the beleaguered force.
“I have every intention of helping to restore the integrity of the police department and restoring the community trust in the police department,” Twombly told Lawson. “I would have no interest in trying to cover up anything or hide anything from the mayor and council or the public. My whole intent in this is to bring things to light … You’re hearing form me about the police department because at this point in time, I see the police department as my highest priority.”
The new auditor would not halt or replace the work of the city’s new police community task force, which Councilperson Nicole Johnston helped stand up earlier this year. The group is expected to eventually issue recommendations to city council on how the city could create yet another review entity to oversee Aurora police.
“Our purview is pretty narrow with the task force, so one is eventually an independent — and I won’t say auditor because we didn’t want to define it — but some type of independent entity over at least high-profile cases,” Johnston said Thursday. “ … So I would say actually what the city manager is doing is still separate from the formal charge of the task force.”
Twombly, too, said that new auditing role would not nix the possible creation of an independent monitor in the city.
“Creation of this position for Aurora would not detract from the effort of evaluating the independent monitor options for our police department,” he wrote in city documents. “Rather, instituting this function now gives us a head start in helping with accountability, integrity and transparency.”
Twombly said he’s reviewed the auditing functions of monitors’ office in Atlanta and Austin in his initial research for the new position. He added that he’s speaking with the head of Denver’s Office of the Independent Monitor, Nick Mitchell, about the functions of that entity on Aug. 28. The Denver monitor’s office was established in 2004.
Twombly did not specify when the new police auditor may be hired or begin work.