Next week is scheduled to bring something long lost back to Aurora: a permanent police chief.
Former Los Angeles Police Department commander Todd Chamberlain is slated to take the reins of the beleaguered and embattled Aurora Police Department Sept. 9.
Chamberlain will be the first permanent police chief since former Chief Vanessa Wilson was sacked in 2022 in a political war among city lawmakers over how much police reform is too much police reform.
Chamberlain faces a nearly impossible challenge in Aurora, where opposing forces compete to steer the chief, and ultimately the city’s 650-person department.
Chamberlain must first and foremost implement the state consent decree, mandating strategic changes is how Aurora officers contact and engage with the public. A long investigation into Aurora police discovered “patterns and practices” of officers routinely using excessive force, especially against people of color.
The low points of this department’s problems have garnered international headlines. Infamous and often video recorded episodes of racism and racial profiling make clear just how serious the challenge is for Chamberlain.
At the same time, Aurora faces serious challenges with managing tenacious problems with youth violence, gun violence, rogue motorists on increasingly dangerous roads and an uphill battle to keep the department staffed.
Even as Chamberlain finds his way in the department, the community is, likely, close to discovering whether outside investigators will recommend criminal charges be filed against Officer Michael Dieck for his part in the fatal shooting of Kilyn Lewis in May, during his bungled arrest.
Chamberlain’s first major test is a no-win situation if investigators absolve Dieck in the shooting, or if they press charges.
Chamberlain could fire Dieck if he isn’t charged, almost certainly enraging police union leaders and pro-cop city council members. But he stands to enrage much of the community and advocates for justice for Black residents and people of color if Dieck stays on the force, essentially setting the tone and tenor for his term as police chief.
There are probably a dozen or more equally awkward and polarizing positions the chief must confront that require appeasing his previously temperamental and capricious political masters on the city council and a public that regularly makes their distrust of the police department apparent at raucous city council meetings and protests.
The only answer for Chamberlain is complete transparency to the public and to the city council.
While Aurora police have made inroads in allowing the public a closer look at the metrics of Aurora police activity, there is still a great deal of work to do in helping the public understand police actions and logic behind individual cases and incidents.
Three things will immediately work toward restoring the public trust, and defending the actions of the chief against critics not only from the public, but from within the police department and on the fractured city council.
Chief Chamberlain should immediately review the roster and mission of the Citizen Advisory Committee, which reviews the work of the city-and-attorney-general assigned Independent Monitor. Not really a monitor at all, this entity is a paid, professional advisor to the police department as it works its way through mandated police reform.
Those reforms have a better chance of holding up to public scrutiny, if the public has trust in the CAC.
Likewise, Chief Chamberlain should immediately make public most business and details of the department’s Internal Affairs Unit. Currently, it’s this group, under the control of the police chief, that ferrets out and rules on the very cases of police misbehavior that have brought so much public scorn on the department, often because of a lack of discipline and enforcement against errant officers.
Most important, Chief Chamberlain should immediately begin developing with city management a truly independent oversight committee, immune from the caustic politics of the city council, the self-serving agenda of some police union forces, and from the insular administrative forces of city hall.
Nothing will do more to build confidence and trust in the department than oversight that is independent of the politics of city council and police to ensure the department is truly transparent in its operation and accountable to the public for mistakes and successes.
So, the Sentinel editorial board (read Dave Perry) would have the new chief build confidence and trust by having oversight which is independent of the politics of city council and the police by placing that oversight in an independant board or commission. Who does he think appoints such boards and commissions? The answer is city council so it seems unlikely this will remove the oversight from politics. If another method of appointment to what would be an inherently political position on such a board or commission were devised that process too would be inherently political with advocates for one position or belief or another all vying for appointment. Long and short, it is a fool’s errand to believe policing will ever be non-political, yet Mr. Perry would have the City chase that unattainable goal. If Mr. Perry wants policing to be non-political maybe he should stop politicizing policing. Of course that would take away the last bit of power and relevance of a fast fading newspaper.
And that’s your Blogs editorial opinion, that has nothing to do with the Police Chief doing his job of running a department that makes a community safe for the public.
How about he lacks all transparency and speaks to no one except the City Manager and just runs his department independently? That would take most of the politics out of his day to day job. That would take a strong personality. Let’s hope.
HOW about he is completely honest and transparent and answers only to the people he serves? He needs a direct conduit to us the citizens who are paying that quarter million dollar salary. Yes the city manager hired him but ultimately he is answerable to the citizens of Aurora (at least he should be)