AURORA | A few initial concepts of potential Aurora police oversight were introduced Thursday by community members during a second round of police oversight community meetings, including “full transparency and balance.”
“We want people to come and have their voices heard in the process,” Councilmember Amy Wiles said.
Wiles and council members Alli Jackson, Stephanie Hancock, Mayor Mike Coffman and City Manager Jason Batchelor all attended the community police oversight roundtable meeting.
Police oversight has been a topic of conversation plaguing the city since before Aurora was placed under a state-mandated Consent Decree, which was created after a state investigation by the Colorado attorney general determined that Aurora police exhibited “patterns and practices” of using excessive force, particularly against people of color.
The Consent Decree was imposed by Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser in 2021. Triggered in part by the 2019 death of Elijah McClain, who died at the hands of police and rescuers after being stopped, unarmed. The decree mandates broad reforms in training, accountability, use-of-force policies, data systems and community engagement.
As city officials continue to engage the community to determine how they want police oversight in Aurora to look, the city has been taking small steps and asking the community to continue engaging.
The city has also allocated approximately $350,000 from the 2026 general fund for police oversight, Bachelor told the Sentinel. That money would fund two positions to create an Office of Police Accountability, a new office focused on police oversight.
The city already has a position in the city auditor’s office dedicated solely to auditing the police department.
Some crowd members in the meeting were concerned that employees might be swayed by the city and the police department if they were paid by the city, and Wiles responded that city officials, city council and the community could address that issue by ensuring that the monitor and civilian oversight board are completely separate and independent.
The meeting on Thursday, the second so far, allowed community members to bounce ideas off one another, and each table then announced a specific aspect they would like to see moving forward.
Suggestions included everything from leading by example by making every step along the way fully transparent, snapshots of what other cities are doing, a balance between supporting officers while holding them accountable, looking into what would trigger subpoena power, having more control over the public narrative and communications from the police department and collaboration between all parts of the community, including whether to include members of the youth.
Other groups had broader or more controversial ideas, such as giving the oversight entity subpoena power, hiring and firing authority, and unlimited access to unedited information.
A more pro-police group included Coffman and Hancock and asked Batchelor to be their spokesperson. They said their group wanted to see the oversight based on non-punitive principles, “but based on the idea that this function really needs to raise the entire public safety function so that it’s raising the standards on building trust, both for the community and for officers,” Batchelor said. “To make it an effective and transparent process.”
Not everyone in the room completely agreed on every idea, but the meeting showed the community finding a few key places in common to start.
Even skepticism about Bachelor’s engagement was redirected toward a drive for transparency and full engagement.
“When I took office, everything I do, every meeting I’m in, everything, I keep trying to remind myself, assume positive intent,” Wiles said. “Assume positive intent.”
The next meeting will be next month. The date hasn’t been announced yet, but city officials have already slated a special guest: Fort Worth, Texas Independent Monitor, Bonycle Sokunbi, who had to miss Thursday’s meeting due to bad weather plaguing Texas.
All the meetings so far have been evenings at the Aurora Center for Active Adults in northwest Aurora, and include food such as pizza.
All future meetings will soon be listed on the city website, and they will continue to encourage as much community involvement as possible.
“One thing that we thought was the most profound that we talked about was what we needed is based in transparency,” Wiles said, presenting for her group’s roundtable. “So transparency in the process, starting right now, and moving its way up. So every step of the process to create this oversight board team, person, whatever it is, we’re going to end up with transparency every step of the process, so that nobody feels like they’re not involved.”
How is transparency in any way profound, and what’s with the constant repetition of the same buzzwords like they’re a magic spell? These people really do have main character syndrome.
Sentinel’s ‘storytelling’ here makes little sense. Most people’s problems with Aurora PD would revolve around how hard it is for the Aurora PD to get there response time within 50% of the national average.
Racial profiling transparency is the Sentinel’s fixation while Aurora residents wanting to file a criminal report for their home getting burglarized, despite calling for help, never getting a report or anything filed from the Aurora PD responding officer, who came after a 6 hour delay, are ignored. Didn’t matter if I was a direct witness to the crime, or if signs of of B&E were clearly visible.
I EXPECT the Aurora PD to let me down, but people writing these articles straight give the police a free pass on daily matters that affect far more Aurorans, but because their skin didn’t meet the right hue it doesn’t matter from a journalistic standpoint.