AURORA | Aurora City Council members will take a first formal vote Monday on a targeted picketing ordinance on at its regular meeting.
Councilwoman Francoise Bergan took up the 19-year-old city law after protestors in September took to the Tollgate Crossing neighborhood in southeast Aurora. The protest was in and near the home where Johnny Choate, a warden at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in north Aurora, lives. GEO Group Inc., a private company, contracts with the federal government to operate the facility.
“I had so many residents that contacted me via email, texting, on Next Door, that I just felt that something had to be addressed,” Bergan said after introducing the ordinance to a city policy committee. ” … It was very scary I think for a lot of the residents.”
The ordinance up for a vote Monday would add language to the existing ordinance to clarify “targeted picketing,” according to city documents.
“Targeting picketing of a residence is not permitted. However, non-targeted picketing and marching in a residential area is allowed, with some time, place and manner restrictions. This amendment clarifies the noise restriction in residential zoned districts between specified periods of time, specifically at night, and specifies what constitutions obstruction of a residential street and sidewalk.”
Some city council members have raised questions about how noise would be measured and why an existing ordinance for unnecessary noise and disturbing the peace wouldn’t be applicable in these situations.
Protestors have balked at the proposed amendment.
James Rotten, a spokesman for Denver Communists, previously told the Sentinel the group would double down on protests in the city if the amendment were to be added to city code.
“We oppose this attempt to repress free speech and, should it pass, we look forward to demonstrating that opposition outside another ICE official’s house,” Rotten wrote in an email. “Protests rarely pose a threat to public safety, as this bill claims, but they do pose a threat to public indifference to injustice. That is what the city of Aurora seeks to protect here—indifference to the concentration camp in our backyard.”
— Quincy Snowdon contributed to this report