AURORA | Aurora lawmakers voted this week to restart the city’s reserve police officer program, creating volunteer opportunities for former police, cadets and others to serve in limited law enforcement roles.
While the program was at first mostly discussed as a path for SWAT medics to receive training and certification to be able to safely carry firearms, Aurora’s fire chief has since said fire medics will not be allowed to participate in the program, and police officials spoke Monday about volunteers also helping with investigations and other police duties.
Aurora’s City Council voted 8-2 to restart the program, with progressives Alison Coombs and Crystal Murillo opposed. While Murillo said she didn’t think the Aurora Police Department has done enough to earn back trust after the 2019 death of Elijah McClain, police chief Art Acevedo said it made sense to bring the reserve program back at a time of enhanced oversight.
“There’s no better time than now,” Acevedo said. “Our department is under scrutiny like it’s never been scrutinized, and so if you’re going to start a program where there are community concerns, it’s best to start it at a time when you’re going to have an independent police monitor here for the next few years.”
At the time of the council’s first vote in July, Pete Schulte of the Aurora City Attorney’s Office said SWAT medics have been known to carry concealed weapons on the job and that the creation of the reserve officer position would result in those medics being trained and afforded the same protection from civil lawsuits as full-time police officers.
Tactical medics will still be eligible to become reserve cops under the version of the ordinance passed Monday, along with current city employees, former city employees who retired in good standing and would otherwise eligible to be hired back, Aurora residents with at least five years of police experience who left their last law enforcement job in good standing with no discipline greater than a written reprimand, and Aurora police cadets in good standing with their program.
However, Aurora Fire Rescue Chief Alec Oughton said in a statement that firefighters would not be permitted to take part in the program or carry guns on the job.
“I appreciate the city’s interest in reenacting a police reserve program,” he said. “The proposed ordinance would allow certain community members to voluntarily participate in the program and in no way obligates Aurora Fire Rescue medics to be reserve officers or to broadly carry firearms.”
While Councilmember Curtis Gardner said the fire agency was kept out of the loop during the development of the proposal, Acevedo on Monday described Oughton as “a great partner and colleague,” and said he “would never want to do that to him.”
Reviving the program comes at a time when Aurora, like most agencies across the country, are struggling to recruit and retain police officers.
Police have said applicants to become reserve officers would go through the same hiring and background investigation process as lateral police recruits and would be expected to complete a training lasting about six weeks before they could receive their certification from the Peace Officer Standards and Training Board.
Acevedo also said Monday that he wanted to be able to meet with and screen every reserve officer candidate personally before the decision is made to accept or reject them.
“There are strict requirements for any reserve officers that come forward,” said Councilmember Danielle Jurinsky, who sponsored the proposal on behalf of the Aurora Police Department.
Other council members questioned Schulte and Acevedo about the extent of the training that would be received by reserve officers. Murillo said she did not think candidates would have training comparable to that of full-time officers while explaining why she opposed the item.
She also said reform efforts that have been underway since the death of Elijah McClain have yet to create a cultural change within the department.
“I’m hopeful under the consent decree that we will be in a much better place for it with these structural and cultural shifts within the department,” she said. “A few years does not, to me, create enough time for that culture shift to truly take place.”
Acevedo told Murillo that the reserve program would likely attract retirees with a career’s worth of experience in law enforcement, including individuals who could help with investigations.
“It would be based on the needs, obviously, of the organization at that time,” he said.
The chief said his department would begin creating a policy to govern the behavior of reserve officers and present it to the council’s public safety policy committee before the program becomes operational.
The Reserve program is merely a band-aid. The real root cause/problem: Very, very few potential LE applicants choose to apply in Aurora. As an employer, APD is NOT competitive enough — not in light of Aurora’s poor image.
All the social-media outreach doesn’t resolve the fact that Aurora’s simply not competitive enough with pay, benefits, training and quality of work-life. True leaders would acknowledge this head on, would identify alternative strategies to resolve applicant reluctance and would provide sufficient resources to execute the most promising strategies.
In my opinion, subsidized 24/7 childcare might be the game changer that APD needs to significantly boost both applications and retention. How many young single parents rule out LE as a career because of the odd hours? No, I’m not proposing that APD raise the kids with overnight care every night, but give the officers a reliable safety net for those shifts, weeks or seasons when they need a solid Plan B.
This is one of probably a dozen such alternatives that our City Council isn’t even discussing. If Council were sincere and functional, they would be focused on APD’s lack of competitive differentiators in the job market and taking direct action to resolve– not squandering resources on band-aids like the Reserve Program and NOT lowering the bar on character and qualifications as they have also done.
The City of Aurora and APD sorely need strategic leadership and this Mayor and Council simply aren’t providing it.