Aurora gets new police chief Monday and promised protests over Venezuelan fracas

AURORA | Todd Chamberlain will swear in as Aurora’s seventh police chief in five years Monday afternoon amid even greater discord than the already turbulent city government is used to. 

The veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department takes office as Aurora has been making national and international headlines as the epicenter of an election-season frenzy over undocumented immigrants in the U.S.. 

Far-right Aurora Council Member Danielle Jurinsky has for the past six weeks fomented worry over what she has described, often without basis, as lawlessness among Venezuelan migrants locally and rampant violence by members of a Venezuelan prison gang, Tren de Aragua, otherwise known as TdA. 

Her warnings about an alleged TdA reign of terror in a few blighted apartment complexes owned and managed by the same companies have been echoed, to varying degrees, by Mayor Mike Coffman, and other conservative members of the city council; John Fabbricatore, the Republican former U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) field office director seeking to unseat U.S. Rep. Jason Crow; U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, who is vying for a new congressional seat that abuts Aurora; other conservative members of Congress and far-right media influences; and even Donald Trump, who has been exaggerating the situation in stump speeches about what he falsely claims are “thousands and thousands and thousands of terrorists pouring into our country at record levels.”

“In Aurora, Colorado, entire apartment complexes are being taken over by armed Venezuelan gangs with weapons the likes of which even the military doesn’t see,” Trump said at a rally Saturday in Wisconsin. “They’re terrorizing residents and they’re just menacing the whole state …  and the people are petrified. Even the sheriff, he’s trying his best, but he’s got a small force by comparison. This is like a military force. And they’re vicious, violent people.”

Closer to home, Jurinksy and Fabbricatore have taken aim at Aurora’s acting Police Chief Heather Morris, accusing her of covering up and downplaying TdA’s threat to the city when she said gang members have not in fact overrun the apartment complexes in question. 

“Interim Aurora Police Chief Heather Morris will be replaced (Monday). She gaslighted the public about the apartments and knew about the gang violence for months. She should never hold another Chief position anywhere,” Fabrricatore posted on X on Sunday. 

Morris hasn’t returned an inquiry seeking her response. 

She will be leaving the department with the arrival of Chamberlain, who said in a news conference last month he had never heard of TdA. 

Chamberlain, like Morris, will face the challenge of being candid with the public, even if it means contradicting the often politically motivated assertions of the council members he works for.

According to the Spanish-language El Comercio de Colorado, Coffman expects Chamberlain to immediately sign documents to initiate shutting down two of the blighted apartment complexes, one at Helena Street and East 13th Avenue and the other at Dallas street and East 12th Avenue, much like the city shut down one on Nome Street owned by the same landlord last month.

After Chamberlain’s swearing in at 3 p.m. Monday, the council will meet in executive session, partly to discuss a proposed agreement with the owner of the blighted apartment complexes. The owner and associated lawyers have claimed the apartment complexes fell into neglect and disrepair because violent TdA members overran the buildings, extorted rent payments from tenants and chased off property managers and maintenance crews. Under that deal, the city proposes to post police officers at the properties, at least for a few weeks, in exchange for a commitment to keep a property manager on site.

Also behind closed doors, the council is scheduled to discuss possible legal action against  the state regarding a law passed earlier this year requiring municipalities that try domestic violence cases to maintain the services of state public defenders. The council’s conservative majority has been trying to dismantle Aurora’s public defender office in favor of replacing it with contracts to private, outside defense lawyers. An attempt to do that earlier this year failed when no private lawyer firm responded to the city’s requests for proposals.

While council members are in executive session, a community group is inviting Venezeulans and members of other migrant communities to gather outside City Hall at 5:30 p.m. to renounce racism and anti-immigrant sentiments many say the council’s conservative majority has manufactured against them. The event, which will offer free food and drinks, is being billed as a chance to “show the world who you are.”

At the council’s regular meeting at 6:30 p.m., a group of civil rights activists who have been protesting since May about the shooting of Kilyn Lewis by Aurora SWAT Officer Michael Dieck also is expected to shine light on what one of its organizers, Auon’tai Anderson, calls the conservative majority’s “hatred of immigrants.” That group has slammed city officials for hiring Chamberlain, the new police chief, without public input, and is expected Monday evening to repeat its persistent demands that the city speed up its investigation of Lewis’s killing, fire Dieck — who is on paid leave during the probe — and criminally charge him for the incident.

Other members of the public also are expected to weigh in at Monday’s council meeting with their concerns about the blighted apartment complexes at the center of the Venezuelan gang controversy and persistent gunshots they hear near them. 

“The City of Aurora and Aurora Police Department have been aware of these issues for many months but did provide a reasonable response until this started getting media attention. Even then, they invested considerable attention trying to downplay these issues. Many of us in this community have felt ignored,” said Shannon Peterson, a neighbor of the complex at 12th and Dallas streets that has received heavy media attention.

In other business, the council is expected Monday to pass a resolution to move domestic violence cases out of Municipal Court and into local county and district courts, beginning in 2025. Mayor Pro Tem Dustin Zvonek has argued that the shift would save tax dollars that could otherwise be spent prosecuting, adjudicating and providing public defenders in those cases, while also exploring the future privatization of the Aurora Public Defender Office.

Opponents see the move as the council’s latest attempt to gut Aurora’s public defender’s office. They also counter that there are not enough county judges to hear domestic violence cases, that the plan has not had sufficient public input, and that the issue should be tabled until a new judicial district is created and a new district attorney takes office, both in January.

The council also is expected to approve a resolution creating a legal pathway to seize stolen shopping carts from public and private property. The city deems the presence of those carts away from the stores they belong to a “visual blight” that is “aesthetically detrimental to the community.” City officials also argue the stray carts constitute a public nuisance because of their potential to create potentially injurious “hazards for pedestrians and motorists,” “obstruct public rights-of-way, impede stormwater flow and become receptacles for trash.”

The plan would allow city officials to seize the carts while breaking up camps of unhoused people, who often use them to transport and hold their possessions. It calls for the city to develop a process whereby people who feel their shopping carts have been confiscated unlawfully may challenge the seizure.

Under the plan, the city would create a program to collect and return stolen shopping carts to retailers. City officials seek to work with local stores, property owners and community groups not just to reduce the number of abandoned shopping carts, but also to “educate retailers about their responsibility to prevent shopping cart removal from their premises and to retrieve abandoned carts in a timely manner.” A team of city staff or contractors, funded partly by fees collected from grocery store bag sales, might be created to collect and return them to the proper retailers.

Also on Monday’s agenda is the introduction of an ordinance removing the “sunset provision,” or expiration date from an ordinance related to retail theft. That proposal would make permanent the mandatory minimum sentence for shoplifting an item valued at more than $100 at least three days in jail for a first-time offense. Minimum jail sentences for second- and third-time offenders would indefinitely remain 90 days and 180 days, respectively. 

The proposal also would indefinitely extend the mandatory minimum sentence for stealing food or accommodations valued at more than $15 to at least three days in jail. For people convicted of motor vehicle theft in Aurora, the mandatory minimum sentence would remain at 60 days in jail for a first time offense and at least 120 days for repeat offenses.

If the proposal passes, failure to appear on a theft charge would continue to come with a mandatory minimum jail sentence of 10 days.