Aurora lawmaker returns to Fox News, X with fresh Venezuelan gang allegations, which city officials deny

AURORA | An Aurora City Council member has leaked internal emails she says prove city police and managers have downplayed the public safety threat posed by Venezuelan gang members.

“This is one of the biggest cover-ups I’ve ever seen, and Aurora police officers on the front lines are sick of it as well,” Councilmember Danielle Jurisnky told Fox News on Thursday. 

City government issued a statement Thursday afternoon reading, “Contrary to claims made on social media and by select news organizations, the city, including APD, has remained consistent in responses on this matter.”

Though she stopped short of alleging a cover-up in a phone interview with the Sentinel, Jurinsky said internal emails she posted on her X account show city police and management have not been transparent about the presence of and concerns about the Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua, also known as TdA, in the city.

“APD knew about this for well over a year,” she said. “I just want the truth to come out and to be acknowledged because people are suffering and real help has to come.”

One email Jurinsky posted Thursday was written Nov. 16, 2023 by Officer Matthew Walters of APD’s gang intervention unit. It spoke of intelligence the department allegedly received from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent that “TdA has decided to make Denver their headquarters due to sanctuary policies and location.”

Other emails, written in a chain in late June of this year under the subject line “Officer Safety — Law Enforcement only,” detailed a complaint by a woman who worked in a cleaning crew at two northwest Aurora apartment buildings, Whispering Pines and Aspen Grove, both owned by the same company, CBZ Management. One message reads that unnamed suspects told the woman to give up the keys to a vacant apartment at Whispering Pines “so that a group of Venezuelans could move people” into it. 

“The suspects left but not before warning her to comply or else they would kill her and her family,” the email says. “The suspects made statements that they have both buildings under surveillance and that they had over 200 people working for them. I would highly recommend you guys to take 2-3 friends with you when responding to any calls there.”

A fragmented email reply by Sgt. Jeff Longnecker of APD’s major homicide unit seems to suggest officers were advised not to respond to calls at Whispering Pines “without an armored vehicle.” 

State and Aurora officials pushed back on the repeated allegations.

“Gov. Polis is committed to supporting local law enforcement and their work to keep our communities safe,” Polis spokesperson Eric Maruyama said in a statement to the Sentinel. “The state was first notified by Homeland Security in late July that they were monitoring activity in Aurora, the state then immediately reached out to the city of Aurora, including the Governor reaching out to the Mayor, to offer any assistance needed. “

Polis said Coffman and city officials told him in late July there was, as of then, not a “strong criminal case yet.” Polis officials said they then offered any assistance or support that state Troopers or the Colorado Bureau of Investigation could provide.

“Since then, Gov. Polis has been in regular contact with the City of Aurora and its law enforcement,” Maruyama said. “Aurora is a wonderful community full of hard-working people and small businesses and it’s disappointing to see some city leaders continuing to slam their own city. “

Jurinsky has led a nearly three-month messaging campaign defending CBZ Management, which owns three blighted apartment complexes in Aurora, one of which the city shut down in August. The company’s claims that TdA members overran its buildings prompted Jurinsky and, to a lesser extent, Mayor Mike Coffman to assert in the summer that the gang had essentially overrun whole swaths of the city, although Coffman later walked back those assertions.

In the meantime, the narrative that TdA members are terrorizing Aurora became a favorite talking point among right-wing politicians, including Donald Trump, this election season as an argument for tighter border restrictions and mass deportation of undocumented immigrants. Local and state officials, including Gov. Jared Polis and Aurora Congressperson Jason Crow have accused Jurinsky of contriving her public appeals as part of Trump and right-wing Republican ploys to scare voters into supporting the Trump election ticket.

Jurinsky told the Sentinel Thursday that the urgency in the leaked emails she posted is inconsistent with assurances by the police department and the city manager’s office in recent months that CBZ’s buildings have not been overrun by TdA members and that the gang does not pose a major safety threat to the city.

The city’s statement acknowledged that “more than a year ago, there was speculation and concern among some of our officers that members of TdA and/or other criminal elements were active in the city victimizing new members of the Venezuelan migrant community.”

Still, officials said, “The information released without authorization in these emails highlights” only “portions of the investigative process into these concerns,” and not the whole picture.

“We must remember that police departments and the justice system as a whole must rely on admissible evidence, not hearsay, rumors and fragments of information” the statement read.

“Governor Polis is committed to supporting local law enforcement and their work to keep our communities safe. The state was first notified by Homeland Security in late July that they were monitoring activity in Aurora, the state then immediately reached out to the city of Aurora, including the Governor reaching out to the Mayor, to offer any assistance needed. When Governor Polis met with Mayor Coffman in late July we were informed that the city did not have a strong criminal case yet and the state offered dedicated investigative support in the form of Troopers and CBI agents to work cases, and DHSEM provided analysts to support investigations to identify and arrest known criminal gang elements. Since then, Governor Polis has been in regular contact with the City of Aurora and its law enforcement. Aurora is a wonderful community full of hard-working people and small businesses and it’s disappointing to see some city leaders continuing to slam their own city. Anyone who commits a crime should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

It is completely false that the Governor “called the police” on her. The Governor encourages her and anyone else who has evidence of a crime to share it with the police immediately so they can investigate and hold criminals accountable.” 

Eric