AURORA | A majority of Aurora’s City Council voted Monday to expand mandatory minimum jail sentences and ban proposals similar to the Israel-Hamas ceasefire resolution that brought crowds of demonstrators to the group’s last meeting.
Even without the raucous crowd that fired tensions Feb. 26, the council clashed. During one exchange, progressive Coouncilmember Alison Coombs was upbraided by conservative Coumcilmember Stephanie Hancock for Coombs’ statement that she was worried about mandatory jail minimums disproportionately affecting people of color.
“Stop using brown and Black people to put forth this leftist ideology,” said Hancock, who is Black, as other council conservatives applauded and laughed. “Stealing from other people, that’s wrong. It’s wrong, and don’t put a brown and Black face on it and try to make it something that it’s not. … I’m insulted that you would actually put that in your mouth and say it.”
Coombs didn’t reply at the time, but she said Tuesday that Hancock’s interpretation of her statements as characterizing people of color as criminals was “preposterous.”
“These are well-established, researched concerns about this type of policy,” Coombs said. “It’s literally the fact that those laws are enforced disproportionately. It’s not greater criminality on the part of people of color.”
Councilmember Angela Lawson, the council’s only other Black lawmaker, told Coombs on Monday that she too was “taken aback” by Coombs’ comments about the impacts of mandatory minimums.
Coombs and progressive Councilmember Crystal Murillo also objected to the motion made by Councilmember Danielle Jurinsky and approved by the majority to terminate debate on increasing jail sentences for shoplifting as well as a separate item endorsing changes to state construction defect laws.
Jurinsky said there was “nothing else to hash out” about the mandatory minimums and dismissed concerns raised by Coombs about the cost of the proposals, which did not include breakdowns of their potential financial impacts, contrary to council rules.
“Whatever the cost is, we’re going to pay it,” Jurinsky said. “You know why? Because we’re going to keep crime illegal in this city. We’re going to keep it illegal. So whatever it costs, whatever the caseload is, that’s what it’s going to be.”
Cost of mandatory jail for thieves was and is an open question
Jurinsky’s proposal to introduce enhanced penalties for repeat shoplifters and lower the total amount of goods retail thieves must steal to serve at least three days in jail garnered its second and final “yes” vote from the council Monday.
As it did Feb. 26, the council voted 7-3 along partisan lines to update Aurora’s shoplifting laws and finalize another ordinance that Jurinsky sponsored with Councilmember Steve Sundberg mandating jail for diners who cost restaurants $15 or more by skipping out on their bills.
Shoplifters previously faced jail time if they stole more than $300 worth of goods. That threshold was lowered to $100 after Jurinsky and Pete Schulte of the City Attorney’s Office said thieves had pivoted to stealing just under $300 to avoid being incarcerated.
Retail thieves will spend at least 90 days in jail if they have one prior shoplifting conviction in Aurora or another jurisdiction and serve at least 180 days’ jail if they have two or more convictions.
The new and enhanced mandatory minimums are the latest examples of policies focused on punishing criminals that conservatives on the council have promoted as a common-sense approach to deterring theft.
Meanwhile, progressives have stressed the lack of data proving the efficacy of Aurora’s existing mandatory minimums and questioned what the costs of conducting more trials in Aurora Municipal Court and locking up more prisoners in city and county jails may be.
They reiterated their objections Monday, with Coombs asking for but receiving no estimate from city staffers of how much the city might spend enacting the new ordinances.
“At the federal level, and at the state level, they prepare fiscal notes based on assumptions,” Coombs said. “I don’t think it’s an acceptable answer that we can’t really figure out how much these things are going to cost.”
At one point, Coombs invited chief public defender Elizabeth Cadiz to explain how the changes may impact her office, which represents the city’s poorest defendants specifically when charges include the potential of jail time.
But Cadiz was shooed away by Jurinsky, who said she was “tired of the dog-and-pony show that’s going on with our public defender’s office.” Jurinsky moved successfully to end debate on the first shoplifting item, which subsequently passed.
The back-and-forth mirrored the scene in July 2022 when conservatives voted at Jurinsky’s request to end debate on their first mandatory minimums proposal, that one applying to motor vehicle theft, and Coombs lamented the lack of cost data.
When Mayor Mike Coffman again invited Cadiz to speak Monday, she said the number of jury trials handled by the city court increased nearly threefold between 2022 and 2023, with 194 cases tried in 2023 compared to 67 in 2022. Cadiz said the shoplifting proposal in particular would cause “a dramatic delay in being able to get through the cases we’re defending against.”
However, the proposal’s supporters said the cost analysis required by council rules would fail to account for the economic benefits that they said would come from businesses not relocating or keeping away from Aurora altogether due to crime.
“I don’t think staff is going to have the ability to determine what we’re going to save,” Councilmember Dustin Zvonek said. “I think that in a year from now, in two years from now, we’ll have the ability to look back and determine if there were costs associated with it, but the unknown is what sort of impact it has on our business climate in the city.”
Council votes to keep legislative focus local after second run-in with pro-Palestine demonstrators
Not long after their latest scolding by activists calling for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas War, a majority of Aurora lawmakers voted Monday to block their colleagues from bringing forth resolutions focusing on “international issues or concerns.”
“We’re a local government body,” said Councilmember Curtis Gardner, who along with Coffman sponsored the ban. “Performative statements on world events are not the purview of the City Council. We’re not the United Nations. We’re not Congress.”
Council members’ recent attempts to weigh in on the invasion of Israel by Hamas and Israel’s subsequent counterattack on the Gaza Strip have resulted in rancorous meetings featuring hours of public comment slamming the majority’s expressions of sympathy for Israel.
While conservative Councilmember Francoise Bergan brought the resolution condemning the massacre of Israeli civilians by Hamas, which a majority of the council voted to pass in October after an explosive hearing, Bergan said Monday that she no longer believed the council should weigh in on international conflict.
“I think it has created so much disruption and so much division in our city that it’s not healthy,” she said. “We need to be focused on what is important to our residents.”
Resolutions are one of the types of agenda items that council members can sponsor and are often used to articulate policy positions and give directions to city staffers through the handful of officials appointed by the council.
Coffman and Gardner’s proposal won’t limit council members from addressing international issues through proclamations, short statements read at the start of meetings that acknowledge noteworthy people, groups and events; motions, which are similar to but less formal than resolutions; and, at least in theory, ordinances, which carry the force of law and may be used to modify city code.
The proposal also specifically exempts resolutions dealing with Aurora’s Sister Cities International program or its “sister cities” in Africa, Asia and Central America.
Coombs, who at the council’s last regular meeting sponsored and then withdrew a resolution calling for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas War, disagreed that the proposal was needed. She and Murillo said council members should have the freedom to weigh in on topics that matter to their diverse constituents.
“Generally, we do stick to local issues,” Murillo said. “But as a council member representing the most diverse city (where) one in five and foreign-born, I don’t agree that we should be limiting the topic of a resolution.”
The council voted 8-2 to pass Coffman and Gardner’s resolution, with progressive Councilmeber Ruben Medina joining conservatives in support, and Coombs and Murillo opposed.
Also on Monday, the city council:
- Unanimously approved the purchase of about 4,800 acres of farmland in Otero County, which the city bought for the associated water rights but plans to lease to a local farming company to preserve its agricultural use.
- Voted 7-3 to endorse a Colorado Senate bill that among other things would give builders the right to remedy a claim made against them by fixing the construction defect in question or hiring someone else to fix it; Coombs and Murillo said they supported an alternative bill, and Medina joined them in voting “no.”
- Approved an intergovernmental agreement with the Colorado Department of Transportation and the Denver Regional Council of Governments for the $3 million replacement of the Alameda Avenue bridge over Interstate 225.
- Approved an intergovernmental agreement with CDOT for improving the safety and capacity of Gun Club Road between Quincy Avenue and Aurora Parkway for $2.5 million.
- Agreed to postpone the approval of the written minutes of the group’s Feb. 26 meeting, usually a procedural item, after Coombs said she wanted to suggest “several amendments” clarifying motions that were made during the meeting, which she would send details of to her fellow council members.

What a mess. We deserve better representation from our elected officials.
Why is stealing $15 from a restaurant more deserving of punishment than stealing $15 from a store?
Do any of them sincerely believe that restaurateurs will flock to Aurora because dine-and-dashers get three days in the pokey? Probably not.
Even Councilmember Zvonek admits that this is a case where the ethereal trumps the empirical. He says we’ll know the costs in a year or two but we’ll never know the sort of impact it has on our business climate.
At least Jurisky came up with a zinger of a slogan for her next campaign:”Keep crime illegal.”
We deserve better from our elected officials. We deserve lawmaking based on facts rather than emotions.
YOU ARE CORRECT.
If there was proper vetting for these ideas perhaps they would make more sense. but the conservatives are in charge and will do what ever they want to. Reminds me so much of THE ANIMAL FARM
The three socialists have cemented themselves into a corner all sharing the same delusional thinking Aurora citizens are willing to tolerate the accepted lawlessness that seems the norm anymore. Think again… Despite their view, there is a whole lot more people that are sick of the general disrespect these thieves continue to operate as untouchables against business property. The citizens have made noise to their Ward reps, and it shows. Some of these noise-makers are otherwise known as consumer’s, they understand the problem. The man that owns the Mexican restaurant on Yale gave a compelling three-minute very clear statement of what the thieves are doing to his little business. I find it outrageous these three socialists are calling for less prevention and their fondness to create excuses proving unhelpful to these businesses suffering factual losses. Many owners finally say enough is enough and close their doors. The thieving across the county have shuttered so many small operations, just look close at Denver. At the same time, none of three characters are qualified to run any type of business. Amazing!
for all your rhetoic there is no solution. Just saying you’re gonna jail people doesn’t take in to account how you gonna catch them in the first place. The thing is let’s see and hear some common sense solutions. We could start with a Chief of Police?????
Aurora is on the right track. While Denver residents deal with the fallout of Mike Johnston’s hapless Housing First homeless strategy, and the sanctuary city beacon attracting thousands of illegal aliens, our city is sending a message that we value our citizens and their safety over social ideology or virtue signaling. Will this drive retail here? To the southeast area, possibly yes. And maybe consequences will keep Havana businesses from fleeing to the Southlands.
Why do progressives love criminals so much?
we don’t love criminals. But we do love to see common sense solutions and not just loud mouth rhetoric.
So everyone just start stealing stuff and keep it under 100$ fuk Aurora. This country owes all of us. If we have to steal it’s cause our government keeps us broke and we take what’s ours anyway. We osy taxes. I’m not going to condem anyone that steals. Especially if it’s good .
I’m just shaking my head at your deep misguided sense of oppression.
Musteal a calculator to tally price of things I take to stay below the Thievery Threshold.
The criminals deserve jail time with no TV in jail.
I have no issue with holding criminals accountable for their crimes. I’ve been there and seen crimes committed and was told by THE BUSINESS just leave it alone. They are scared stiff of liability!!
But these things need to be thought out and reasonable commonsense methods of addressing the issue brought forth by the council. But right now? all you have are fear mongering conservatives with power! And they are lovin it! So you get what you voted for. No solutions just laws that will not be enforced and nothing will change.