AURORA | After reviving an anti-gang program earlier this year, Aurora’s city council continued to express skepticism about staff proposals for dealing with youth violence Monday, splitting on the appropriateness of a new strategic plan.
Three members raised formal objections and two others voiced concerns about the plan, which aims to address youth and gang violence, and shootings specifically, through outreach to youth ages 10-24 and families.
Mayor Mike Coffman and Councilmember Angela Lawson said they thought the strategic plan was out of step with the council resolution that reorganized the Youth Violence Prevention Program along the lines of the Aurora Gang Reduction Impact Program, dedicating 80% of program funding to violence intervention and 20% to prevention.
Lawson also said she thought the plan didn’t go far enough in offering short-term ways of addressing the violence.
“Youth are getting shot every single day,” she said. “I’m just trying to figure out … how we’re going to be dealing with those critical incidents that we’re dealing with pretty much on an everyday basis in Aurora.”
In 2021, police say 33 people were shot to death in the city, including two children. Among 157 non-fatal shootings, 39 of the victims were children, and a total of 16 non-fatal shootings were said to have been gang-related.
Mark Hildebrand, metro division chief for the Aurora Police Department, previously estimated that between 20% and 50% of violent crime is gang-related, depending on how police define gangs.
The manager of Aurora’s Youth Violence Prevention Program, Christina Amparan, presented the results of community interviews on Monday which indicated the type of violence viewed as most impactful on the city — gang violence topped the list, followed by domestic violence, gun violence and other categories.
Amparan also mentioned drug use, bullying, mental health problems, family issues and “racial tensions” as reasons why young people get embroiled in violence.
“Many of these behaviors are very complex and require a specialized response, which is even more of a reason why we want to ensure we’re taking that multidisciplinary response,” Amparan said.
She said a multidisciplinary team could begin working as soon as next month, referring at-risk and high-risk youth to one of the two outreach specialists who will be a part of the program’s full staff or to an outside agency.
Other points of the strategic plan presented by Amparan include supporting police and courts by acting as a “resource hub” and continuing to assess the impacts of violence, expanding other partnerships to break down what Amparan called the city’s “siloed” response to violence, and undertaking prevention work, like serving runaway youth with the help of police and offering mental health services and safe spaces in the wake of gun violence with the help of churches.
Councilmember Dustin Zvonek said he also objected to the strategic plan moving out of Monday’s study session.
While council members Francoise Bergan and Danielle Jurinsky did not formally raise objections, Bergan said she thought the focus of the program was still too broad and Jurinsky said she wanted to see which organizations would be selected to benefit from an offer of funding to groups willing to run some of the violence mitigation efforts.
“I don’t think there’s any cost we should spare to keep our children alive and stop these shootings,” Jurinsky says.
Amparan told Jurinsky that finalists for the $500,000 notice of funding opportunity would be selected later this week.
Because a majority of council members did not oppose the item moving forward, the strategic plan was scheduled to move forward to a regular meeting, where the council may vote to approve it.
Those who did not oppose the item still asked logistical questions of city staffers — Juan Marcano asked whether the city could collect anonymized data about the challenges facing Aurora youth and families.
“I think that will also help us steer our policymaking as well, because I think that we have a strong role to play in addressing youth violence as well,” he told Amparan. “I think it’s community, it’s the work you’re doing through your program, parents, but also us in our legislative capacity.”
Amparan said staffers would be presenting updates during policy committee meetings, which could include trends seen by members of the program’s intervention workgroup.
Given how violent so many GOP followers are, and how many GOP legislators support and encourage their followers’ violence, I don’t know how we can expect clear-thinking, informed, caring and equitable policies from the majority on the Aurora City Council.
Well Debra, you don’t seem to get it, yet, again. You will never understand conservatism. For now it’s here in Aurora so you will just have to soak it up. I lived with a socialist City Council for the past two to three years then the city voters changed to a conservative council. That’s what elections are supposed to do. Now, I’m kind of happy and you are not. Life in America.
By the way, silly one, I abhor violence as do most of my conservative friends and neighbors here in Aurora. Violence is not a left vs right situation. Blessed be the peace makers.
Back in the 1980’s, I started program called the Police Area Representative program. Another officer and I got 7000 citizen signatures that we presented to Council. Council required the department to run a pilot program The intent of the program was to give every part of the city an officer with the commitment, flexibility, and neighborhood communication necessary to deal with crime in each neighborhood. I explained that the program should be gradually expanded over the years and that in high density and high crime areas the areas needed to be very small. I don’t have room here to go into all of the details, but, eventually the program would have meant that officers would have had an intimate knowledge of the people in their areas and also would have had the time to devote just to the crime and other problems in their area. In the long run, the city would have needed fewer officers and would have had a large pool of officers to be used in major problems with a minimal need for overtime. The citizens understood the potential for the program right away. The Division Chief immediately took me aside and told me that they were going to teach me a lesson and make sure that the program did not work. He said that they were going to make sure that the areas were too big. I ran the pilot program and it was successful and other areas of the city demanded that they have a PAR officer. The department officially praised my effort as the first true community policing program in Aurora. Meanwhile, they turned it into a token program and simply treated it as a “grin and wave” program like all other police politician community policing programs where all you do is talk to people and make them feel better. The program never expanded in order to be able to really get into the neighborhood and deal closely with the problems.
Computerized reporting and the tired, standard police deployment have greatly reduced the officers contact and knowledge about the people in the neighborhoods. I moved on, seeing the hopelessness of trying to do the right thing while working for completely unethical police politicians. APD has a long history of self serving police politicians who are loved by the public while secretly serving only their own careers. When I was a supervisor in patrol and in the gang unit, I got an even clearer picture off the failings of our police system of deployment. The patrol officers would stumble onto a nest of gang members that no one realized was there. They would call the gang unit and the gang unit would respond and contact the gang members. The point was that the police don’t have a clue about the people and the conditions in the neighborhoods. They don’t know who is a good person and who is not. The lack of knowledge and real personal contact means that good youths are more likely to be stopped and problem gang members are free to intimidate a neighborhood. The positive aspects of policing are not felt and the negative aspects are painfully obvious.
If you want to really know where the problems are and have the luxury of actually developing positive relationships with the public, you can’t do it in the way that Chief Wilson and all the woke police politicians espouse. Community policing is supposed to be a partnership with the public. It is not lust a nice bunch of meetings where the public expresses their feelings. A partnership means that the police actually have the flexibility to address the problems. The police have to develop a feeling that the people in the area are their people and that they have the desire to help with whatever problems their people have. Many of the solutions will not be standard police solutions. It means using all possible resources to address the problems. The police have to actually do something as their part of the partnership. The standard system of patrol deployment cannot do that.
I created the program to be a long range change in how we do policing. It was “reimagining” police work. The standard shiny police politician that we select as chief cares only about their image. We need a long range program that changes the standard model of policing. We need a program that allows officers to actually interact with the juveniles and families in the neighborhoods. The token programs that we see proposed are simply that. Had the department really cared about the community and expanded and supported the PAR program, we would be in a different situation in Aurora. This is more long range planning with immediate results in the small areas that are staffed.
When you are listening to the new candidates for chief, see if they have any real ideas about policing. I expect that you will hear the same vague comments about developing a relationship with the public. What they won’t do is explain the flaws in our present systems and give you a detailed plan for fixing things. But, they will appear very caring and sensitive and you will love them.
Not sure if I get it, Don. If a police ‘politician’ only cares about his/her image and career, why wouldn’t he or she adopt a program that would have real results and, therefore, make him or her more valued and important? BTW, congrats on your attempts at using paragraphs!
And what role do Aurora council members expect PARENTS to play in keeping their kids safe? How about expecting parents to get their children to school? Or keeping their kids at home after 10 P.M.? Or having parents commit to safe, legal gun ownership? Or having parents commit to supporting their child’s sport, music, volunteer, art, or employment activities?
Ah yes, probably the key to most of our problems. No personal accountability and a lack of parenting. Sort of similar to a lack of leadership in police work.
By the way, we tried to use this same argument many times through my career. We tried to get them to see that they would benefit from the success. It rarely worked. It is about control and ego.