Aurora lawmakers vote 5-4 to suspend Denver pact to aid cops in emergencies

AURORA | Aurora’s City Council narrowly agreed Monday to suspend the city’s mutual aid agreement with Denver police, vowing to turn away select requests for manpower from Aurora’s neighbor. 

The decision came after the Denver Police Department asked for Aurora’s help managing the protests that followed the death of George Floyd in 2020 near the Colorado Capitol in Denver. Aurora police officers have been named in at least four lawsuits brought by people who say they were mistreated by cops while protesting in downtown Denver.

But Aurora officials said Monday that Denver has so far refused to foot the bill for their legal costs, despite the fact that the Aurora officers would have been “subject to the direction and control” of Denver’s police chief at the time under Colorado law.

Mayor Mike Coffman said Denver is already on the hook for $14 million stemming from those lawsuits and suggested that suspending the mutual aid agreement would give Aurora “leverage” when negotiating with its neighbor.

“As a matter of principle, you have to agree with me that it is not wise to send our officers in when Denver is not willing to defend them,” he said. “We could get stuck with the same thing all over again.”

While interim police Chief Art Acevedo and Pete Schulte from the City Attorney’s Office said the move was not expected to impact day-to-day cooperation between Denver and Aurora police, Councilmember Curtis Gardner said Denver cops would see it as “essentially a big middle finger to Denver.”

Such mutual aid agreements are common among local fire and police departments, allowing towns and districts to draw from neighboring resources during large or complicated emergencies.

Councilmember Alison Coombs said trying to pressure Denver into indemnifying Aurora officers by suspending the mutual aid agreement, which Coffman said was his goal, would only make it harder to partner with them moving forward.

“Leadership and collaboration with our neighbors shouldn’t be about leverage,” Coombs said. “It should be about communication, and if we feel that we need to exercise leverage over them to come to an agreement, I think the agreement we’re going to come to is going to be an impoverished one.”

According to Coffman, Denver’s former mayor, Michael Hancock, told Aurora officials that he wanted to settle the dispute over the indemnification of Aurora police in court.

Coffman said he had not talked about the problem with Denver’s new mayor, Mike Johnston, which prompted Gardner to suggest that the proposal be tabled to give Coffman the chance to negotiate with the new administration.

Juan Marcano and Francoise Bergan indicated they would support postponing the vote, but Bergan relented after Schulte said there could be a hypothetical future situation where Aurora officers answered a mutual aid call from Denver regardless of whether they were indemnified.

“We would be putting our officers in the very precarious situation of having to not be indemnified,” Bergan said. “With some hesitancy, I think I will support this.”

The council voted 5-4 to suspend the agreement, with Coombs, Gardner, Marcano and Ruben Medina opposed. Angela Lawson was absent from Monday’s meeting.

After the vote, an Aurora Police Department spokesperson sent a statement attributed to Acevedo in which the chief reaffirmed the agency’s commitment to working with Denver outside of the context of mutual aid.

“We have a longstanding, close working relationship with the Denver Police Department and diligently work with their leadership team and officers to keep our communities safe every day,” Acevedo said.

“That relationship will not change. In the rare instances of large-scale events that lead to formal requests for large-scale mutual aid responses from Aurora officers, we will continue to assess each of them on an individual, case-by-case basis.”