AURORA | Aurora officials, acknowledging criticism about them quietly appointing a new police chief, said that seeking public input would have only prolonged what has been 28 months without a permanent hire and proven “damaging” to the city.
Besides, they said Thursday, shrouding the identities of applicants was key to assuring the best pick.
“In approaching this decision, I chose to use a process that provided the highest probability to find the best qualified candidate to fill this role on a permanent basis,” City Manager Jason Batchelor said at the start of a news conference introducing former Los Angeles Police Commander Todd Chamberlain as Aurora’s new chief.
“After our failed public process of the last time, the feedback we heard from experts in the field was that there were many qualified candidates that would not take part in a public process because it could place their current job in jeopardy.”
Batchelor’s explanation echoes those of officials governing city and county governments, school boards and public universities throughout Colorado and nationally who increasingly cite applicants’ need for privacy when justifying hiring top appointees without transparency or input from the public.
In Aurora in particular — which has fumbled the hiring of previous chiefs and has been slammed for a lack of accountability within its embattled police force — the closed-door process set Chamberlain up for criticism even before his appointment is scheduled to be ratified by the city council this Monday and he is slated to be sworn in Sept. 9.
As recently as July, NAACP and other minority and police watchdog groups and activists asked specifically for community involvement in selecting a new chief. During the last two hirings of permanent police chiefs, Vanessa Wilson and Nick Metz, there were multiple chances for public participation, including question and answer sessions.
“It would have been nice… for the public to meet the new chief and/or some of the other candidates so [we could] get to know them and they would get to know what the interests of the citizens are,” said Barb Cleland, a former Aurora city council member who currently sits on the civil service commission.
“Given the community’s justifiable mistrust of Aurora police for their horrific track record of brutality and excessive force, it is troubling that community leaders weren’t consulted in the selection of a new police chief. That said, I’m hopeful that Chief Chamberlain will provide true leadership and honor the constitutional rights and humanity of Aurora’s residents,” added Mari Newman, a civil rights lawyer who for two decades has represented multiple victims of Aurora’s police abuse.
A large portion of those victims have been people of color.
Aurora has a narrow, 51% racial minority-majority, according to Census records.
Chamberlain, who is white, defended the way city officials handled his hiring for a $250,000 job, asking whether more transparent processes in selecting police chiefs who didn’t last long in the job benefitted the city or its approximately 700-person police department.
“I’m going to be very candid with you, I don’t think it has. You had five chiefs in five years…,” he said.
Chamberlain, 61, retired in 2018 as a commander in the LAPD where he worked for 34 years. He oversaw 1,800 people across six divisions in that department and since has worked as Chief of Police for the Los Angeles Unified School District (LASPD) and, more recently, public-safety consultant and a lecturer at California State University Los Angeles.
In Aurora, he will face the challenge of serving and satisfying multiple, and conflicting, groups and communities. Aside from civil rights watchdogs seeking police reform, there is a vocal and powerful city council faction that publicly pushes against reform efforts championed by a large part of the Aurora community, leaving no room for compromise.
Chamberlain spoke Thursday of his experience within LAPD insisting on officer de-escalation techniques and helping conduct internal investigations of use-of-force cases.
“Use of forces are still going to happen,” he told reporters. The difference under his tenure as chief, he added, will be that “the entire department [will] understand what happened” and learn “to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
Aurora police and the city government are currently part of a consent decree requiring police reforms after an investigation by the Colorado attorney general into its practices. The probe found a series of “patterns and practices” of excessive force, especially against people of color. In a statement Thursday, Attorney General Phil Weiser called on Aurora to establish an independent office monitoring the police department’s adherence to reforms after the consent decree expires in 2027.
“A permanent structure for independent review of the police department would help ensure that reform, accountability, and transparency continue, and that the city is responsive to community concerns,” Weiser said.
Such a structure would have to be put in place by Aurora’s city council, which is unlikely, given the group’s current anti-police reform majority.
Although the consent decree will to some degree limit his flexibility as chief over the next few years, Chamberlain described it as a “needed burden” for a city whose police force lacks public trust. Rebuilding trust will be one of his top metrics for success, he said — a goal he said he’ll address by building partnerships and relationships within the community, working collaboratively with other government agencies and cities, and being more accessible to the news media than his predecessors.
“I think the message is that, give me a chance, let’s collaborate and let’s work together,” he said. “I am here for the long haul.”
Over the last several weeks, some city council members and right-wing influencers have expressed concern about what they assert — without any evidence that Aurora’s police department has yet made public — is the pervasive and violent presence of a Venezuelan organized crime ring, Tren de Aragua also known as TdA. Some reporters asked Chamberlain about the group on Thursday.
He said he is “not familiar with that particular gang.”
Chamberlain spoke of his plans to:
- Use new technologies, including artificial intelligence, to police more effectively
- Base police policies on methods that data show work and don’t work in Aurora
- Boost morale within the force by easing some officers’ workload and “treating employees with the respect they deserve”
Despite years of much-publicized problems within the department, he noted, “This is still an amazing organization.”
hoping for the best here but also noting the comments by both the new ‘chief’ and the city manager as well as the reporters acknowledgement that the current city council is a problem…so let’s see what happens. Maybe it just gotta be an old white guy at the helm to satisfy the cops and the current city council 🙁
We’ve got to give this chief a chance. More importantly, the erratic city council needs to ratchet down the rhetoric and give him a chance. He can’t be suspect just because we don’t approve of the hiring method. He needs a shot at changing the culture. I like his initial comments about de-escalation.
Sounds like an amazing hire to me!! Public does not to be involved with a search like this. The City Manager did it his way and we trust his leadership in our city.
Damned if you do; damned if you don’t.
We need a chief in there to get this police department in line and make it a unified police department.
we do need that for sure. Just wonder why a $250,000 job is so hard to fill right? And only retired individuals seem to want to take a try at it. Really strange
Our currant City Council was elected with a campaign that eliminated the identification of the two parties-Democrats and Republicans. When the practice of ‘fluid’ political ‘deceptions’ is the Norm, removing the Parties identification makes the Democratic Process Worse! This City Council is an example of this?!
absolutely correct.
LOL, you do realize that “non-partisan” elections where the candidate’s party isn’t listed happen in places that your team controls, too, right?
If we continued to get public input for agreeing to a candidate, we’d never get a new Chief because a certain group of people don’t want policing to exist. Hoping our new Police Chief can begin to let the Aurora Police do what they need to do; enforce the laws. Aurora is becoming more and more like Chicago and San Francisco, with crime becoming rampant and politicians hell bent on keeping law enforcement from doing what needs to be done. If the Police can’t enforce the laws, then the citizenry will have to step up and do their work for them. Let’s get back to being a city where talented police candidate want to work with the community.
I’ve lived in Aurora almost my entire life, and I don’t want to live in a city where crime is out of control and criminals are treated like victims. Get tough on crime, and the crime will stop. That’s my message to our new Police Chief.
Bet you don’t like California and this guy ran the LA police dept as a Commander for 34 years. what say you?
Our wackado city council is at least partly responsible for the turnover.
“Our wackado city council is at least partly responsible for the turnover.”
LOL, how, exactly? Maybe these chiefs ultimately realize that trying to police a city with a large percentage of the population who thinks petty crime shouldn’t be prosecuted isn’t worth the aggravation.