Aurora police chief Todd Chamberlain digs into the perfect crime fight

AURORA | About six months in, Aurora’s most recent chief of police is ready to make the troubled department his own, he says.

Chief Todd Chamberlain says the proof is in the policing.

“Our primary mission is to fight crime,” Chamberlain said. “That is it, and that’s what I am focused on.”

How he plans on doing that is by implementing a host of changes, mostly based on data, metrics and analysis, he says.

The 35-year-veteran police administrator, who came to Aurora last September from leadership jobs in the Los Angeles Police Department and a school district there, told city lawmakers over the past few weeks that capturing more data and scrutinizing it has the most impact.

Chamberlain has been expected to meet the whims of an often divided and demanding city council that has often sent mixed messages about making meaningful changes in Aurora’s controversy-plagued police force. The majority of its members have defended APD in its long string of excessive use-of-force cases and pushed against reform efforts required under a state order and championed by a large part of the Aurora community.

That state order, called a consent decree, was imposed in 2021 after an investigation by the Colorado attorney general into APD’s record

It found “patterns and practices” of excessive use of force, especially against people of color. The decree requires APD to mend its ways by 2027.

The police department is the recipient of equal pressure to address as well as prevent a myriad of prevalent crimes.

Chamberlain was sworn in Sept. 9 amid multiple furors in the city: national controversy surrounding Venezuelan immigrants and allegations of international gang “takeover” of part of the city, a focus on episodes of gun violence, shoplifting and car theft.

When Chamberlain took the reins of the department in September, police union officials, community and city leaders said they were looking for stability in the department.

Chamberlain met with city council members multiple times in the past two weeks to explain to them how he plans to get there.

He breaks down his strategy into three categories: process, policy and people.

The process includes crime analysis, police deployment and data review. The policy includes guidelines, compliance and a focus on constitutional policing. The personnel include patrol, command staff, specialized units and the community.

Aurora will focus on crime analysis, officer deployment and data review

Equally important to best practices in policing, is regularly practicing review of just about everything the police department does, Chamberlain said.

“The framework that we have based and put into place for the police department right now is evidence-based,” Chamberlain said. “Evidence-based policing is being able to articulate, through data information, that the strategies that you’re implementing are having an impact.” 

Chamberlain said he classifies three crime categories based on the severity of the situation police are dealing with. The divisions are based on whether the problem requires an immediate, near-term or long-term strategy.

Near-term strategies include hotspot policing, where the department highlights specific areas with high crime rates that typically encompass only a block or a few blocks. They address it by using stops, citations and arrests, and then review to see if they are having an effect. 

“Productivity is something that has not been measured here in Aurora a lot, but it’s something that’s really tangible, and it tells you if you are touching the right people, doing the right thing, based upon how crime goes up or down,” Chamberlain said.

Chamberlain offered a map of a three-by-three block area near Monview Park as an example of “hot spot” policing. The map showed locations of assaults and robberies, along with a chart listing calls for service and locations of reports of “shots fired” over each month, and totaled for the year.

Another chart showed “proactive policing by clearance” for different actions like arrests, summons, warnings and warrants. The graphic aid depicted which police team took action, among a patrol officer, a Police Area Representative (PAR) officer or a Direct Action Response Team (DART). Chamberlain said this information helps the department gauge whether its approaches are working in those areas.

Mid-term strategies involve site-based approaches, Chamberlain said. Examples of that include collaborative efforts the police orchestrated to push the Edge at Lowry apartments into closure. The Edge at Lowry became a nationally notorious location after building owners and some city lawmakers claimed the building was “overrun” by Venezuelan immigrants and Tren de Aragua gang members. Police and city officials maintained that the apartment complex suffered from mismanagement, and while there were numerous crime incidents, including some involving Tren de Aragua, officials have refuted that gangs overran the complex.

Long-term strategies focus on intervention and prevention, identifying individuals with a “high propensity for violence,” Chamberlain said. The police will “call in” these repeat and high-risk offenders and use them as “lever pullers” to go back into their group or organization and tell them what future actions the police, city and courts will take on them if they persist in criminal activity. 

The strategy is called “Operation Ceasefire,” where law enforcement communicates to gangs that there would be swift, sure and severe consequences for violence, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. 

Aurora police recently targeted three individuals for their last “call in” session with Mayor Mike Coffman being involved, Chamberlain said.  A police analysis revealed that those three people were linked to about 25 shootings in Aurora. The endeavor was a success story, he said, because one of them turned their life in a better direction.

“​​​​That’s an example of intervention prevention, trying to modify an individual’s behavior or place,” Chamberlain said.

Proactive policing and metrics

Chamberlain said crime analytics must provide crime location, date, suspect, details about the victims, crime patterns and details of how the criminals operate .

“Then we correlate that with the actual individuals doing it, as opposed to just doing a broad brush where you’re infiltrating an entire neighborhood and you’re getting the community really upset,” Chamberlain said.

He said police focus on the time, the locations, the individuals and the victims. 

Measures include assessing the results from stops and contacts, patrol arrests and citations. He said the department focuses on repeat offenders, while also assessing the impact of community contacts, intelligence and surveillance. 

The key now to the success in preventing and fighting crime, Chamberlain said, is strategic collaboration.

“The department is much more than just patrol. It is a department that cannot work in silos, and that cannot function that way.” Chamberlain said. “It’s about using different resources in the most effective way, and then measuring that impact.”

The Aurora police department has also been examining a new youth-violence prevention program, Standing Against Violence Every Day, dubbed “SAVE.”

In cooperation with the city’s Youth Violence Prevention team, the effort collects information on contacts, gang affiliation, case outcome and even the age of the candidates brought in. The project also monitors and documents gang rivalries and levels of activity.

“It’s really challenging too, because a lot of the juveniles are not pursued by prosecution, and that’s why a lot of gangs will manipulate juveniles,” Chamberlain said. 

Juvenile detention centers typically do not have enough beds, some police and justice activists say, so they keep the most violent offenders and let the least violent offenders go. Chamberlain said that gangs often recruit juveniles with the least violent records. 

“I just want to uplift the data driven approach,” Councilmember Crystal Murillo said. “I know there has been pushback in the past, from the Council on focusing resources on specific areas, obviously, aligning that where there are high instances of crime makes a lot of sense to me, I just want to uplift that approach that you’re taking.”

Technology and Real-Time Crime Center 

The police department is in the process of opening a so-called Real-Time Information Center, which combines various technologies, including crime analysis, computer-aided dispatch, and crime mapping. 

“We are slowly rolling it out,” said police spokesperson Agent Matthew Longshore. “We are waiting for other technology pieces to come in until we “officially” open it up. Ultimately, it’s people that actively monitor calls for service, cameras and other technology around the city to help with active calls for service, assist investigators, etc.”

Chamberlain said the centers can track crimes and pursuits, using technology like computer-aided dispatch, records management systems, crime mapping, forecasting, license plate readers and drones.

The chief has also said he’s interested in purchasing an Axon Fusus system to use as the technological system for the real-time information center in multiple meetings. An Axon Fusus connects to active cameras in the city — such as at local schools and grocery stores — to help track crime. 

“When we talk about cameras, it allows for agencies to not have to invest in their own equipment and technology, but rather utilize camera networks that are already in place, meaning like they can capitalize on public, private partnerships, and they can integrate with existing cameras,” Kimberly Przeszlowski, assistant professor of criminal justice at Quinnipiac University said referring to Axon Fusus systems.

Atlanta, PD, for example, had 1,500 of their own cameras when they first started out, roughly, but through Fusus, they were able to integrate an additional 16,000 plus cameras per the year because companies were public, maybe institutions like gas stations, schools, they’re allowing the agency to just access their cameras in real time.”

In the meantime, Chamberlain and police staff have been putting one together with the resources and funding they have while studying and visiting other real-time crime centers, according to Longshore.

These centers are different from just surveillance because they don’t look for people committing crimes; they look for them in the area once the crime is committed, Przeszlowski said. They can be used as surveillance in hot-spot policing for locations with heavy crime and/or gang activity, she added.

Besides ground observation technology, Chamberlain said police need a better view from above.

“We’re also hoping for an increase in technology related to our drone technology,” Chamberlain said. “You can pre-stage drones. They can go up immediately. They can be flown or observed based on longitude, latitude, out of the real-time information center, and they can track crimes. We can get units there quicker, or even say a unit doesn’t need to go there.”

There are a lot of limitations around drones, as well, Przeszlowski said. “A lot of information nowadays has to be publicly accessible, especially if you do have a drone as a first respondent program.” 

Policy, guidelines and compliance

During the past few months of his tenure, Chamberlain has made a variety of changes to policing policy, notably how and when officers can pursue suspects in squad cars.

“This has everything to do with fighting crime, because if our policies are not sound, nothing within the organization is going to function,” Chief Todd Chamberlain said.

This modification permits police to pursue stolen vehicles and drivers suspected of driving under the influence. While Aurora police have essentially been prohibited from car chases, there have always been exceptions, mostly when an officer perceives grave danger to the public if a chase isn’t carried out. Chamberlain said the change essentially justifies new criteria for police pursuits.

“We’ve had about 17 pursuits so far, since the modification took place, 75 percent of those individuals that were stuck in those pursuits had extensive, extensive, prolific criminal histories,” Chamberlain said. “They were stealing those cars and then going out and committing more crimes.”

Police said no injuries from the pursuits have been logged so far. National research and most police departments point out that police car chases are dangerous to both the public and the officers, and policies prohibiting them prevail.

An Aurora bystander was killed in northwest Aurora last year during a police pursuit when the suspect lost control of his car and slammed into a parked car on a residential street, killing the occupant.

Chamberlain said he has spoken with his officers about the danger of pursuits and issued a training video. He said he encourages officers to discontinue pursuits when they become dangerous for the community. He said his officers have handled pursuits very competently. 

“When you’re going into pursuit, there’s a high opportunity for tragedy to occur, both internal, within the organization, or external,” Chamberlain said. “We put a huge training policy video release to our officers, saying that if the pursuit is going in a really bad direction, discontinue. And we’ve had just as much success with discontinuing pursuits.”

Patrol, command staff, specialized units and community

Chamberlain said he also made changes to personnel and rank deployment, which caused some pushback for moving personnel from one command to another. Overall, he said, the move was necessary after reviewing operations and performance data.

For him, he said it became clear that leadership roles were not being “fulfilled” effectively in certain areas, and the changes brought fresh perspectives to teams that had grown stagnant, with some leaders becoming too close to the issues to maintain objectivity. 

Essentially, the chief has combined some ranks and redistributed responsibilities among others.

“They got too close to the trees to see the forest,” Chamberlains said. “So those modifications were not only needed, but they were warranted.”

The captain rank in the police department was changed. 

“It was a throwaway rank,” Chamberlains said. “The people that were captains were not put in positions that actually had any authority.”

Now, captains are placed in specific areas with commanders who act as their mentors to eventually train them into a commander role, as commanders get promoted to division chiefs. Chamberlain said that this also aims to streamline internal operations and support administrative functions like policy implementation and complaint adjudication.

Units were also consolidated, which Chamberlain said was also controversial in the department. 

“I know that that was a big problem with a lot of people, where units were taken out of special operations and put back into patrol,” Chamberlain said.  

This happened with the Direct Action Response Team (DART), Gang Robbery Investigative Team (GRIT), Regional Anti-Violence Enforcement Network (RAVEN), Aurora Safe and the Gang Intervention Unit.

The business services division was entirely “civilianized,” replacing multiple captains and lieutenants who previously held roles in that department. Sworn officers were reassigned to operational sections, overseeing personnel and resources. Civilianizing the division not only improved efficiency but also gave greater ownership to non-sworn, meaning civilian, staff, Chamberlain said.

“A department will sink or swim, not just on the sworn, but also on the non-sworn,” He said. “And our non-sworn are absolutely incredible, and they don’t get the identification and the praise that they deserve.”

Another key area that Chamberlain said needed attention was the team of analysts. Analysts play a vital role in understanding where, how, when and why crime happens, he said. Chamberlain had the police department evaluate the technological resources they have and encouraged the analysts to create in-house dashboards and data-driven research with that technology. This should also save the department a lot of money, he said.

“They should be able to build that technology based on the request of the organization and what’s needed,” Chamberlain said. 

Money and people

Aurora has long struggled with trying to determine the size of its police department, and pay for it.

For decades, Aurora strived for a self-imposed ratio of hiring two officers for every 1,000 residents, never reaching the goal.

Besides years of semantic arguments over the need for officers on the streets or just officers in the department, the “two-per-thousand” goal has been elusive because of attrition, recruitment, training time and money.

While the majority of police-department dollars are spent on people, a large portion of money goes toward cars and technology. In Aurora, and across the nation, communities and police departments argue over whether more, visible officers is a better crime deterrent than technology.

Both, Chamberlain says.

“This is not a request for bodies,” Chamberlain said. “I understand the budget. I understand the mechanics of that. This is more of an enlightenment for everybody in this room, because I think it’s an important conversation.”

The Bureau of Justice Administration and the FBI generally believe that a police department should have two officers for every 1000 community members, according to FBI policy statements.

The Aurora Police Department is well behind the national average and the state average, along with the two officers per 1,000 civilians’ intended quota. 

The national average is 2.4 or more officers per 1,000 civilians, Colorado is about 2.3 officers per 1,000 and Aurora is below 1.7 officers per 1,000.

The population of Aurora is an estimated 404,000, according to city and U.S. Census officials. The police department was authorized to employ 748 officers in 2021, but that number has not grown with the increase in population. The department should be authorized to staff 808 officers, Chamberlain said. 

The department currently has 690 officers hired, with a vacancy of 58, and only 590 of those officers are actively deployed because of either attrition or trainees being unready to step in full-time. That would make for 118 vacancies if the city authorized 808 officers.

Mayor Mike Coffman said he is not worried about unfilled positions for the authorized 748 cops. After the national reckoning of George Floyd, and the pandemic, many officers left police forces across the nation including in Aurora. The Aurora police and fire department medics involved in the death of Elijah McClain, also made officers less interested in signing up to work for the Aurora Police Department for the past five years, some city lawmakers say. 

“The department got better in 2024,” Coffman said. “We had the largest class we’ve ever had in the history of the city, which started out around 50. Right now, 44. That’s enormous, and so if we can continue down that path, we can bridge this gap.”

The transparency portal on the Aurora Police website shows that as of April 1, 690 sworn officers and 235 civilian personnel made up the police department. Of those sworn, 438 are officers, 106 are agents, 97 are sergeants, 31 are lieutenants, eight are commanders, six are chiefs and four are captains.

“Even with that, these numbers still reflect that this department is locally understaffed,” Chamberlain said. 

He said the target number does account for what he estimates to be thousands of people migrating on and off Buckley Space Force Base on a daily basis, as well as 20,000-30,000 undocumented, and uncounted, immigrants and homeless people.

With both substantial current and predicted budget shortfalls, upwards of $12 million this year, more officers is unlikely, city council members have pointed out over the past few weeks.

He estimates that 450,000 is a more accurate population estimate for Aurora.

Chamberlain said the department is stretched too thin with only 202 officers spread across three shifts for round-the-clock service.

Despite that, Chamberlain made a pitch to city lawmakers to spend money allocated to hiring officers, but unspent because of vacancies, on technologies that can make the department more productive.

Drones, technological systems and related strategic policing efforts could bridge the city from what it allots for the police department and what it needs, he said.

“Not every department needs the same numbers, but I would tell you without question, having 1.6 (officers) in the City of Aurora, with all the diversity, with the crime issues, with the problems, and having Boulder, or having Colorado Springs with a 2.5 (officers), that makes no sense, that’s completely upside down, something does have to be modified,” Chamberlain said.