APD Bodycam Screengrab
AURORA | The Aurora Police Department published its first annual Use of Force Report, for 2023, showing a steady level of incidents, still mostly involving Black people and other minorities.
The report outlines key data, policy updates and training initiatives to enhance transparency and accountability. The report offers a detailed analysis of use-of-force incidents, officer and subject demographics and comparisons to previous years, providing the community with greater insight into police operations.
The issue of use of force by police pushed APD into the international spotlight after the death Elijah McClain at the hands of police and fire-department medics in 2019.
Aurora Police, city administrators and the Colorado Attorney General’s office entered into a consent decree two years ago, requiring a variety of police reforms, many because of “patterns and practices” of abusive force problems, most involving people of color.
“Following the launch of the Online Transparency & Accountability Portal in January, publishing this annual report is the logical next step in our commitment to transparency and broader information sharing with our community,” Deputy Chief Chris Juul said in a statement.
The report highlights significant trends in use-of-force incidents:
- Lethal use-of-force events dropped to four in 2023, down from 13 in 2022 and eight in 2021.
- Low-level force, such as physical control techniques, accounted for over 80% of incidents across 2021, 2022 and 2023.
- Use-of-force incidents occurred in 11.2% of arrests in 2023, slightly higher than 10.4% in 2022 but lower than 12.6% in 2021.
- Use-of-force events represented a consistent percentage of total calls for service, ranging from 0.1% in 2021 to 0.3% in 2023.
Use of force on the Black and African American people was still high in 2023. According to the report, 757 incidents of use of force were reported involving 791 subjects. Of those, 309 identified as Black or African American, 235 identified as white or European and 173 identified as Hispanic or Latino. 54 were people whose race and ethnicity were unknown or not specified.
Only about 16% of the city’s population is Black, according to U.S. Census records.
Aurora police reported a 20% increase in total use-of-force incidents, from 627 in 2022 to 757 in 2023, partly attributed to increased public interactions post-pandemic and the broader definition of “use of force” adopted in Colorado in 2021.
“The new legislation predominantly took effect in mid- to late-2021, at which time low-level use of force numbers began to rise because of the new “overcoming resistance” definition and agencies adoption of that standard,” the report stated.
Intermediate responses, including Tasers and chemical agents, accounted for 16% of use-of-force incidents, while lethal responses decreased significantly to 0.5% of incidents, reflecting a shift toward de-escalation and non-lethal tactics, the report states.
Officers applied force in 3.57% of investigatory contacts and 11.2% of arrests. Training enhancements in 2023 included scenario-based de-escalation programs like Integrating Communication Assessment and Tactics (ICAT) and peer intervention training through the Active Bystandership for Law Enforcement program.
“We recognize as an agency the importance of capturing and analyzing use-of-force information in the spirit of continuous improvement and enhancing public safety services for our residents,” Juul said in a statement.
The full report is available on the Aurora Police Department website under the “Public Reports & Crime Data” tab.
The Aurora PD deserves congratulations and encouragement for employing de-escalation training to achieve better results. Policing is tough work, but de-escalation is key to safety for officers and the public. I believe de-escalation builds public trust and appreciation for the work our officers perform!
Aurora PD has been doing annual use of force reports for years. They were part of a larger report that covered several statistics about the police department. Leave it to the Sentinel to not have a clue.
Statistics is often the enemy of context. Macro statistics tells the public nothing about the circumstances in each specific use of force. True, police have a responsibility to try and de-escalate a volatile situation when Possible, however, a citizen also has the responsibility not to escalate the situation as well. Here is an experiment worth trying if you would like a perspective on why stats alone cannot be the test of a Law-enforcement agencies performance when it comes to use of force. The Guardian runs an annual report called The Counted which tracks all of the fatal force incidents in the United States. they used to provide links to news articles related to each incident, but I don’t believe they do that any longer. Still, I would challenge you to choose an arbitrary date and then take the name of the person involved and Google search articles that will provide some perspective about what took place prior to the fatal use of force. Do that for 10 consecutive incidents and I think that you will see that in the vast majority of cases police officers were confronted with an individual who he just committed a very violent crime or were confronted with potentially lethal violence themselves. If you are not convinced, do the same for the next , consecutive 10 incidents
First, the reporting system driven by the “Police Reform Bill-SB217” is an extremely cumbersome and overdone response. Although use of force incidents should be reviewed, the manner in which it is done is important. As a police supervisor, I conducted many use of force investigations. If there was an injury, the suspect wanted to complain, or the type of force was significant, I always responded and did an investigation. Luckily, today we have body cam videos that greatly aid. Unfortunately, now everything is considered a use of force due to the vague language in SB217. Supervisors are now looking at three hours of investigation in even the simplest of resistances. The overblown review system serves to tie up supervisors to the point that they have far less time to be out on the road actually supervising and making sure that incidents go the way they should and that training needs are identified. Basically, the police are spending more time justifying their existence than they are doing the job. The ultimate effect is that officers avoid stopping persons who might become combative. Community policing means that there is a partnership between the community and the police. If the police fail to make stops based upon the community input for fear of an exaggerated review system, then the police side of that partnership is damaged and public confidence in police protection is greatly reduced. There are a number of other complex considerations. Since the radical SB217 drove thousands of senior officers out of the job, we have a wave of young, hastily trained officers and few officers and supervisors with extensive experience. We are seeing tactical errors resulting in deaths where a better approach might have averted the death. The public has only a vague sense that something is wrong. Next, if you are a senior officer, and the young officer does something that isn’t the best approach before you can stop him/her, you are now at risk of criminal prosecution. This is happening now. The overreaction by the Colorado legislature has made its way to the prosecutors who are unjustly charging officers in use of force incidents that are would not have been charged when viewed by police leaders with some real experience. This is happening now. An officer that I served as an expert witness for was just acquitted of all charges after the jury saw the real videos that the Arapahoe County DA’s office and the Aurora Police Department essentially hid from the public and the officers in the department. The touted Force Review Board, chaired by Division Chief Juul, submitted a report that was full of untrue statements. Further, it does not appear that the Force Review Board ever saw the videos that ultimately cleared the officer in court. How do you claim to have done a review of the force when you don’t look at the most important evidence in the entire incident? I have to laugh at the fact that Division Chief Juul pretends to be a credible source. Anyone who would like to see his review of the use of force in the mentioned incident and the real videos that were suppressed, I would be glad to show you. The public never saw those videos. So, police supervisory misconduct is something that the legislature never considered. An officer I had trained in the past was telling me about the panicked reaction by a supervisor to an injury that resulted from a resistance. The resistance got worse because a young officer had tried to use a technique that he was not good at and things escalated to the point where the subject was Tased. The supervisor, like most, had little real use of force knowledge and was running scared. The injury was not major but did require a competent investigation and an informed review. We cannot judge these things from the public’s perception.
The Aurora Police Department is now committed to flawed and dangerous goals. The Attorney General foisted the consent decree on the department based upon erroneous judgments. First, he called a number of incidents racist when they were not. Second, he pulled out the old disproportionate racial statistics trick. Other Colorado cities had statistics that were more racially imbalanced than Aurora. If you are a police department that is pursuing racially balanced statistics in today’s culture, you can only do that by not doing your job.
Black suspects are disproportionally involved in crime. Sorry, in today’s world that is a fact. It isn’t police misconduct that is causing those statistics. So, please notice that whatever Aurora does the statistics will never be proportionate in today’s environment. What is missing is any politician or police leader who will admit that fact. Please watch the future statistics for proof of what I am saying.
I won’t go into depth here, but the Aurora Police Department has had to rewrite their policies to be in line with the vague and dangerous SB217. This leaves officers with vague and dangerous guidelines. The safest thing to do is to not try to do your job. Let us look at just one noble idea from the legislature. The idea of minimum force. First, not one can tell you what minimum force is. It is certainly different for civilians who will be on a jury from what a trained police officer understands. But I have to worry about being judged from that ignorant viewpoint. The “reasonable and necessary” force guidelines “from the viewpoint of a reasonable officer at the scene” standard established by the Supreme Court made some sense. The idea of minimum force means that officers often try to use force that is not sufficient to control the situation. The result is that the suspect breaks away and goes for a weapon and either the officer, the suspect, or both, are shot. I can show you videos of that occurring. By trying to be so caring, the legislature has actually made it more dangerous for both the officers and the public.
I won’t go on. The truth is that all of our elected leaders and our police leaders have shown no moral courage to face these issues, They have allowed the legislature and the Attorney General to decimate law enforcement and leave you the public waiting an hour while your neighborhood is shot up. The officers I know tell me horror stories that you will only get small glimpses of until you need help. Meanwhile, the legislature realizes that we are short of officers while taking no blame in the fact that they created the problem.