AURORA | Residents on South Jamaica Street can’t wait for the weather to turn cold — so cold that crowds of young people will stop partying all night in a nearby parking lot as they have all summer.
“We’re hoping for rain, sleet or snow, for anything that will make them go away and their noise to finally stop,” one longtime homeowner told the Sentinel on Wednesday.
He and dozens of other residents near the corner of East Iliff Avenue and South Havana Street have been complaining to city government, Aurora Police and each other since the spring about what has become a regular, thrice-weekly meetup of teens and 20-somethings in a parking lot between a FirstBank and an Olive Garden. The meetups start at about 11:30 p.m. on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays and last until sun-up. They always involve Latin tech house music blasting from a truck tricked out with speakers the size of washing machines.
Councilmember Stephanie Hancock, whose Ward IV includes the parking lot, last week referred to those trucks as “floating discos.”
Neighbors, especially those on South Jamaica Street, say it’s one thing to have 30 to 100 young people drinking, smoking, urinating, vomiting and littering behind their homes three nights a week. But it’s quite another when the music is so loud and bass so low that residents say they feel its vibrations thumping all night long.
“It resonates even through my waterbed,” the homeowner told us.
“Even closing our windows and wearing ear plugs can’t block out the noise,” his neighbor said.
Both, along with three other residents we interviewed this week, asked that we not use their names in this story for fear that partiers might retaliate against them for complaining.
Parking lot parties, or raves, as they’re sometimes called, are nothing new in Aurora or elsewhere in Colorado, for that matter. High school football game goers have been tailgating as far back as anyone remembers, and Aurora’s youth have for decades gathered in lots at the old Buckingham Square, Town Center of Aurora, former Lowry Air Force Base and parks throughout the city.
This year, Aurora’s biggest parking lot rave triggered complaints about far more than the noise. On July 28, the day of Venezuela’s presidential election, between 2,000 and 4,000 people — mostly newcomers from that country — gathered in the parking lot of Aurora’s Gardens on Havana shopping center to celebrate what was expected to be President Nicolás Maduro’s defeat by opposition candidate Edmundo González. (Maduro later declared himself the winner of another six-year term in what many believe was a fraudulent election.) Drawn by messages on WhatsApp, people crowded there so quickly that customers and workers in the strip center struggled to leave its parking lot and others feared for their safety. After someone in the crowd fired a few gunshots into the air, a Target store and a few other businesses closed early as a precaution.
Aurora Councilmember Danielle Jurinksy posted on Facebook the next day about the “severity” of the situation, claiming there had been reports of theft and assaults in the crowd. “Thousands of these folks took over and completely shut down a part of our city. The police were totally over run (sic), and we’re (sic) forced to get out of the area for their safety. A police car was shot up,” she wrote.
Her post and a flurry of social media chatter that followed prompted Aurora police to correct what it said was misinformation. The department debunked assertions that attendees rioted and damaged property, saying nobody was ticketed, arrested or hurt.
Large amounts of garbage was collected by store employees and volunteers the next day. The city has insisted there’s no evidence a police car was shot at. City spokesperson Ryan Luby said police officers were not forced out by the crowd, but were on-scene “for the entire event.”
Meanwhile, some Aurorans say raves have grown louder over the past few summers with the presence of high-volume speakers, and that some have popped up closer to residential areas like South Jamaica Street.
The area around East 12th Avenue and Dayton Street has over the last few years become a frequent rave site. Residents there have complained about frequent gunfire in addition to loud music.
The intersection of East 17th Avenue and Alton Street also has drawn all-night parties. Aurora police responded to complaints there on the night of Aug. 31, when neighbors said subwoofers were rattling their windows, and several cars had parked illegally and blocked the road. Officers impounded seven vehicles, including an SUV with the large stereo system, and issued summons to two people.
Aurora police remind the public that city ordinance prohibits unnecessary noise and disturbing the peace. In public and private places, city code reads, “It shall be unlawful for any person to make, continue, or cause to be made or continued any unreasonably loud or unusual noise which seriously inconveniences other persons in the area.”
The Police Department also wants the public to understand that it is short-staffed and cannot respond to every complaint about excessive noise at a party or rave.
“We must prioritize calls for service depending on their severity and active nature, and Aurora 911 dispatches us accordingly,” Agent Matthew Longshore, a spokesman for the department, wrote in an email to the Sentinel. “There could be times when someone calls in for a loud music complaint, and the people are gone when we arrive. We continue to ask that our community report these incidents to better understand where and when they occur and work on a response plan to address these concerns, similar to what we did on Alton Street.”
At Hancock’s urging, Aurora’s new police chief said in his first week on the job that the department is looking for ways not just to break up parking lot raves mid-party, but also to prevent them from happening. Chief Todd Chamberlain told the Council’s Public Safety, Courts & Civil Service Policy Committee on Sept. 12 that he is considering staffing what he called a “party car” in which an officer would respond to complaints about parking lot raves and make the problem their priority duty.
Although he wouldn’t commit to the idea until he weighs the need to control noise violations against other more violent crimes in the city, Chamberlain said, “Right now, I think we can get resources to start focusing on it specifically.”
City officials also are considering working with businesses whose parking lots attract raves to build barriers and that might make those spaces less conducive to parties.
Maybe we could get the Israel’s to fix those speakers, just a bit bigger than pagers.
Stop calling them “raves”.. Raves are peaceful and held in locations with permits. Get your facts straight.
Lmao, this is the most out-of-touch take ever. The true beginnings of rave culture are from UNDERGROUND events, aka unpermitted or “illegal”. Abandoned warehouses, empty storage basements under old grocery stores, the middle of the woods, etc. Calling those corny commercial shows being put on at Mission Ballroom and Red Rocks “raves,” is categorically false. Those events only play rave music which is where the similarities both begin and end.
Simple. Have the City announce that the only location this will be tolerated is out at CAPSTC on 25950 E. Quincy. There is a large parking lot and there are no homes in the vicinity. See if they wish to oparty in the shadow of a police training facilty. In all other locations start making arrests and towing vehicles. The expense and inconvenience will deter the behavior. Kids cannot long afford the cost of vehicle towing and impoundment.
This is great APD tells us they are concerned and are serious in showing us a plan with a superior breakthrough for peace and quiet leading to city calming. How -about this? Before APD, and city council spends time on these bothersome neighborhood rockers as urgent get-er-done business, it’s a great opportunity to convince us by demonstrating they know how to enforce the law on expired license plates. The city so far has been either unable, unwilling or uninterested to tackle the illegal growth in expired plates. The insurance companies on the other hand sure recognize what it means, and the rates have surged because of this regressive law enforcement thinking. Particularly UM/UIM rates and its cost to cover those driving around without insurance, and no plates go together with it. This is a perfect example of Aurora’s enforcement priority policy and a basic explanation of the economic impact of Gov. compelled inaction.
Oh, for the good old days when those that didn’t want to register an auto simply ripped off the plates from another car. As for the lack of insurance coverage, you’re dreaming if you don’t think that thousands of motorists haven’t purchased coverage for decades. (10’s of thousands in the Denver metro area I would guess) There is no real, practical way of avoiding the reality of no plates and no insurance.
Many people simply won’t do either and any attempt to rectify the situation is neither practical of possible. You, and I, will have to pay.
I feel for the residents. We live close enough to apartments to hear occasional bass booming and it does reverberate throughout a home. It’s disheartening that people are so disrespectful to public property and careless toward residents.