AURORA | Aurora Police and a large outdoor shopping center last week unveiled a collaborative effort officers and retailers hope will take a bite out of shoplifting crime.
“Community engagement is huge,” Aurora Police District 1 Commander Michael Gaskill said at an opening ceremony Feb. 13 at the Gardens on Havana shopping center. “We have to be able to partner with not just the community, but the businesses, and especially the ones who are feeling it the most with the retail theft.”
Police joined city and retailers at the large mall at East Mississippi Avenue and South Havana Street in opening what police officials are calling a substation in a vacant retail space, provided rent free by mall owners.
The new space will not have on-site staff or officers but will serve as more of a stop-off location for patrol officers in the neighborhood to take a break and hold occasional meetings. The presence of the station and an outside emergency callbox is an attempt to deter shoplifters with an increased police presence without funding the staffing of an entire police station.
Police officials said that while they currently do not have the resources to staff the facility nor programmatically provide officers for regular patrol in and around stores at the shopping center, increased police funding could bring the substation to life.
Retailers, city officials and investigators say the need for more police presence in stores is critical.
“This is one of Target’s worst stores for retail theft,” Gaskill said. “The more we can have cops in the area, it’ll help the shoppers feel more safe.”
City crime statistics showed a 6.6% decrease in shoplifting across police District 1 — the northwest part of the city and area of most recorded crimes — during 2024 compared to 2023. Shoplifting across the city increased last year by 22.7%, showing a 50.7% spike in District 3, the city’s southeast area.
Aurora city lawmakers have increased penalties for shoplifting over the past few years, including mandatory jail time.
Police have not released any analysis of legislative or law enforcement impact on local or regional shoplifting rates, which put the metro area among the top of the list of worst shoplifting cities. Other regional shoplifting rates, including Denver, reveal shoplifting incidents were about the same or slightly higher last year than in 2023.
Police said some of the increase in Aurora could be attributed to a push for retailers to report theft online, but no analysis substantiated the reason for an increase in shoplifting reports.
Kevin Coppola, regional property manager for AmCap Incorporated, the company that owns the Gardens on Havana, said the idea of donating retail space to help increase police visibility has been kicked around for a few years but never materialized.
Coppola said when he took over management about two years ago he reached out to police officials and created a plan.
“We had a space available if they were willing to make it happen,” Coppola said. “Shaker jumped on the opportunity, and the project to renovate the space started a year ago.”
The station is a smaller storefront location in the center of the shopping center, next to the Dick’s Sporting Good store.
The facility has six cubicles, a private conference room, a bathroom, a water bottle filler, two parking spaces out front, security cameras and a police callbox outside.
Although police will not be stationed there, multiple officers said they were excited to have a spot to stop in the middle of town.
Gaskill said officers can use internet access to write reports and dock their body-cameras. He said he planned to hold private and community meetings there as well.
“It can only go up from here,” Commander Gaskill said. “We’ll develop it more, and depending on staffing, I would like to try different things.”
Community interaction with officers can also help police educate retailers, Gaskill said.
While local retailers meeting with a variety of officials have regularly asked for more and regular police patrols, and better police response to calls about shoplifting, Gaskill said online reporting is efficient for both police and store officials, when there is no suspect or the suspect has already left the store.
“If there’s not someone in custody or someone that could be arrested immediately, there’s no rush in recording the theft itself,” Gaskill said.
Good cooperation.
Cops on bikes and foot patrol will too.