The path to oversight: Aurora lawmakers seeking a way to police the police

AURORA | Aurora’s newly seated city council is mapping out the creation of an oversight system for local law enforcement that they say must emphasize independence, effectiveness, and most of all, public trust

“No two civilian oversight agencies are the same,” Councilmember Gianina Horton said during a Jan. 13 meeting she called to discuss the issue. “We have to tailor it to us.”

Horton, who previously worked for Denver’s Office of the Independent Monitor, joined Councilmembers Amy Wiles and Alison Coombs in hosting a public forum to help residents better understand what police oversight might look like in Aurora. The event featured Lisabeth Pérez Castle from Denver’s Office of the Independent Monitor and focused on the structure, challenges and limitations of civilian oversight models.

The next meeting, a community roundtable, is slated for 6 p.m. Jan. 29, giving residents the opportunity to continue commenting on how Aurora should design the new system.

At the meeting, Castle explained how Denver’s model functions. Coombs explained Aurora’s history with oversight, and City Manager Jason Batchelor and City Attorney Pete Schulte provided technical guidance on how Aurora should approach an oversight system.

The history of police oversight in Aurora

The push for civilian oversight comes after Aurora’s ongoing police reform efforts and community struggles with the city’s Community Advisory Council and the consent decree’s monitor system. The advisory council was created under a state-mandated consent decree. Aurora’s Consent Decree was created in 2022 and was created after a state investigation by the Colorado attorney general determined that Aurora police exhibited “patterns and practices” of using excessive force, particularly against people of color.

​​The Consent Decree was imposed by Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser in 2021. Triggered in part by the 2019 death of Elijah McClain, who died at the hands of police and rescuers after being stopped, unarmed. The decree mandates broad reforms in training, accountability, use-of-force policies, data systems and community engagement.

The Community Advisory Council was intended to serve as a bridge between the community and the reform process, which was created to gather feedback, advise on implementation and communicate progress to residents. 

Over time, the council became mired in disputes over its role, authority and independence.

Some members viewed the advisory council as an advocacy body meant to push for accountability and systemic change, while city officials and the consent-decree monitor characterized it as a non-deliberative advisory panel with no decision-making power. 

This created internal conflict and frustration among members who felt their input was not meaningfully considered. 

In 2024, all advisory council appointments were terminated, and members were asked to reapply, leading to significant turnover and disrupting the group’s continuity of work. Several original members chose not to return, including Horton and the Aurora NAACP Chapter President Omar Montgomery. These actions raised concerns that the council had become more symbolic than influential and less representative of community voices critical of police practices.

Current discussions around oversight are shaped by that history, with Wiles and Horton being two former members of the advisory board who won their current city council seats in the most recent election. 

They, and many other community voices, are now pushing for a new oversight body to be structurally independent, adequately funded and protected from political rollback.

Historically, police department leaders in administration and the police unions have pushed back on efforts to create independent oversight, saying that trained police must have a seat at the table when judging their actions.

All this creates a twofold mission, lawmakers say: developing truly independent oversight of how the city implements the consent decree, and developing an independent system that provides oversight of all police operations.

Example of Denver and other approaches

At the recent forum, Castle explained how Denver’s Office of the Independent Monitor operates by leveraging transparency, public reporting and structural independence to create impact. 

Under Denver’s model, recommendations regarding officer misconduct move from investigators to police or sheriff’s leadership and, finally, to the city’s director of safety, who has final authority over discipline, Castle said. 

While Denver’s oversight office can review investigations and recommend discipline, it does lack enforcement power, Castle said. Instead, accountability comes through public reporting, community pressure and oversight by elected officials.

“We do draw a line on discipline,” Castle said. “Anyone who receives discipline of 10 days or more, we write about that case in our reports so the community gets to know what kinds of penalties are imposed for what kinds of offenses. Ultimately, it’s the community that holds departments accountable.”

Horton said there are four national oversight models: review focus models, monitor/auditing focus models, investigation focus models and hybrids. She said many are hybrid models.

Review-focused models are centered on civilian review boards, public forums and reporting, she said. Investigation-focused models are “purely investigation,” Horton said. They include highly trained civilian investigators who independently examine cases and recommend discipline.

“Rarely does an investigative model have outreach or policy and look at those processes,” she said about the investigative model.

Finally, the audit or monitor models combine case review with policy analysis, data monitoring and long-term reform efforts, “promoting long-term, sustainable changes to oversight,” Horton said. The audit or monitor model is Denver’s model, she said. 

“The Denver model is where they are at now; it is not where they started, and it took community organizations and community advocates to push to strengthen that office and to secure it as a necessary entity of public safety,” Horton said.

Horton cited the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement as a key resource, offering training, research and guiding principles focused on independence, transparency, community involvement and accountability.

While Aurora currently allows systems inside the police and fire departments to investigate, detail and determine discipline, Aurora has a unique Civil Service Commission, composed of non-police and fire appointees who have quasi-judicial oversight for discipline. The commission primarily hears disciplinary appeals from officers and firefighters.

Community input

At the meeting, concerns centered on protecting any new oversight body from political rollback, especially given that city council members change every few years. A request for a charter change was even suggested. 

“My question is this: every time we start to get one of these groups, and we start to make inroads and progress, it’s snatched away,” a community member asked. “And so that’s the issue out here, is that we have to keep restarting these groups and these oversight boards, or whatever we want to call them.”

The push for a truly independent oversight structure pre-dates the consent decree and national attention to the death of Elijah McClain, who died at the hands of police and firefighters in 2019. Former police Chief Nick Metz assembled his own “oversight” panel, composed of police officers and select community members. The structure was frequently criticized by community leaders who said it was not a substitute for independent oversight.

Horton responded that the “fight is real.”

She said that the city council is working to propose an oversight office, create a budget and ensure it is independent and “has teeth.” Horton said that Aurora has its own governance structure, history and community expectations, and will need to create its own oversight structure. These will be the top priorities of the meeting at the end of the month, she said. 

LaRonda Jones, the mother of Kilyn Lewis, a man who was fatally shot by Aurora SWAT in 2024, asked how Denver decided enough was enough and how they created their own oversight office. Castle said that in Denver, the Office of the Independent Monitor emerged after years of community frustration from police shootings, including the killing of Paul Childs. At the time, Denver ranked among cities with the highest rates of police shootings in the country, with Aurora not ranking far behind, and residents demanded an independent mechanism to restore public trust rather than face a federal consent decree, as Aurora did.

Funding and independence also emerged as concerns during the discussion. 

Denver’s Office of the Independent Monitor operates on an annual budget of roughly $6 million, Castle said. Most of which is spent on staffing. That includes attorneys who serve as deputy monitors reviewing investigations and discipline, PhD-level researchers who analyze data and identify trends and community outreach staff who collect complaints and feedback.

Although the Office of the Independent Monitor has its own budget line, Castle said that funding levels depend on decisions by the mayor and city council.

By comparison, Aurora reported spending only $3 million on their independent monitor and oversight from 2022 to the beginning of 2025. That monitor is a police contractor and CEO from IntegrAssure, hired to oversee implementation of the city’s consent decree. It has no oversight authority over police operations, acting only as a reviewer.

Batchelor said that funding has already been allocated in the current budget to begin establishing a public safety oversight “function,” but he did not say how much.

Other questions, including one from a former police officer, Don Black, asked whether Denver allows confidentiality in reporting between officers and the monitor’s office, which Castle confirmed was the case. 

In a later interview, Jones and Veronica Seabron, the mother of Jabron Seabron, who was shot by a Douglas County Deputy in 2024, both said they also hope that any oversight committee or board gives the public the chance to make one or some of the appointees. Calvin Seabron also stressed the same request. None of the family members specified how many they wished to be appointed by the community, but as long as a few are.  

The next steps

Batchelor said that funding has already been allocated in the current budget to begin establishing a public safety oversight “function,” without needing any potential changes to the city charter. Future discussions, such as the roundtable on Jan. 29, will focus on defining the office’s scope, powers and safeguards, including how it would differ from the CAC and how it would coexist with or outlast the consent decree, Horton said. 

Council members Horton and Wiles said they plan to ensure independence, secure long-term funding and prevent the kind of rollback or dissolution that plagued past reform efforts.

“We’re not anti-police,” Castle said. “We’re here to make the department better, and we’re here to hopefully make the community safer, both law enforcement and community members.”