The Aurora Police Department and its chief are under the delusion that the embattled police department has restored its credibility after being forced to address its years-long “patterns and practices” of using excessive force against people of color.
It has not.
For more than three years, Aurora police have been working under a state-imposed consent decree requiring them to fix critical problems in the police department that have wrongly left a long list of Black people dead, injured or traumatized after confrontations with police.
APD has a very long way to go before it can expect the public, and especially the Black and brown communities, to bestow a level of trust they need to do their job.
It’s clear Aurora Police Chief Todd Chamberlain does not understand that, creating even more problems for the beleaguered department.
The Aurora Police Department was not simply admonished by Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser in 2022 for dubious instances of treating Black residents they encountered unfairly. The exhaustive investigation that led to the Consent Decree illustrated and made clear the long list of “patterns and practices” of the department to allow for, overlook and even hide instances where some officers abused and even killed people because they were Black or brown.
The notoriety from the Elijah McClain killing was only the city’s most infamous example of how some Aurora police officers treated Black people in a very different and sometimes deadly way than they have treated others.
Aurora has paid out tens of millions of dollars in court settlements to families of Black people wrongly maimed or killed during interactions with Aurora officers.
Sentinel investigations revealed that the police department, for years, swept all kinds of police misbehavior under the rug, even after extensive evidence was produced during internal investigations. A famously drunken police officer avoided firing by the department. A police officer, who referred to Black witnesses to a crime as “porch monkeys,” was fired and then reinstated by the Aurora Civil Service Commission. Two years ago, an Aurora ranking officer was promoted to division chief after the Sentinel made public her involvement with a house break-in in Denver, and an APD Internal Affairs investigation determined the chief had lied about her involvement. This is a department battered by its own actions, such as when officers forced Black women and girls to lie face down on hot asphalt during a bungled traffic stop. Some members of this department fought back when former Chief Vanessa Wilson fired an officer who pistol-whipped a Black man accused of trespassing while the police body camera was rolling. Numerous relatively new state laws were created because they were based on the misbehavior of Aurora police over the past decade or longer.
The department has made big strides over the past few years in trying to uncover the why and how so many people of color are mishandled by some Aurora officers. And the Sentinel and others have rightfully pointed out that the vast majority of Aurora police officers are skilled, honest and capable of treating Black and brown people with the same dignity and care as everyone else they encounter.
But despite some initial progress, Aurora police continue to kill and injure Black people that officers encounter, raising serious questions about officer training, competence and department policies and procedures.
Two weeks ago, an officer shot and killed 37-year-old Rajon Belt-Stubblefield during a bizarre traffic stop in central Aurora.
Within hours, Chamberlain called a press conference to dispense details of the shooting, and much more.
“We are not going to hold back anything,” Chamberlain told reporters. “I ask the community to please realize we are going to provide real and factual information, and I ask for their support in this process.”
Immediately, Chamberlain held back the identity of the officer involved in the shooting. Sentinel sources unofficially identifying the officer point to a veteran cop who has been the subject of police, court and Sentinel investigations questioning his veracity and behavior.
While Chamberlain did provide some clear and factual details about the shooting, much of what he provided was conjecture about what happened, and why.
Chamberlain told the media that, at the time, police had not even interviewed the officer involved in the shooting, yet he made a variety of comments based on a police-body-cam video that was not, and has not, been made public.
What’s clear is that the officer was working on a holiday weekend DUI patrol and, for an unspecified reason, tried to pull over Belt-Stubblefield as he drove by. In a short distance, Belt-Stubblefield crashed into the back of one car, and then hit another. When the officer confronted Belt-Stubblefield in his car, a dispute began. At one point, the dispute moved outside of the car.
From there, Chamberlain pieced together a narrative of what happened, outright determining that Belt-Stubblefield was to blame for his own death at the hands of the officer who shot him.
A real, external investigation may determine the same thing, some day.
But Chamberlain did nothing but undermine the department’s already damaged credibility by jumping ahead of the investigation.
He did that by repeatedly insisting his assumptions and conjecture were “facts” even before any real “facts” were gleaned and examined by an outside agency that is not under investigation for wrongly killing Black people it encounters.
Shooting-incident video made public by bystanders reveals what appears to be a heated argument between Belt-Stubblefield and the officer. At one point, the officer takes a swing at the man, hitting him in the face with the punch.
Chamberlain said that was the officer’s attempt to “de-escalate” what he described as a stand-off.
Police training experts say that officers are, indeed, trained to punch people in the face, but not as a “de-escalation” technique, rather as a critical maneuver to prevent a catastrophic event, usually involving someone who is nearly hysterical or delusionally upset.
Chamberlain said that, from observing unreleased body camera video, Belt-Stubblefield had a handgun that he threw onto a nearby grassy median. During the reportedly heated confrontation between the officer and Belt-Stubblefield, the man yelled at his son, who had unexplainedly appeared on the scene, to “get the shit.”
“He said, ‘get the shit, get the shit,’” Chamberlain told reporters. “Get the shit, referring to the weapon, and if he’s not referring to the weapon, I will be 100 percent completely surprised, because every time that statement is made, he is looking back exactly where that weapon is at, and he is talking to the individuals. He is talking to his relatives. He is talking to other people in the area. Get the shit. Get the shit.”
Chamberlain gave the impression Belt-Stubblefield was commanding people to bring him the gun or possibly wield it. He could be right, but he offered nothing but conjecture about the gun and what Belt-Stubblefield’s intent was at the time.
Instead of providing only what police actually knew, Chamberlain essentially convicted Belt-Stubblefield and cleared the officer, without even hearing the officer’s statement.
He asked that the community make its determination about the shooting based on his “factual” and “transparent” statements.
But he has continued to press the department’s unproven narrative of how the shooting unfolded, and that the suspect was to blame for the shooting.
“I wish that the suspect would have listened to what the officer said,” Chamberlain said. “Again, these are decisions, and these are things that he decided. This is not what the officer decided, it’s what the suspect decided.”
It may well turn out after a real, outside investigation into the shooting, underway by the 18th Judicial District Critical Incident Response Team, that some or all of Chamberlain’s conjecture will prove to be accurate.
But neither police in Aurora, nor anywhere, can be trusted to investigate themselves for potential crimes they have been repeatedly convicted of in the past.
State lawmakers need, again, to use Aurora as an example of what can go wrong in policing, and require a statewide system that precludes an agency involved in a CIRT investigation from being the sole provider of public information about details linked to their own potential crimes and misdeeds.
Had it been an outside police agency — or better, a member of the yet-to-be-created Aurora police independent oversight commission providing these preliminary details — the public and people directly affected by the shooting could have confidence in the information.
But Chamberlain’s zealous demand for accuracy and facts mixed with pure conjecture and speculation does nothing but undermine the credibility this agency is working so hard to restore.
This is a real mixed bag. First, this is like the kettle calling the pot black. The Sentinel sticks to distortions while demanding transparency and honesty. First, Attorney General Weiser distorted everything in a way that that would help his career. There was nothing in most of the cited incidents that indicated racism. Elijah McClain’s case was sad but there was nothing in it that said the police had any racial motivation. It became a witch hunt that helped Weiser again. Second, Weiser wants racially proportionate arrest and contact statistics. I told you that that is not possible. Black crime is not racially proportionate. I said previously that shootings of black males would continue. It is an unfortunate part of our societal problems. The black culture has real problems with black youth and their use of violence and a criminal culture. Blacks are not genetically inferior as was believed by our elites in the early 1900s. Blacks are not simply the victim of systemic racism as espoused by our present elites. But, too many young blacks have adopted an aversion to success in a predominately white society and have pursued the glamorous gang life or a life quick to lash out. I suppose that if I felt that people looked at me as inferior, I might adopt a hostile attitude. I suppose that we are creating more of this hostility by teaching people to be easily offended and to not be able to deal with any conflict in a reasonable way. “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me”. I heard that a lot when I was young. A pronoun wouldn’t have fazed me. Now we are teaching people to be offended and that they are so special that they should be allowed to lash out or kill themselves due to the insult. The fact that blacks are killing other blacks so frequently would seem to bring some of the inferiority idea into question.
As for the “porch monkey” thing, I have never had any affection for the few racists that we did have on the Department. I also know that they were generally not dealt with by our police administration. Police administrations suffer from all of the failings that we see in government or other leadership areas. I always knew that we had poor leadership in law enforcement. A good part of that is that the promotion system, like most, was broken. I watched through the years as we regularly got two bad promotions for every one good promotion. That meant that the good supervisors were always dominated by the bad supervisors. The worst of these often made it to the top of the Department, even though everyone knew they were not fit to be police officers. So, when the Sentinel is critical of police review, they are partly right. Ironically, the Sentinel has never recognized that the “pistol whipping” incident was actually a gross miscarriage of justice by former Chief Wilson and her buddy Chief Chris Juul. A jury found the officer not guilty of all charges. The video that they never released to the public or to their own officers showed a completely different story than the one put out by Chief Wilson. The Internal Review chaired by Deputy Chief Juul does not resemble any of the facts and includes a number of blatantly untrue statements. I made an Internal Affairs Complaint against the detective, Ethan Snow, and Chief Juul. I submitted copies to Council. I spoke with the Monitor of the Consent Decree, Jeff Schlanger. He was going to look into what happened with the IAU complaint, since it happened on his watch. Apparently, nothing happened. The interim female chief just told IAU that they were not going to investigate it. So, the questionable honesty of Chief Juul could go on without question in a system supposedly overlooked by a Consent Decree Monitor. So, I guess there is real reason to question the honesty and integrity of an APD investigation.
Mike Hancock, who had access to all of my IAU complaint, wrote a good article in the Denver Gazette where he questioned what APD had done to Officer Haubert, the “pistol whipper”. Outside examination of investigations is a good thing. Transparency is a good thing. Each time APD shoots another black man, I say to Mike, “Would more bias training help”. We both know that is a silly question. It is not racism that is causing the deaths.
Chief Chamberlain is in a difficult spot. The popular narrative created by George Floyd means that a chief cannot really stand up for his officers in a meaningful way. Real leadership stands up for its people when they are right. In the Elijah McClain incident we saw that the system could render a fair judgement and then be circumvented by a politically motivated grand jury. The officers an be justified but still have to be worried about political motivations of DAs and other officials reacting to the mob. The smart officers realize that we are in a time of political influence over law enforcement. It is wrong in all respects. We can use civilian involvement. However, that usually means uninformed people with an agenda. Since they don’t have any realm power and don’t understand the real problems, they don’t pose much threat to the power system. However, the power system understands that they cannot allow objective, informed people to review what is happening. Any real review would show that the police department is led by people who cannot address real problems. Virtually all of the shootings incidents show poor training. After the Kylin Lewis shooting, Chief Chamberlain said everything was within policy and training. Since many of the SWAT actions were amateurish and not within basic training, there is real question as to the ability to correct problems. Although I have no real sympathy for people who attack officers, I realize that professionalism demands a level of ability that means you have options other than just shooting everyone. The training is grossly inadequate. I have friends within the Department who have lamented to me the lack of skills. Chiefs are usually generalists who massaged their careers and moved around in assignments to show they were well balanced for promotion. Generally, they are sociopaths who paid little real attention to the job but a lot of attention their careers. That means that they have no real understanding of how to address crime or proper and adequate training. It is as simple as that. Our failings as people mean that we pick people we like, not people who are the best. The promotional systems screen out those who care about the job and who make waves trying to improve things. There are far better ways to do policing. We won’t see those. Instead, we will continue with approaches that are safe and easy to supervise. But the people in charge are comfortable with the same safe approaches that demand little real leadership. There is a quote, “He who knows not that he knows not…”.
So, there is some truth in this editorial but a great deal of the same misguided racist rant.
Don’t you ever get tired of race-baiting Dave?
I was waiting for the Sentinel’s take on this. I agree that police can’t expect trust from the community when they insist on one side of the story. It is disheartening to see this three years down the road from what are supposed to be improvements in community relations. It did seem to be going better, and now it seems to be crashing again. If anyone knows what the answer is, I wish they would tell us. What training have officers been given to comply with the consent decree? Surely it doesn’t look like the actions of this officer.
Why doesn’t Aurora assign two officers to every car, at least in high crime areas? If two officers had been there, the situation would not have gotten out of control.
I like this idea because it’s concrete, it doesn’t depend on an elusive change of culture, which isn’t happening. Also it’s an excellent idea. Searching for DUI drivers by yourself seems unacceptably risky. If there’s a shortage of officers and assigning two of them to a patrol car in some ares isn’t possible, then don’t put officers and the public as risk by sending only one officer. There was no reason for this incident to spiral out of control and result in death.
Citizens demand that in a situation like this the officer must let the perp hit him at least three times before the officer is allowed to use his gun to defend himself. If any officer shoots before having been hit or struck at least three times that will be proof positive of racist intent and reckless policing bordering on criminal activity on the part of the officers involved.
Accountability requires open dialogue. Yet Mayor Coffman and members of our city council have shut down in-person meetings, leaving the community without a forum to talk about policing and public trust. Transparency isn’t just press conferences or selective updates; it’s making space for citizens and leaders to ask questions and work through concerns together. Until Aurora’s leadership creates that space, genuine trust and reform will be out of reach.