EDITORIAL: Aurora should plan to march ahead after Hogan’s first step toward police oversight

Kudos to Mayor Steve Hogan for stepping forward with a long-overdue plan to bring oversight to the Aurora Police Department even though the mayor’s initial proposal falls short of what’s needed.

Hogan got a tepid reception from a handful of fellow city lawmakers this week when he went out on a limb with his proposal to hire an independent police monitor. The notion of some kind of police oversight system is a political land mine for city lawmakers. The ideas are popular with voters and anathema to police, who are actively involved and extremely influential in city elections.

Hogan wants to address the lack of police oversight in Aurora before a controversy arises focusing on the lack of police oversight. It is a problem, one that previous city councils haven’t had the political backbone to resolve. In the past, police have come under fire for questionable cases involving fellow police officers gone awry and being the subject of SWAT response. Police actions were questioned when a white man shot a black man in a parking lot after an argument about who bumped whose car. The white man shot the black man and was set free from the scene of the crime in a case similar to the recent Zimmerman debacle in Florida. More recently, police actions were questioned when an officer tackled and injured a young black woman in a King Soopers parking lot after her mother was wrongly accused of improperly using a handicapped parking slot. And there has yet been no resolution as to the ill-advised mass arrest of dozens of innocent motorists snagged in an impromptu, massive dragnet after a bank robbery.

Add to this the fact that Aurora police routinely get about 400 complaints a year from residents insisting that police were unprofessional or outright abusive and illegal in their actions. It is the police themselves who resolve those issues and decide whether citizen complaints are valid. That’s the problem that Hogan hopes to solve. The reality is, Aurora has one of the best, most professional police forces in the country. Although it receives 400 complaints alleging malfeasance or abuse, the department responds to hundreds of thousands of calls a year. Of those 400 complaints, about 60 are deemed serious and valid, and of those, about a dozen each year result in serious officer discipline. On the surface that looks good, but since there is no separation of power, the numbers lack credibility and can easily be used to show just how questionable a system is that allows police to police themselves. An oversight program would enhance police integrity and their reputation, not undermine it.

The problem with Hogan’s proposal as it stands is that a police monitor would have only an advisory role, which would mean nothing more to residents than having a current city staffer poke around and make reports. An effective oversight system would offer a diverse board made up of police, city staff, residents and experts weighing police actions after investigations and making final, binding decisions as to the wisdom, fairness and appropriateness of police decisions. Police Chief Dan Oates complained this week that he dislikes Hogan’s proposal because it would diminish his power as chief. That’s exactly what’s needed. City lawmakers have unwisely abdicated the job of ruling on controversial actions to a city staff unable or unwilling to make difficult decisions that only a civilian entity should be making in regards to the unparalleled powers we bestow upon this quasi-military agency in Aurora. The very separation of powers wisely created by the nation’s framers of the Constitution are just as important to emulate on a local level.

It isn’t that police are inherently corrupt or unable to make righteous, appropriate decisions about controversial police actions, but if police are left alone to govern themselves, they undermine their own credibility. It is the rank and file, as well as Aurora voters, who should demand some version of effective police oversight be created by city council to protect the reputation of the department and the rights of Aurora residents. There can be no losers in such a system.