Amid a torrent of controversy over Venezuelan immigrants and gang members in Aurora, the city desperately needs help — from itself.
By design, by accident or by default, Aurora appears to be a rudderless government, run by a frenzied propagandist, a confused and waffling mayor and FoxNews.
Immediately, the city must choose a credible spokesperson for this large and durable government to provide at least daily press conferences where accurate and detailed information is provided to all the media and the public, and where the media can press for clarity.
Instead, Councilmember Danielle Jurinsky and other Republican politicians are, along with right-wing social-media trolls and FoxNews, defining the crisis and story with a flood of propaganda, exaggeration, misinformation and an undeniable anti-immigrant and patently racist agenda.
Since Jurinsky began her political career on city council three years ago, she has gone out of her way to stand behind nearly any and every move made by the Aurora Police. Suddenly she now paints them on local and national TV stations as lazy and inept dullards, mostly responsible for allowing Aurora to become “overrun” by members of the Tren de Aragua Venezuelan prison gang and covering up their presence.
Jurinsky has repeatedly provided complicit local and national media outlets with a barrage of factless or debunked allegations, and yet the city officials and administrators have not stepped forward to call out her misinformation for what it is.
Coffman has provided a vast array of ever-changing stories and opinions, sometimes contradictory to Jurinsky’s public tantrums, and others that parrot them. Just as irresponsible and damaging to all of Aurora, Coffman issues inaccurate, conflicting and unclear edicts and announcements on TV or in social media posts, and it takes hours and even days for the media to get clarity and facts from reputable city and police officials.
Last week, near the end of the day on Friday, Coffman announced on his Facebook page that Aurora would seek “emergency” court orders to essentially seize and shut down additional dilapidated northwest Aurora apartment complexes. Such a move would involve evicting hundreds of poor and struggling residents, many of them Venezuelan immigrants, with nowhere else to go.
It wasn’t until days later that city officials began making clear Coffman’s announcement was erroneous. The facts were, instead, that the threatened shut-downs were only options for the city. In reality such a scheme would take weeks, months or even years.
But the damage was done, and Coffman’s factless assertion caused undue fear and panic among vulnerable residents of the apartment complexes and the public.
This Friday, Coffman said on Facebook that he agrees with police and residents that gangs have not now nor ever “taken over” any of the problems owned by “slumlords.” But he agreed with the same “slumlords” that gang problems forced property managers “to flee.”
Neither Coffman nor Jurinsky have the credibility nor are in a position to be the public face of clarity, transparency, accountability and factual detail in this issue.
Neither run nor administer the city. Jurinsky has one of 11 votes among the city council. Coffman does not run or administer city government. The charter empowers the mayor only to run city council meetings and make minor appointments, nothing else. City Manager Jason Batchelor is Aurora’s chief executive.
It’s unclear whether police and city managers and staff are too fearful to publicly denounce Jurinsky’s propaganda and factless tirades, or to correct Coffman’s rogue missives. It could be that police and city officials are overwhelmed and unprepared to manage the crisis.
But, enormous damage has already been done to residents directly affected by this controversy, as well as everyone who lives and works in Aurora. Venezuelan residents have repeatedly told police, aid workers and the media that they do not fear gangs nor gang activity in these buildings, they fear racist reprisal by vigilantes and public panic created by the political farce perpetrated by Jurinsky and complicit politicized media outlets.
Despite that, both Jurinsky and Coffman have become the near sole sources of public information — primarily misinformation — about an Aurora crisis that is not Venezuelan immigrants and gangs, but hysteria created in a vacuum of reliable information from a credible city source. That information should come from either the police chief, a deputy chief or a professional city spokesperson.
We agree with Aurora Congressman Jason Crow on his view of the sham.
“You have politicians, in this case, who are misrepresenting and distorting the facts for political purposes…” Crow told the Sentinel Thursday.
The city cannot wait another day before changing tactics in making public the factual details and critical plans about to unfold.
A credible city spokesperson, in person and answerable to credible media, must set the record straight. At the same time, this spokesperson must factually detail how the city will address the long-standing and now critical underlying issues in northwest Aurora that a bevy of unscrupulous politicians and media have misappropriated.
I said it after Jurinski maligned the police chief Wilson on conservative radio. She is a loose cannon in a job that requires a steady reliable hand to calm reservations roll up one’s sleeves and collaborate to solve problems! She, Zavonek, Coffman, and Sunberg need to go. The secret meetings, unsubstatiated claims, and thinly veiled efforts to “save costs” by outsourcing court costs to the county. They are not collaborators. Their edicts are “my way or the highway” commands. We are a city of tax paying citizens who should demand better!
Agree 100%! Residents of Aurora deserve better representation than City Council members who spew lies and racist rhetoric. Please pay attention and be sure to vote in November.
The lies are coming entirely from your side, Mary. You’re actually running with this nonsense narrative that there are no Venezuelan gang members in Aurora. You really aren’t any different than the public officials who allowed Blood and Crip gang members to set up shop in Denver in the 80s, and all denied it was an issue until the violence got so bad they couldn’t deny it anymore (or, Biden’s obvious dementia until his debate with Trump finally forced your side to admit it, lol).
The article’s summary wants a credible city spokesperson to be answerable to credible media. Imagine calling for the city to be answerable to media. Would that not make the media, the credible media, in charge of the government? And just who would this credible media be? Certainly not the Sentinel.
A simple solution to this vexing “problem”, a problem that was clearly looming on the horizon, exists. The simple question is “Why hasn’t ATF been called in to enforce Federal gun control laws?” 18 USC 822(g)(5) makes it a federal felony for an illegal alien or an alien unlawfully present in the US, or has been admitted as a “non-immigrant” to possess firearms and/or ammunition. This would solve the issue without all the fingerprinting that’s going on. But don’t hold your breath. The Biden-Harris regime has opened the flood gates with the assistance of Alejandro Mayorkas (DHS Secretary), flooding this country with millions of aliens who have never been properly vetted. Democrats and Establishment Republicans like Coffman constantly want more gun control. But when an opportunity presents itself to enforce gun control laws, they waffle or worse yet, refuse to do so. Where’s the ATF? Why haven’t they arrested these “prohibited persons” for violating federal gun control laws? Answer? Because the criminals are non-US citizens who have the protection of the Biden-Harris Regime, and the protection of Garland and Mayorkas, and by extension, Jason Crow.
News reports coming out suggest corospondence with apartment management and their Representatives has been 90 % Redacted in request for public information. Can you verify or deny this claim from a reliable news source?
The politicians answer to the voters, not the media. What we need are answers about what the Aurora Police are doing while armed people are moving about through these apartments. Do they know who these men are? Do they know if they legally own the guns we all clearly see in the pictures? Sara they US citizens? And lastly do they know why they are moving about under arms in a public area?
If they are US citizens and are acting in accord with they’re rights, all very well and good. But do the police have any idea? It is at least their jobs to investigate if citizens have reported such activity. Let’s hear journalists getting the real answers for a change, then the voters can decide what’s to be done.
I do hope an investigation is made about conversations between the Slum Lords and the city as well as the unscrupulous politicians shaping of this stain on our city.
The far Right and the far Left are the same disease with different names. Neither accomplish anything except vitriol and accusations. Public Safety is compromised when the focus is on sound bytes and political hay making. Aurora has now been unfairly depicted nationally by elected officials politicking for name recognition and their personal delirium. The question is what specific steps have they taken beyond their mouths running to make the City safer?