The 18th Judicial District helped make the case last week that there is no substitute for truly independent review of controversial police actions in Aurora and across the state.
Joining what appears to be a growing, shady Friday Afternoon Club, the Arapahoe County district attorney office lobbed the results of investigations into two, separate Aurora officer-involved shootings.
The news was issued to local media without notice or comment late Friday, an easy way for governments to bury stories they don’t want to garner public attention. Aurora police and both its judicial district attorneys continue this cynical habit despite being called out on it repeatedly.
In both of the newest shooting cases, prosecutors determined that two different officers were legally “justified” in firing on two subjects they encountered last year.
This most recent absolution of police maiming and killing subjects makes it clear how critical it is to continue work toward enacting independent, public oversight of police.
These district attorney investigators review officer-involved shootings for the sole purpose of determining whether police have broken the law by opening fire on people they encounter during official duties. The public confuses these investigations with real independent reviews of whether police acted properly and prudently as officers when shooting people they interact with.
Aurora has no such review system and desperately needs one. City lawmakers are currently in the process of working with the public to outline how such a procedure could be created, but that process has been waylaid by the pandemic crisis.
Independent public review is critical in the controversial Oct. 10 shooting of Andy Huff. Huff was inside of his home when a squad of officers crept up to his front yard near midnight and shot the 22-year-old man from outside the house, through the living room window.
Police did not announce they were coming, nor that they were there. They were responding to a roommate dispute from earlier in the day, which other Aurora police had already attended to. The officers who went later that night and shot Huff were unaware of what their own department had done earlier in the day.
When police crept up in the dark to Huff’s home, they said nothing until one of the officers fired, noting that Huff apparently had a gun and that the officer was afraid he would use it on police. The officer shot Huff in the buttocks.
Police body cam footage showed the shooting happened mere seconds after police crept into Huff’s front yard and without signaling police were outside.
“There is no doubt in my mind that Mr. Huff knew it was the police that were there and (he) went and grabbed that firearm anyway,” a former deputy chief said last year. “Once that case is thoroughly reviewed by the District Attorney’s office, the specific details about how we believe that to be true will come out,” he said.
They didn’t. Prosecutors went over the same territory, but credited a police hunch rather than absent evidence.
Most importantly, while the report does make it clear that, stipulating what police said they “knew” about the situation, no laws were broken, the report doesn’t explain to the public how a bungled civil dispute call turned into a police shooting that has maimed a man for life.
Only “investigators” with a sole vested interest in the community and revealing the truth can offer meaningful information to the public regarding incidents where police injure and kill the public. Internal police investigations are compelling for police, but they lack the sound and critical objective review the public needs and deserves to be the ultimate judge of how police conduct themselves while upholding the law.
The Huff incident raises myriad questions about the Aurora police department, administrators and officers that have yet to get answers. The only thing the public can count on is that those who are injured by police, or families of those killed by police, can be assured of huge payouts funded by city taxpayers when police settle liability disputes.
The incidents themselves are questionable, but more dubious is how the city continues to handle them, precluding public review and even access to records and investigations.
Despite challenges made even worse by the pandemic crisis, Aurora needs to push ahead with exploring a citizen review process in time to better deal with the next incident.