If there are any adults left on the dais of the Aurora City Council, or anywhere at City Hall, they will stop Councilmember Danielle Jurinsky from pretending in local and national media that she speaks for anyone but herself and her partisan political allies.
Sorry, Aurora, but just when you thought this dangerous, tragic and ridiculous national furor about Venezuelan immigrants and gangsters taking over Aurora could not get any worse, it sure as hell just did.
For weeks, Jurinsky, a right-wing Republican extremist, has been all over Fox News and any other propaganda machine that will hoist her anti-immigrant rhetoric, which she says is a message of care and love.
Jurinsky has been at the forefront of the political Q-Anonish quackery trying to persuade first Aurora, then the state, then the world, that Aurora police and city officials are conspiring to hide what she has claimed — never once with vetted evidence — that Aurora is run amok with Venezuelan prison gang members, part of Tren De Aragua.
Now, she claims you and the rest of the world imagined her prolific propaganda.
Yesterday, the city, reacting to hysterical claims Donald Trump made during the presidential debate, said the former president’s “gang takeover” claims are fiction. Trump was simply mirroring claims made by his political ally, Jurinsky.
“We have millions of people pouring into our country from prisons and jails, from mental institutions and insane asylums,” Trump said. “You look at Aurora in Colorado. They are taking over the towns. They’re taking over buildings. They’re going in violently. …And they’re destroying our country. They’re dangerous. They’re at the highest level of criminality.”
Sound familiar?
Jurinsky’s been singing that off-key anthem for weeks now.
On July 28, a parking lot rave celebrating what should have been the political end of Venezuelan Dictator Nicolás Maduro’s political career spiraled into a flash mob at the Gardens on Havana. Jurinsky was the first to sound not just the false alarm, but to campaign for Trump and other extremist Republicans at the same time on Facebook.
“The police were totally over run (sic), and we’re (sic) forced to get out of the area for their safety. A police car was shot up. This is in the United States of America… this is in YOUR city. Please, please spread the word. This November’s election may, in fact, be the actual most important of your lives, your children’s lives, and your grandchildrens (sic) lives.”
The truth was, the car was not “shot up,” city officials have said.
Police repeatedly said they never lost control of the scene, and no one was ticketed, arrested or hurt.
Jurinsky’s grasp on truth and reality has only slipped away further.
After the city announced it would essentially seize and shut down the Aspen Grove apartment complex on Aug. 13, providing reams of code violations and documentation showing what a dump the complex had become after more than two years of mismanagement and neglect by owners. Jurinsky told city officials and police at a public meeting that she didn’t believe them, and she blamed it on a gang takeover.
“None of us buy that story, that this is based on a code enforcement violation,” Jurinsky said during an Aug. 8 city council public safety committee meeting, referring to herself and council members Stephanie Hancock and Steve Sundberg. “Our opinions are not up for debate.”
Smelling Democratic political blood, Fox News leaped at Jurinsky’s political sharkbait
“It’s unreal,” Jurinsky told a Fox Newser interviewing her on Aug. 27.
“They are going block by block. They are taking it over. The city really doesn’t know how to handle it,” she told the Fox personality who was shocked, shocked and dismayed at how immigrants had destroyed a once pristine suburban northwest Aurora neighborhood.
This isn’t “anything other than a complete gang takeover in parts of our city,” Jurinsky said, guaranteeing her return trip to Fox News.
One of those repeat episodes came on Sept. 5 when she told Laura Ingraham that she was insulted by people pointing out the same northwest Aurora buildings and neighborhood had been plagued by Crips and Bloods gangsters, crack houses and relentless poverty for decades.
Not the same, she told Ingraham.
No doubt, the thousands of northwest Aurora and east Denver families who have lost loved ones to gang allegiance, shootings, violence and other crimes would argue, along with the rest of her story.
“The fact is that these folks are a product of our current administration’s failed border policy,” Jurinsky said.
After that came a recent series of political playdates with other Republican icons of facts and veracity, like Congressperson Lauren Boebert and Texas Congressman Chip Roy.
The threesome gathered for a rally at Jurinsky’s Aurora bar to pump up local Republican John Fabbricatore, running against Aurora Congressperson Jason Crow for the 6th Congressional District Seat.
Fabbricatore has apparently joined Club Q-Rinsky, telling Fox News and his X followers that former Interim Police Chief Heather Morris had been part of a conspiracy to cover up Aurora’s Armagangdon.
So after weeks of Jurinsky working overtime to nuke Aurora’s reputation, the city is now quoting her and Coffman as the official voices of the Venezuelan cataclysm.
What could go wrong?
Try this. Yesterday, citing Jurinsky, police, Coffman and city staffers, Aurora issued a formal rebuttal to the part of Trump’s Tuesday tirade that painted Aurora as a cause lost to pillaging Venezuelan immigrants anxious to take over city hall and maybe the local car wash.
Immediately, Crow, who has tried to dispel the mania for the political melodrama that it is, thanked the city for stepping up at last and letting the world know that we’re OK here in Aurora, and we got this.
“Thank you to the City of Aurora for setting the record straight,” Crow said in a tweet. “There is no gang takeover in any part of Aurora. Recent exaggerated claims are simply not true. These claims have led to a narrative that makes it harder for law enforcement to do their job and incited dangerous rhetoric against our immigrant community.”
Less than an hour after being one of the official voices of reason for the city, Jurinsky jumped back.
“The crux folks is that the statement is what I’ve said all along. The entire city of Aurora was not taken over,” she said in volley-tweet to Crow. “Neither Coffman nor myself have ever said that the entire city had been taken over. You either can’t read or flat out, don’t care. …Shut up and show up.”
Jurinsky is one vote among 11 on the city council. The city cites her credentials to speak officially for Aurora on this matter because she is chairperson of the city council public safety committee. It’s nothing more than a pre-clearing house for bills and issues, with no real power, by design. Jurinsky runs the meetings and tells top police officials who show up that she thinks they’re conspiring with gangs or someone to hide their crimes and even existence.
Because of her scheme, Aurora is in danger of having businesses avoid investing in the city or even consider moving away from here. More than 100,000 Aurora homeowners invested in their properties are at risk of seeing their values diminished by Jurinsky’s outlandish and false claims.
And local community leaders in the metro area have already pointed out how Jurinsky’s extremist speech toward Venezuelans endangers every Latino and Hispanic person of color.
Just ask the city’s large Asian American community how life was for them after Trump launched the “China Flu” or Aurora’s burgeoning Muslim population when Trump pushed the “Muslim Ban” across the country and into Aurora.
Talk like this has consequences.
Jurinsky can’t credibly speak for the city to a catastrophe she incited. She speaks only for herself and her partisan allies. Someone unafraid of her needs to make it stop.
Follow @EditorDavePerry on BlueSky, Threads, Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook or reach him at 303-750-7555 or dperry@SentinelColorado.com
Dave, did you not see the Denver Gazette or the Denver Post over the last two days? Council Member Danielle Jurinsky’s reports of several buildings being overtaken by a Venezuelan gang were verified by eyewitness accounts and gang member arrests. Just because the Sentinel has hidden the truth does not mean our elected officials should. I applaud Danielle for first exposing the facts and working to have the criminal elements that caused them eliminated. Newspapers used to report facts, but I don’t think yours ever did.
Thank you. My first thought too when I read the coffman/jurinsky statement was: these are the people spreading the conspiracy theories along with trump/other GOP with a plan to scare the nation about immigrants – mainly immigrants of color. This is the same old tired playbook that unfortunately has many dangerous consequences. A bomb threat today in Ohio where trump attacked Haitians with lies at the debate, to try to create fear, hatred, rile up his base, get votes, distract and deflect, grab the news cycle that he lost at the dbat, and coffman/jurinsky just part of that plan, right before the election, and to attract national attention. Same Old Tired Playbook.
Hey Debra, so you’re claiming, contrary to actual news reports, that there are no TdA members in Aurora or the Denver metro? Are you that eager to allow a next-level violent gang establish a robust operation in the city, just because you have this manic fetish for importing the entire Third World to the US?
Gang SHAM! trump better stay away from Aurora. vance admits he made the story up.
Debra continues to lie that there are no gang members in Aurora.
Trump doesn’t need to stay away from Aurora, no matter how much you limp out about it.
Lighten up, Debra, your insights are really unrewarding to most of us. And for some reason you have latched onto, “Same Old Tired Playbook”. You might latch onto that saying for your thought process.
Immigrants and immigration is a terrible situation for America for the past three years. You can’t deflect that. Nor can the Sentinel Blog.
Gang SHAM. Also from you, just personal attacks, as typical, trying to stifle others, all of which is the same old tired playbook.
Lol, no one’s stifling you, Debra, you hysterical bint.
WOW! She has done quite a bit more than what I’ve known about her Lies! I had heard a little of the Election gathering at the old buckingham Square(i’m old), but I had no idea that she was the mouthpiece of the supposed mayhem there. And then to spring the Venezuala gang Bu#*sh$t on top of this. It’s no wonder those who arn’t aware of Jurinsky’s antics of the past thought we were being taken over! She should be arrested for. Terrorist activities putting this city and metro area into a potential racewar kill zone. She, and others who went along with her are deserving of shame at the least
WOW! She has done quite a bit more than what I’ve known about her Lies! I had heard a little of the Election gathering at the old buckingham Square(i’m old), but I had no idea that she was the mouthpiece of the supposed mayhem there. And then to spring the Venezuala gang Bu#*sh$t on top of this. It’s no wonder those who arn’t aware of Jurinsky’s antics of the past thought we were being taken over!
Shoot, I’m not afraid of her, but I’m just a 70-year-old resident who’s been watching and commenting on her deplorable behavior since she denigrated Chief Wilson on conservative radio, calling Wilson trash. What grownup talks like this, let alone a person who is elected to a leadership role. Colorado residents need to remove Bobert and Jurinski through the election process. These idiots might think they’re entertaining, but they are embarrassing.
CM Danielle Jurinsky: “Our opinions are not up for debate.””
Conservative economist Thomas Sowell: “It is usually futile to try to talk facts and analysis to people who are enjoying a sense of moral superiority in their ignorance.”
It’s hilarious watching Dave and the leftist commenters here go into a flop sweat trying to deflect from the fact that TdA is, in fact, setting up operations in Aurora.
You’d think they’d be more than a bit concerned about a group that traffics in drug distribution and child prostitution, and is documented to murder police and public officials and their families when their operations are threatened. But they’ll clearly overlook that in their mania to keep the Third World-to-First World Open Society pipeline running.
Just because you say something with conviction doesn’t make it true.
But then, truth has never been your strong suit…
You definitely speak from experience, Jeff. But we know you love to lie that there are no gang members in Aurora.
Wow I knew this newspaper was garbage. Name calling should be beneath a good reporter but not Dave. I will not be picking up this pos rag ever again. Oh and dave? Why don’t you do some good investigative reporting and go spend a week in those apartments? My money is on you won’t make it past the 2nd day.
The judgment and thinking from Dave Perry in response to massive coverage to local front-page news, both print, radio, and TV over this Apartment episode has been a hot button for everyone. It’s got it all, politics, crime, economics, racial backlash, immigration policy, city hall contradictions, it goes on. We all know what basis Dave is coming from, before his theories are advanced in his first paragraph.
The bigger story on this is starting to leak out. Dave Perry just can’t seem to see it, or get it, but CM Jurinsky, is a primary deflection to use to the larger issue This is turning into a greater scandal than we first recognized or were aware of. How these CBZ buildings could end up with so many illegal immigrants living there with no clear means of self-support which Included these TdA gangsters? We didn’t know, and most of us don’t bother looking for the answer. Although we shouldn’t be surprised what we are learning by reading things other than the Sentinel feels is important.
Dave’s genuine dislike for any politician that has a (R) misses the bigger formation and expanded more than news carried by FOX. The WSJ has now tied into news coverage about this, they report the South American gangs are expanding in the US, it’s not about CM Danielle Q-Rinsky. Dave, maybe the WSJ, doesn’t share your high standards of the frontline point.
This is simple… it’s a story that’s turning into AuroraGate. This Dave, was the opportunity of a financial scandal investigation you could do right under your nose. But you are obsessed with the daily Jurinsky bashing. This is bigger and about more government endorsed- financed programs, endless money, and their continued success sending gangs as no one looked, or even cared to look into free housing we gave them. No one would be held unaccountable for non-vetting anywhere along the long trail right across the open boarder, then here to Denver County’s welcome center. No checks needed Dave, all the way, right to Nome Street Aurora.
The State of Colo under Gov. Polis requested 3.8 billion in Federal for a grant for resettlement and was given $3.8 billion of federal funds to Colorado, under the Biden administration’s American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), a COVID period spin off program 2021.
Part of that money went to Denver, under their new Denver Asylum Seekers Program, and other “newcomers’ programs” under Denver city councils approved resolutions of millions of dollars for their own version to administer this resettlement. Denver use of nonprofits NGO to launder this function for those NGO was to settle the new Venezuelans. Denver, in turn contracted with multimillion dollar deals with two NGO’s. ViVe Wellness https://www.vivewellness.org/ and Papagayo Organización Papagayo – Unidos Somos Más (organizacionpapagayo.org).
Denver city council in one of their resolutions approved a proposed Agreement between City and County of Denver and ViVe to provide housing navigation, and rental and utilities assistance for newcomers enrolled to participate in the Denver Asylum Seekers Program. Approves a contract with ViVe; ViVe Inspiring Wellness, also known as ViVe Wellness, for $7,863,598. Darrell Watson, Denver Council pushed this $7.8 million resolution through and proud of it.
The Denver NGOs are run, respectively, by Yoli Casas and Marielena Suarez, both Venezuela immigrants themselves. Papagayo’s NGO firm worked with CBZ Management, thus having money to fill-up these three apartment buildings Edge of Lowry, Whispering Pines, and Aspen Grove aka Nome Partners now condemned by Aurora.
Papagayo and Vive Wellness directed Denver’s Venezuelan migrant newcomers to CBZ Management and offered to cover their rents while they settled in to their new homes in the Aurora staring in 2021 This process at its core was a scheme set up through the NGO’s using taxpayer money. This was a booming business in the beginning after they figured out how easy it was to set up. Was what these NGO’s up to, raises questions using the IRS exemption non-profits are given special treatment as they are to do things that benefit the taxpayers and society.
How much money did the city of Aurora contribute their selves into non-profits to resettle folks into the CBZ buildings. Don’t be surprised when we find we did the same thing as Denver.
The foolish greed of TdA gangs taking advantage of a rent-free place unfortunately for them met up with a couple bigger fish. One, the lender hired a national law firm to investigate what risk was their investments in the property was now being forced to deal with? That investigation has further wide-spread implications. The other bigger fish in this case was the fumbling of City of Aurora as what appeared looking like a bunch of amateurs. Despite years of no action and rather than confront this and make these apartment owners follow the rules they let things finally explode. This episode ended in chaos with a lot of white noise dropping to continue to keep things murky. What a perfect demonstration of all these government agencies and the level of non-accountability from the very top down to the local level.
Thanks for this article. It’s ok for her to be a Republican but it’s not ok for her to abuse her position in our community to play partisan politics. Jurinsky needs to go.
There’s nothing partisan about letting a violent international criminal gang set up operations in the city. Your side can minimize the threat all you want, and pretend that it’s not happening while claiming no such individuals exist, but once it’s established, you inevitably need the Bukele solution to resolve it.
But I suspect the same people who thought repealing the Gallagher Amendment was a good idea and were shocked at their property taxes soaring will be equally surprised when another 90s-style gang task force has to be set up in the next five years or less because they think it’s funny to “disrupt, dismantle, and abolish” high-trust, stable societies.
Aurora has always had a conservative majority. So, if TdA established their presence here, they did so on the watch of other folks in Jurinsky’s party.
“Aurora has always had a conservative majority.”
Ah, I see we’re already memory-holing the DSA/Emerge years. And stop being so disingenuous, we all know any effort to actually police these areas properly would be met with banshee-like screeching by your side with fake claims of “police brutality” and “institutional racism.”
So how about you freaks do the right thing for once, and shut your pie holes so that more of your rad-left dysfunction can be properly eradicated? Once that’s done, your side can return to your fake screeching about “systemic inequities.”
Is it just me or am I to believe that everyone who is even talking about this subject is actually lying except of course, for high level Democrats and Dave Perry. Wow, life will be so much simpler now. Thank you Sentinel!
And here I thought the Know Nothings were a historical, but extinct, political party.
Haitian pet eaters? Venezualan Gangs? Nazis? Marxists? Repubs? Democrats? John Birtch Society? Ku Klux Klan? Rednecks? Hippies?
All these are insults?
Assasinations! Mass Shootings! Intolerance! Starvation! Slumlords! Ignorance Child Abuse! Elderly abuse! Needless Suffering. Hate!
These are insults! These are Societies Cancer! These are what Political parties and their represenatives need to erase from our country and this world! And it has to start with real Representatives of the United States of America! People with Brains and Heart, not hate and intolorence! People with Compassion for rightgeousness and Fairness to all, not Greed and Hatred!
Where do we start? Start where your at. How do we start? It starts by weeding out the corrupt, parties and politicians alike. So grab a can of whoop-ass and a shovel and tidy up this mess ! Lots of weeds in our own backyard