PERRY: Aurora cops burn through another $1.9 million and trust funds for abusing Black people

1. Sounds as if there is no common sense within the police department.

2. Perry is right about one thing…this was wrong & someone at the scene should have used some common sense & reason and determine that strict training protocol shouldn’t have been applied here. There are many cases where this training protocol is appropriate to keep both officers & suspects safe. Officers who don’t or cannot control the scene create danger for everyone. This case was the use of extremely poor judgment. Where Perry is wrong is in his smug assumption that this protocol wouldn’t have been used on someone who is not Black. Perry has no idea what the officers would have done, nor does this clown have any idea of the culture within the department. Perry is a guy who sits safely behind his computer screen while arrogantly believing that he has all the answers. He isn’t unlike most leftists who operate on feelings, and like the officers in this case, he has a pattern of failing to use common sense & reason.

   1. While he does dip into conjecture a bit, the number of reports and the funds paid out as a result of charges and cases do seem to indicate an ongoing ‘pattern and practice’ in APD. When will the good cops demand change in the ranks to get rid of the bad cops?

      1. Recently I spoke with a black gentleman who had the same question. He was trying to make a film that explored the use of force by police from many angles. He seemed to me to be a decent human trying to help make things better. I told him that he was “late to the party”. My brother, who is very liberal, recently asked me the same thing. Since we have lived apart for many years, he really had no concept of what I had done in life. The reality is that good officers have been trying for many years to force better training and more professionalism. As I have stated many times, the obstacle to that was the leadership. You, the citizens, think that the chiefs are just good guys struggling against resistance to change from the officers. Whereas that may be true in some cases, especially back east, it is not often true in Colorado. The push for changes in training, professionalism, and how the department runs have long come from the bottom. We used to say that we did police work in spite of the chief. For the most part, the chiefs stayed out of the way of good police work and simply played politics.

         The reality is that when you try to improve the department, you become a “whackamole”. The chiefs make it clear that they don’t want to hear it and that ideas are a threat to their power and control. After I took citizen signatures to city council and they made the department start the PAR program, the division chief told me that they were going to teach me a lesson. He said that they were going to make the areas too big to make sure that the program did not work. So much for a concern for the public. I knew that when I made lieutenant, I would always be assigned as a watch commander so that I would not look good to a promotion board. We knew that if we tried to push improvements within the department, we would never be allowed to work in jobs that we wanted. The only way to struggle for improvements was to make sure that there was nothing they could take away from you. Civil service was our only protection. If we did our job and didn’t become too vocal, we were protected. The public think that Civil Service protects bad officers. In reality, Civil service protected many good officers against abuse by the police administration. Police chiefs try to destroy Civil Service so they are able to keep everyone quiet about how the department is run. If you want transparency, you need to lesson the chief’s power, not increase it.

         The police have no voice. If they did, things would work better and the public would have a better understanding of how police work is done. Our systems are set upon to keep the officers quiet. A big part of the problem is that the public has little understanding of both the problems, how the job should be done, and what could be done to fix it. The gap in understanding is huge between the police and the public. That works to the advantage of the police administration. You are not allowed to hear how things could be better and their incompetence and blatant favoritism are not exposed.

         So, you are late to the party. You just don’t know it.

   2. What’s a leftist, you racist scumbag? If you are ok with this police brutality then maybe you should go public with your feelings. Coward.

3. Thank you again for pointing out, right is right and wrong is wrong.
   It should be a simple concept, but APD must have a malignant tumor layer within the ranks. It’s not just the Chief, it can’t be. No, there’s a powerful, resistant and stagnant faction that must be rooted out for real change to take place.
   Yes, these are difficult times to recruit at any police department. But, if I was interested in being a cop, I’d want to be sure that the department I joined was fair, well intentioned and professional.
   C’mon APD, jettison the obstacles, pay them their pensions. Then recruit from well-trained departments that respect the balance between citizens, criminals and duty.

4. Since August of 2020, have there been any changes in the training on procedures for high-risk stops? How about on knowing a Montana motorcycle from a Colorado Dodge SUV? If I am told there have not, I wouldn’t be surprised.

5. This one is hard to comment on because, unlike the writer, I do not know what was in the minds of the officers during this stop, I do not know about the training for such instances, and I wasn’t there at the time to observe the behavior of the suspects. What I do know is that racism, at its most fundamental level, is the use of race as the primary factor in the understanding of cause and effect relationships. I have noticed this tendency quite often in these editorials.

   1. And your a racist dipshit scumbag, Krik

      1. I think the correct wording would be “you’re a racist scumbag” or “you are a racist scumbag”. Since you are going to be using that phrase a lot, you should get it right.

6. While Perry is right about Deshazer, he does his usual stretch, like Attorney General Weiser, to make everything racist. Having retired from APD, I can tell you that early on I worked with some racist officers. That attitude was simply ignored by the command staff. As the years went on, there were fewer obvious racist officers and a greater move to professionalism pushed by a number of professional officers within the organization. Again, the Chief and command staff did little to actively push this professionalism.

   In the case of the stop of the little black girls, I do not see any racism. Where you might have a racist officer, you are not going to have a bunch of racist officers who think that it is funny to put little black girls down on the pavement. If you watch the video, you can see that some of the officers are very uncomfortable about the fact that little girls are down on the pavement. What I can see is that the officers were stuck on how they were trained to react in the case of a stolen vehicle. They lacked the experience and training to adapt their response once they saw that the vehicle was occupied by a woman and a bunch of children. Now, here is the thing. Law enforcement training is grossly inadequate. Also, it did not help that the vague police reform bill caused thousands of good experienced officers to leave police work. Further, when they say lessons learned in law enforcement, that is a joke. Ask the present interim chief of APD how the stop of the little girls could have been done safely but differently. They can write sweeping policies, but they can’t give you a realistic answer. And, they haven’t learned anything.

   Chiefs change every 5 years or so and they can neglect training with impunity. They can run the department like a little kingdom based upon favoritism. Further, Chiefs generally are not well versed in police tactics or use of force. Just look at their incompetent handling of all of the protests after George Floyd.

   As for Dave Perry, he will continue to make everything racist and will be part of a problem. He will continue to stoke fear in the hearts of black children and adults with a skewed vision. But, it is part of the popular narrative and it passes for caring.
   Let us deal with facts and root out discrimination wherever it is. But let us be fair and just. The pistol whipping incident that Perry and even the DA use as an example is grossly distorted. The suspect was a drug addict in possession of numerous pills who had a felony warrant, as did his companions who ran. He failed to comply with orders at gunpoint and then resisted arrest. During the resistance, he reached for the officer’s gun multiple times before he was struck. The officer had to rip his gun out of the suspect’s hand several times. Far worse than any of that, the detective filed charges and the Chief (Wilson) condemned the officers before even obtaining other business videos that were never shown to the public. Those videos were not shown in the female officer’s trial. The videos show a far different picture of the resistance.

   Let us try to be just. I spent career trying to be just. Let us give that a try.

   1. Don, as you know, the “problem” is that you and yours are being watched by millions of people that carry a video camera in their pocket. Your every movement, every action, will be watched and judged by those that are, in effect, the employer of current police officers. There is no going back on this. The police are now in a completely transparent position and some of them will pay the price. Their actions may not be race related and they may be using an appropriate amount of force in any given situation, but in many cases, they are going to have prove it and stack their poof up against a bystander that documented the situation. (We love to sue) Police, I believe, will find themselves more and more personally responsible for every action they take. I think it is probable that government will be unwilling to protect them in the future, and each individual will be liable for their own actions. The alternative is just too expensive for government to continue to subsidize. You may be correct in your assumption that some segments of American society create an atmosphere of fear and distrust when it come to the police. My take is that a distaste for the police is not limited to just one economic or racial group, but to Americans as a whole, who really don’t believe that the police have a right or responsibility to tell them to do anything, legal order or not. I imagine that your friends on the police force might back up my assumption, with many stories of the public at large (of all colors) telling them in no uncertain terms to **** off, regardless of the circumstances. Like many realities, this is an unpleasant one, but one that won’t change in the near future or probably at any time. It has very little connection to politics and perhaps something to do with the morality of the American people. Regardless of the reason, it seems to be a fact and dealing with it on that level may be the best idea.

      1. I would guess that you are right in much of what you have said. It started with my generation when we started telling our children that they were special. That meant that they were more important than anyone else. That led to where we are now, where they are all victims of anything or anyone who stops them from doing whatever they want. With juries and judges buying into the victim idea, and cities simply paying out whenever there is a suit, it will be too expensive to have police officers do anything. They can just be like firemen and sit in the station waiting to respond after the murders. I can protect myself. I guess the public will have to accept that community policing is dead and that they will simply have to accept that the public attitude will foster greater crime and a business environment where you won’t be able to do business.

         Be judged on your actions as an officer is not a danger to officers under reasonable circumstances. But, the Supreme Court established long ago that use of force should be judged from the viewpoint of a reasonable officer on the scene. That is not being done now. The hysterical and uninformed judgements of the media and an uninformed public are now being used by prosecutors. If that continues, the police will simply stand by and do nothing. Smart people won’t take the job. Lazy people will take the job knowing they will have to do very little.

   2. Many of us readers appreciate your level-headed and well-reasoned assessment of otherwise slanted and highly partisan editorials by the Aurora Sentinal staff. I think it important that people see that our police in Aurora are respected and appreciated if we are to recruit and retain individuals of the highest character to serve in this dangerous and difficult job. Otherwise, only bullies interested in power and control over others will apply.
      As in any large organization, there are individuals who “burn out” or don’t meet the high standards of the agency. You have pointed out that sometimes, the responsibility for their continued employment lies with the failure of leadership in the department. I was wondering if you feel that unions have any role here. I personally feel that unions do not belong in the public sector and have some responsibility for underperforming individuals remaining employed as police officers, and teachers for that matter. Over the years I have seen instances where officers in Denver were fired for cause, only to be reinstated by civil service review boards heavily influenced by unions. This can make it difficult for leadership to maintain desired levels of performance.

      1. I would agree that ideally we would not need police unions. But, that assumes good, fair police leadership. I have found good police leadership, like all leadership, to be rare.
         There is an exaggeration of the power of police unions here in Colorado. I will say that some unions have a back east adversarial approach that means they will back any officer, right or wrong. In the past, the police association would look at the case and decide whether the officer deserved to be represented. Much of that has gone away. In Aurora, the police administration almost always took everything as personal. I knew not to do that as an officer or as a detective. But, the police chiefs would try to lump everything they could find against officers they did not like. Instead of going with a clean solid case, they would drum up additional charges. Further, they would often violate all of the policies and procedures while going after the officer. That meant that the union would have to say, “Yeah, you’re right, he is guilty, but you violated every legal procedure going after him. So, we have to defend him on that basis” . I saw that many times. I found the police administration to be incompetent and full of favoritism in such a way as to be counterproductive. In Aurora, I never saw the union have enough power to make the chief do anything. An exception would be when they caught the chief doing blatantly illegal things. In those cases, the City would roll over to protect the Chief. In reality, a good chief could establish a reasonable relationship with the union and work together with them to get rid of the bad officers. Most officers don’t want bad officers on the job. But, there is today, a negative attitude in some police unions that is counterproductive and undermines good police work.

   3. Don, you display your bias in the first paragraph by putting the blame on police leadership for permitting racism in the ranks, but implying that officers who saw this behavior and attitude in their peers did nothing.

      As long as that ‘thin blue line’ mentality persists, there is no chance for substantive long-term change in APD.

      1. You assume that the officers did nothing. You are wrong. It was brought to the attention of those above many times, as was brutality. Why do you think that I have such a poor opinion of those who were in charge? I could give you a long list of wrongs that I watched the police administrators do without consequence. Many things were brought to the attention of the City Manager. He did nothing. Power backs power. The acting chief was so drunk on duty that he passed out while reading a disciplinary action to an officer. I watched the division chief sexually harass a records girl one day. He was notorious for it. I told her that I would testify for her if she made a complaint. She said that she was scared and was just going to quit. I can go on for a long time. How many times did they make it clear to us that they really didn’t care about the public? Why do you think I have such a low opinion of those in charge? Try to understand that you really don’t know the truth.

7. I made a long response to this to Gene. However, for a quick reply. You really don’t understand. Officers have stood up and exposed everything from racism to excessive force. It means the end of any aspirations that you have to do some specialized job within the department. The only way to speak up is to make sure that there is nothing they can take away from you. In the past, misconduct by officers who were favored was simply ignored by the Chief and his staff. Disclosed misconduct by the Chief and his staff was ignored by the City Manager. Civil Service was the protection for officers who spoke up but who also made sure that they did their job and didn’t become openly insubordinate. Chiefs try to destroy Civil Service so that they can run their kingdom without fear of anyone exposing their incompetence and often dishonesty. The public think that Civil Service just protects bad officers. Giving the Chief more power is a mistake. I can give you a long list of misconduct that was brought to the Chief’s attention that was ignored. It meant the end of any aspirations you might have within the department. Sorry, Gene. You are late to the party. Officers have brought up all types of misconduct simply to be deemed a trouble maker by the Chief. Power supports power. Like many employers, they don’t want any waves.

   1. Don, besides Civil Service, what about FOP 49, or the Aurora Police Association for officer protection? BTW, racial discrimination is illegal, and if a supervisor, at any level, engages in it, or permits it, he or she is committing a crime. Those who witness the behavior and condone it by not speaking up are abetting criminal behavior.

      Although it is admirable that you are still so loyal to a department that you were part of, your inability to hold ‘bad’ officers accountable, and to continue to heap blame and accusations of misconduct on supervisory personnel, as the sole source of APD’s problems undermines your position.

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