A National Public Radio report last week explained what we all know to be true. There are no longer any rules of the road here in Aurora and the metro area, and researchers know why.
During the pandemic, cops circled the paddy wagons and essentially quit providing traffic enforcement until someone crashed and burned. The ranks of cops in Aurora and across the metroplex has thinned so much during the past few years that traffic enforcement as we once knew it is only something you see in the movies. Old ones.
Researchers say that because we no longer, ever, see cops in the rear-view-mirrors, or anywhere other than at car crashes, we drive like idiots because we know we can get away with it.
That’s just insulting. Now get out of my way.
You know who you really are. I do, too. You’re the guy in the black Ford F-150 with windows that I only assume you can see out of, on my ass while I’m sailing at 85 miles per hour on I-225 — Aurora’s autobahn.
I love the part of the interstate when you’re southbound from I-70 and you can take the curves like a slingshot. I love it until Mr. Compensating-For-Something arrives with his brights on in my rear-view mirror. I can smell the Sonic breakfast sandwich on your breath, dude. And, I can see the North Dakota plate on your banged-up back bumper, which is where you hang your chrome testicles.
Besides the creep in the black truck, there’s Cement-Truck-Driver-from-Hell and his compatriot, The Trashenator. These guys always pace each other on parallel interstate lanes, cruising 5 miles per hour under the speed limit. Their intent is to drive you insane by forcing you to snuggle up to their backsides so you can sniff the floating debris from Leroy as he barrels toward the landfill.
Get behind the guy hanging his tree-stump arms out of the cement truck and kiss your windshield goodbye. Don’t think I didn’t notice the Raiders tattoo on your arm, buddy. If you look closely, you can see stray Fiats and Mini Coopers stuck in the treads of these trucks’ muddy tires. I laugh out loud when I see bumper stickers that say, “Not Responsible for Broken Windshields” only because I have a bumper sticker that says, “Not Responsible for Flinging Flaming Bags of Poo.” Don’t mess with me, flatlander.
The worst of the worst, however, is Princess Peroxide and her Battleship Beemer. You’ve seen this woman many times before in Aurora. Big sunglasses, dark windows, navy blue X5 with her face and fingers on her cell phone as she weaves menacingly toward your car at any goddamn speed she chooses. Usually sporting plates from California, Texas, Arizona or someplace seriously South, she’s come to Colorado for a little slumming at the Cherry Creek Mall. Spotted in Aurora, this driver is hopelessly lost. You can’t intimidate her with threatening hand gestures or death glares. But you can pull in front of her and unroll toilet paper out your driver’s window so that it lodges all over the Beemer grill and wipers that cost more than my shoes.
The scariest cars in Aurora are the Alienators. These are the mirror-window, rolling spike-and-chain tombs that vibrate like a cheap motel bed from the pounding, concert-level bass from deep inside. They slide up next to you late at night at intersections where the light never turns green. What might be deep pounding from a stereo or the smashing of human skulls between granite slabs makes your own rear-view mirror shimmy like Jell-O. I used to think that Satan was in that car, chewing on femurs and sipping a caramel Frappuccino. Turns out it’s usually a skinny 16-year-old kid using a pillow to see over the welded-chain steering wheel. This car always has Colorado plates and weird bumper stickers like “My Other Car is a Prius.”
My archenemy is the driver who sees every other car on the road as a challenge. These people tend to favor cars that start with “M.” They think that when you turn your blinker on, it’s a signal for them to speed up to make sure you don’t change lanes in front of them. Your brake lights are a sign to speed up and then swerve around you. Rather than allow one car length for each 10 miles per hour of speed, these folks — almost always male mouth-breathers and almost always from someplace in the Midwest — appear to drive with one foot on the brake and the other on the gas at the same time. They’re the ones buzzing along the median on I-225 when it’s gridlocked to a halt. These dudes start honking at you before the left turn light turns green because they almost had to wait.
Don’t think that this is going to end any time soon. Colorado State Patrol officials announced a few weeks back that they’re back on the road in full force, and they’ve got just the ticket for handling Colorado’s lawless roads. I haven’t seen a single cop on any metro interstate in the hundreds of miles of roads I warrior past every week.
Welcome to colorful Colorado, folks, boasting vroom with a whew.
Follow @EditorDavePerry on Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook or reach him at 303-750-7555 or dperry@SentinelColorado.com
A lesson in human nature. As a retired officer, I had a conversation with Councilman Marciano who told me the police don’t prevent anything. I said that we were about to find out since the legislature passed the so called police reform bill. They, Rhonda Fields, Leslie Herod, and the rest are still bragging about a bill that drove thousands of officers out of the job and made the rest hesitant to stop anyone. No one can tell you what the bill means other than they don’t want the police to stop or touch anyone. All of that routine police work kept a lid on things. Now the police just come out for the murders. Thank your legislature.
Well, the APD cops who just tased and shot (at 4 feet distance!) a beanbag through the stomach of a guy who looked in the video like he was complying sure weren’t hesitant. They illustrate why the consent decree and intervention was needed, and still is. Cops will not police themselves. Looks like Aurora is going to be writing another big check for police misconduct.
How ironic lefty, Dave Perry is now complaining road rage seems a problem? The cops as Dave states are now no where to be seen, great observation of a local truism. Yes we see it as well. I wonder why? Could defunding, and the states new legislation on civil liability towards law enforcement maybe be a big part of the problem? And Aurora has its fair share of local grown road warriors. Remember the lawlessness when I-225 was taken over a couple times by this kind of criminal thinking. One ding-bat shot at a lone jeep that wandered into the swarm of protesters. The other, a Sunday afternoon take over of the interstate for some hot- rodders. Cops nowhere to be found. This is called anarchy right here in our city. This is complements of our lawmakers. And now Dave, I full well expect you and the paper will be endorsing Juan Marcano for Mayor. The biggest defunder of police out there. So Dave, the road rage with Marcano at the wheel get used to it.
“Amid a national conversation about policing sparked by protests over Floyd’s death, Tuesday’s special city council meeting in Aurora highlighted the contentious nature of the debate in a diverse, fast-growing suburban community where public opinion can be sharply divided. City officials read aloud dozens of comments from residents who advocated for dismantling or defunding the Aurora police department while Mayor Mike Coffman, a former Republican member of Congress, looked on. Councilman Juan Marcano, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America who participated in Saturday’s protests, grilled Wilson and other police officials over their handling of the protest; Councilman Dave Gruber, a retired Air Force colonel, praised the police response and criticized demonstrators, whom he accused of trying to repeat “the Denver riots.”
https://coloradonewsline.com/2020/07/03/colorado-police-budgets-compare-defund-departments/
Cops will go into firemen mode for self preservation, only responding to calls then back to waiting. It was inevitable when Colorado passed the anti police bill.
Excellent writing, hilarious, the only type you left out is meth chewing moron who thinks a change in light from yellow to red means punch it into passing gear
When you keep hammering employees as being bad and you promote only bad leaders in police departments, this is what you get. Police that function like firemen.
Dave, as you so often are, you are right on! And I am tired of hearing the “defunding” nonsense; no one is defunding the police. I am also tired of the passive aggressive behavior that is some cops’ response to any reform: “Ok,”, they say, “ you won’t let us kill citizens at will, so we’re going to act like spoiled brats and refuse to do our job.” And, sadly, it’s not just Aurora, but the entire metro area, and all over the country. We saw this egregious behavior in Lancaster PA, of all places!
Without any knowledge of the law or what the real situation is, it is easy to resort to generalizations. Police officers who knowingly use excessive force should be prosecuted. Officer Chauvin and others are being prosecuted without a need for uninformed new restrictions on law enforcement. I would like to place you in the officers’ shoes in real situations with the poor guidelines that the legislature has created and see if you would be willing to risk your freedom and put the welfare of your family at risk. What the legislature did was to effectively defund the police without doing it in name. There are officers being wrongfully prosecuted now and that is not lost on the others. The police are not looking for the ability to kill citizens at will. But their inability to enforce the laws puts you and the rest of the public at risk. If you are not informed on what the laws say now, you should probably refrain from uninformed comments. You are not alone in your lack of understanding. Let me give you an example. The Colorado State troopers just forcibly removed some teenage protesters from the Capitol building without arresting them. I guess they and the legislature do not realize that under the police reform bill, the police cannot legally do that. There is still law that says the owner or person in control of property can forcibly remove a trespasser. So, maybe the legislators can legally remove protesters without arresting them, but the police can’t. So, the legislature has no idea of the impacts of their own law. They also don’t realize that their law does not allow the police to disperse unruly crowds even by just pushing them. These are only small examples of the problems with their police reform bill. The thousands of officers who left understood the problems. They didn’t leave because they couldn’t kill citizens at will.
Some examples, please, of ‘officers being wrongfully prosecuted.’ Do you have any reliable, verifiable data for your claim that ‘thousands’ of cops left because of increased oversight? Is that nationwide or just APD?
After reading this comment which Sarah appeared so confident in her “defunding is nonsense” a comment we all would take on as a good faith statement. However, a quick Google to the question asking are cities defunding police? The return response of what Google prepared was over a page of headlines of cities that have been active with “defunding”. Below are just a couple links that totally dispute the statement cities are not cutting budgets in police departments. Now perhaps with chief Wilson with her pronounced nonsense gone the city and the local police can have a fighting chance. Previous city politicians have had their fingers into picking the Wilson’s for political theater and this is what we got. And would continue rudderless with this council shifting back to wanting a woke led police department.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/mar/07/us-cities-defund-police-transferring-money-community
“In 2020 budget votes, advocacy groups won over $840m in direct cuts from US police departments”
https://www.foxnews.com/us/austin-police-morale-cratered-after-city-defunded-police-embraced-blm-survey
Great, reliable references! It would be worth your while to see where those funds were redeployed. Or just wait of the liars on Fox to tell you.
“Rather than allow one car length for each 10 miles per hour of speed” Who came up with this chestnut? Recall learning this in Drivers Ed (virtually in the simulator and in the textbook) only to venture out in the real world, on actual roads, where leaving room for another vehicle between you and the one in front of you was an invitation for someone to lane change between you. Literally the second time on a highway, via the Santa Ana Freeway, driving my dad to work, it was bumper-to bumper 55mph; and any attempt to open one car length, let alone five, was filled with other vehicles.
Are you seriously suggesting when you’re driving “at 85mph” you’ve got 8+ car lengths ahead of you? No wonder the guy behind you is ticked off.