Aurora City Council members conduct agenda business in the Aurora Room at city hall instead of inside council chambers in reaction to conduct of some members of the audience. (Sentinel Screen Grab)
The Aurora City Council desperately needs help.
For those who must or want to observe the too often unsavory live-and-on-camera process of governing the state’s third-largest city, you’ve witnessed the 11 people you elected to run the place get verbally and tactically pummeled each week.
At every city council meeting for the past year, the family and friends of Kilyn Lewis have appeared inside city council chambers to air their grievances linked to the fatal shooting of Lewis by police during his arrest in May 2023.
Lewis was being arrested in the parking lot of an Aurora apartment complex on a warrant linked to accusations that he shot a homeless man in the arm in Denver earlier that May. An Aurora SWAT team surveilled Lewis for days before rushing him with guns pulled as he was getting inside his car, according to police video and reports.
Clearly stunned by the police yelling with pulled guns, he apparently turns around flustered, hands up and down, and reaches in his pocket, pulls out his cell phone and then raises both hands up to his head, as seen on police video. At that moment, one of the five SWAT cops, Michael Dieck, fires a single fatal shot. Lewis drops to the ground and died later.
Dieck said he thought the phone in Lewis’ hand was a gun. Both the former Arapahoe County district attorney and Aurora police chief determined that the shooting was “justified.”
Since the shooting, the bi-monthly city council meetings have been dominated by Lewis’ supporters and city council members playing a cat-and-mouse game of Team Lewis virtually, and sometimes literally, taking over the meetings to lodge complaints about Dieck and Aurora police.
That’s prompted Team Council members to routinely change city council meeting rules and procedures in an effort to thwart Team Lewis’ weekly admonitions about the death of Kilyn.
Despite the eye-rolling and mewling from the larger half of the city council about making the bi-weekly council meetings longer and having to listen to repeated and often theatrical protests about not firing Dieck, or having a public discourse between Team Lewis and Team City Council at the dais, the real victims here are the public involved in city government, and the city’s staff.
The public and the city workers are dragged through this bi-weekly War of the Poses and really do struggle to keep up with the usual business of a very, very busy city government.
As confusing, chaotic and annoying as this tit-for-tat hurley-burly has been for more than a year, it boiled over the top last week.
For the past few months, city lawmakers have given themselves a bye from having to actually sit inside city council chambers while the “public invited to be heard” portion of the meeting plays out. Generally, the council’s three liberals sit patiently through the Lewis routine, and, occasionally, one or two others might appear on the dais. Some, as the rules now allow for, appear to be listening from somewhere else via remote access. Some don’t bother.
After lawmakers last month moved the cheese again for Lewis protesters by saying only one person at a time can stand at the lectern to talk, Team Lewis matched the challenge by invoking the Americans With Disabilities Act exception.
Within minutes, city lawmakers and staff were storming in, out and away from the council chambers in a huff, retreating to a nearby room to reconvene the meeting, with some city lawmakers left behind.
Those holed up in a space closed to the public and the press then huffily agreed to end all public city council meetings from that day forward, until a pending wrongful death lawsuit filed by the Lewis family against the city is resolved, which could take years.
Guess you — Team Lewis and Team Council — showed them, huh?
My top recommendation here — given what appears to be a lack of grown ups involved — is for the city to hire a professional mediator to foster some agreement that both sides can adhere to. It has to be a pact that does not lock the public and press out of the very complicated and messy business of, transparently, running this city of 400,000 people.
But I can save city taxpayers a few thousand dollars in professional mediator fees by just suggesting what they will. Bring in a trusted volunteer meeting director, someone like former Mayor Bob LeGare or former Council member Charlie Richardson.
Then, have a representative from each side meet and exchange “demands.”
I can promise you one demand from Team Lewis will be for city lawmakers to hear them in public.
Sorry if it sucks to listen to people you don’t like or agree with, city council members, but that’s what being a public official, and especially an elected official is all about. Get on those big-girl and big-boy political panties and suck it up for the city and your constituents.
As for Team Lewis, reasonable time limits and public meeting decorum aren’t an option. Assuming your right to behave any way you want supersedes the rights of others to participate in public meetings is seriously wrong. Keep the protests outside and bring your compelling messages inside the city council chambers.
There’s no doubt that the answers provided so far by the former district attorney, Aurora police and the 18th Judicial District Critical Incident Response Team are far less than satisfactory in examining Lewis’ death at the hands of police.
Beside the infinitely complicated analysis of the “shoot-don’t-shoot” quagmire linked to the arrest itself, no one has satisfactorily answered the larger question about Lewis’ shooting death.
This wasn’t a handful of cops in a squad car rolling up hot on a crime scene amid that kind of chaos. Aurora police had days to plan Lewis’ arrest. Trained SWAT officers are sent to these types of confrontations to prevent shooting deaths, not inflict them. How could this have gone so wrong has yet to be satisfactorily answered.
But the answers can not and will not come from badgering Aurora city lawmakers, who by design have no power or influence over providing that badly needed information. Team Lewis’ weekly harassment of the city council has not and will not move the needle on providing for a settlement in this case, nor advancing the cause of police reform, which the Lewis family and supporters say is paramount.
Any city lawmaker who doesn’t understand it is just as, if not more, important to hear constituents — rather than make constituents hear you — you should step aside now and let someone who understands how vital that chore is take your place.
Neither side is completely at fault here nor blameless.
What all this has done, however, is lock the public out of what should be a very open and transparent part of government.
Quit the games. Un-cancel the canceled public meetings. Act like the grown-ups you are. Come to an agreement that makes sense and allows the public to be part of the public’s business.
Follow @EditorDavePerry on BlueSky, Threads, Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook or reach him at 303-750-7555 or dperry@SentinelColorado.com
Thinking like that advanced in this editorial is the reason that this fiasco has gone on as long as it has. In life, one learns that giving into bullies only leads to more bullying. This is nothing more than a “shakedown,” something the left has been using for years against cities and corporations. Enough is enough. This is a battle that must be won for the sake of righteousness and to prevent future “shakedowns.” I for one am more than willing to forego some rights for as long as it takes to win this battle of wills.
Mr. Perry is right! I see that 3 comments clearly see that the protesters feel “entitled” to an explanation, but don’t or won’t see tbat several on this council feel entitled to have smooth “nothing to see here” meetings. Well, the job of the council is to represent every Aurora citizen, not just the people who look like you or vote for you. The family is not satisfied with answers they have been given, so why don’t we try mediation? Clearly, both sides could stand some rules to force listening on both sides of tbe argument. However, council members should understand that being an elected official comes with a higher standard of behavior. Listening to constituents is one of those behaviors.
“I can promise you one demand from Team Lewis will be for city lawmakers to hear them in public.”–Lol, as if they didn’t already do that for weeks in their demands to get a ghetto lottery payoff. There’s literally nothing new they have to say that deserves to be heard anymore.
The critical issue here is something called trust. And the Lewis team position with their disputes over the past year advanced to a point which their trust value warrants none.
This victimhood mentality and their hyper-activist approach to take over city meetings in such a backwards method. Standing up in council under the good faith assumption to comment on a zoning ordinance and then precisely twist the city business meetings time to bring up Kyle Lewis. Over and over, their misrepresentation at the podium. Their standard operating pattern was an embarrassing disaster, most everybody on council finally had enough. These Lewis team not knowing what they were doing- made no matter how much noise they made.
Let’s not forget Anton- Tay- Anderson and how he brings so much such credibility with his ability for creating his own one-man side-show of escapades. So predictable is his fairy-tale contribution in this city stand-off, and he doesn’t even vote here. And just think, this Lewis team likely takes all of Tay-Tay’s reputation with his prominent professional political career seriously and thus without critical thought, buys into it seeking the how-to’s in derailing advice from this mastermind.
So, how can this team Lewis be trusted to abide to any treaty that involves trustworthiness?
Seven on this Council have come to realize the reality of the situation, so why bother anymore?