Nearly 50 submit applications for city’s new citizen cop review board

AURORA | City officials are taking applications for a review board that will look at some police discipline cases and give city leaders advice on how to handle them.

Since the city started taking applications for the board around Labor Day, about 50 people have applied, said Deputy City Clerk Karen Goldman.

Goldman said there isn’t a deadline for when the application period will end.

In a statement last month, city officials said they are looking for 20 people who “would be occasionally called on to assist other citizens and police representatives review actions in controversial incidents.”

Goldman said the board is open to anyone who lives or works in Aurora. Applicants also must be willing to serve a three-year term.

In addition to citizen volunteers, the board will include an Aurora police commander, lieutenant and two officers who would share a rank with the officer of the case under review.

While the board won’t have the authority to alter discipline, it will make a recommendation to the police chief about what discipline, if any, the officer should face.

As is the case now, the police chief will make a discipline ruling and the officer will be able to appeal the ruling to the city’s Civil Service Commission if they choose to.

The application can be found on the city’s website, auroragov.org, on the Boards and Commissions page.

City councils’ Public Safety Committee will choose candidates from the applicant pool and they will be confirmed by full council.

Goldman said she couldn’t release names of applicants until they have turned over to city council.

The idea stems from Mayor Steve Hogan’s plans last year for an independent monitor to oversee some aspects of the police department and review citizen complaints and controversial police conduct.

When he pushed the idea last fall, Hogan said he wanted city council to tackle the issue before there was a controversy roiling the community. The idea for an independent monitor met a chilly reaction from former Chief Dan Oates, as well as several council members. With input from police administration, the city manager and the police unions, the idea morphed into the current plan for an IRB.

City Councilwoman Barb Cleland, who chairs the Public Safety Committee, said she has heard from several people who don’t live or work in Aurora who want to be part of the board, but said she hasn’t heard much from her constituents about the board.