Well, scheise, does no one give a damn anymore about their potty mouths?
Aurora city lawmakers are trying to create some kind of rules about things local electeds can and can’t say to each other, or the public, or things the public can and can’t say or do to them during city council meetings.
If you’re thinking that city council members have way too much time on their hands to spend time mulling over public naughty talk, it’s much more serious and complicated than that.
You don’t have to be a regular fan of watching the Aurora City Council bi-weekly Big Ugly Long Lasting Super Heated Insult Tumults (BULL SHIT) shows to get a feel for how unusually unruly and profane these hours-long sessions can be.
I once counted the F-bomb being launched no less than eight times in one meeting, mostly being lobbed from the audience to someone sitting on the dais.
I’m not talking about couched insults and pithy partisan pelts being flung back and forth from the council dais to the public invited-to-be-heard lectern on the council floor.
Sure, there’s plenty of that, but within the last few years, sometimes angry and other times droll citizenry have told select members of the city council to, in just three words, flee the scene and have sexual relations with themselves. Lawmakers have been instructed to consume feces, accused of mimicking reproductive organs, or missing anatomical parts, including gonads and cerebral cells.
Nothing is off limits at an Aurora City Council meeting these days.
While there have been some eyebrow-raising public potty talk going back years in city council and other local government meetings, the flood of flaming vulgarities began in earnest almost two years ago, after the police shooting death of Kilyn Lewis.
Lewis, a Black man, was fatally shot by a member of the Aurora Police SWAT unit while he was being arrested May 23, 2024 at an Aurora apartment parking lot. Lewis was wanted by Denver police on charges linked to allegations that he shot a homeless man in the shoulder.
In the shadow of the Elijah McClain police shooting debacle and enactment of a consent decree mandate, forcing police reform onto the Aurora PD, a Colorado Attorney General investigation leading to the decree determined that Aurora police exhibited “patterns and practices” of using excessive force, especially against people of color.
Days after the shooting, activists and the family of Lewis began appearing at city council meetings, demanding the firing of the officer accused of shooting Lewis and insisting city lawmakers take action against the police department and reticent city administrators.
The demands were met with both silence and insults from the dais.
The city council confrontations soon escalated to outright protests, shutting down some council meetings and eventually leading to the dissolution of the public’s ability to publicly address the city council.
The f-bombardment wasn’t limited to just the elected and unelected folks in council chambers. B-word bickering among city council members reached “can she say that” pitch in 2024 when former city Councilmember Danielle Jurinsky launched into her political allies for daring to oppose her on a plan to end a $5 so-called head tax on employees. The group text, obtained by the Sentinel, was grisly.
“I will not be at the meeting on Monday, and every single one of you can go fu** yourselves!” her first message read. “I fu***** campaigned on that you fu***** pieces of shit! AND FU** YOU DUSTIN!! And I hear you’re a co sponsor, Francoise. You can definitely go fu** yourself! You’ve never owned a business or a fu***** thing in your life you pretentious bitch! My friendship will literally (sic) every single one of you is dead! DEAD! oh, and my loyalty… also dead! I hope you all have miserable fu***** lives! I might make that happen for a few of you. FU** YOU!”
The astrisks there are mine.
The naughty talk has been somewhat more sedate than that during the Public Invited to be Heard periods of city council meetings, but just somewhat.
How did we get here? Experts say the potty mouth thing can be blamed on a variety of issues, including social media, which has pretty much defused the shock value of just about everything. Other causes, according to psych experts going back decades, include the cathartic nature of letting the f-bomb rip when you slam your finger in the car door, or the joy of punctuating news that your partner got tickets for the Westminster Dog Show finals. “Oh hellzyeah!”
As far as being punishable, by anyone but a higher power who cares about such things, only South Carolina, Mississippi and Alabama have laws on the books making it a crime of some type to use the vulgar term for caca or coitus in public. They’re often challenged as illegal.
So city lawmakers are trying to find a way to not just reel in the rank, but force the issue without running into First Amendment rights, which are damn strong here.
Good luck with that.
This is a country where the president recently got on his social media channel and told people whom he doesn’t like, “Open the F***in’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH!”
Can’t make that sh** up, or most of what goes on during public meetings in Aurora.
While city lawmakers can certainly hold each other to some kind of standards that might mete out punishments to violators, the public’s ability to talk dirty is just boorish and banal and in most cases, legal.
Joe Public can lob suggestions from the council lectern about which orifice their elected representatives should deeply insert a bill, a stance or a vote, they just can’t toss festering tomatoes with it.
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I think it would be a good idea if each Aurora City Council member sign on to a code of conduct that would emphasize a good faith effort to practice effective listening skills, ask questions that demonstrate a sincerity to understand opposing viewpoints rather than gotcha inquiries, and agree to disagree without being disagreeable. Have one of the city attorneys draft the code of conduct for discussion and debate. As for those members of general public that get off on verbal abuse and vulgar theatrics that’s probably a lost cause. This is an unhappy, stressed out and polarized country right now. Just look at the lack of civility and decorum in the last State of the Union sessions…Obama, Biden, Trump… it does not matter. I am 80 years old and can remember when the State of the Union address by the President was a dignified event. The behavior of our elected members of Congress is a reflection of the voters who got them there, and unfortunately many of those voters enjoy the chaos and nastiness that is a cancer in our democracy which is increasingly malignant.
Several years ago a city of Aurora APD working at Sams Club off duty issued a city summons codified by city council as a violation against profanity in the city. The defendant otherwise had a different thought about this experience.
He hired a lawyer to fight this ticket. Westword covered this as it played out. You can read what happened.
https://www.westword.com/news/man-says-f-ck-it-at-sams-club-gets-a-ticket-for-disorderly-conduct-5843001/
https://www.westword.com/news/case-against-man-ticketed-for-saying-f-ck-it-at-sams-club-dropped-due-to-lack-of-witnesses-5849795/
Perhaps voters should start electing moderate Unaffiliated problem solvers — rather than ideological warriors who know nothing other than how to fight and name call.
The 51% majority of Unaffiliated voters are done with the political theatrics. There is $45 million per year in additional sales tax receipts just sitting on the table awaiting a Council that can focus on a strategy to sieze it.
What’s more important, making new rules or attending to the city’s biggest problems? Currently, the city can’t fund its way out of a wet paper bag.
City Council: You need to start accepting accountability for the city’s failed retail/dining economy and stop whining.