Aurora police have a lot on their plate, from rising crime to staffing shortages

Alayna Alvarez
·2 min read

The Aurora Police Department is doubling down on its pledge to improve policing after Elijah McClain's death from the hands of law enforcement in 2019 — but promises may be hard to keep when internal strife and crippling crime waves keep getting in the way.

Driving the news: The Colorado Attorney General's Office and heads of Aurora's police and fire departments announced Tuesday they agreed to an overhaul as part of a consent decree mandating changes around public safety practices.

Get market news worthy of your time with Axios Markets. Subscribe for free.

  • The five-year agreement comes in the wake of a state investigation that determined the police department routinely exerted excessive force and showed a pattern of racial bias.

Details: The requirements outlined in the consent decree include improving use-of-force training to prevent "unnecessarily escalating encounters" with civilians and diversifying the police and fire workforces to "better reflect the city's diversity," Attorney General Phil Weiser said at a briefing.

  • Aurora's elected officials are now required to hire an independent monitor to keep tabs on the police and fire departments' progress toward achieving the agreed-upon conditions.

Yes, but: The police are preoccupied amid a crime spike and a high-profile mass shooting this week.

What they’re saying: "I need you to believe in this agency," Wilson told community members Tuesday. "We’re not going to shy away from reform."

The bottom line: Aurora Police remain in the spotlight more than two years after McClain’s death, and questions about whether the city’s officers can rebuild community trust while keeping people safe remain unanswered.

Like this article? Get more from Axios and subscribe to Axios Markets for free.

Our goal is to create a safe and engaging place for users to connect over interests and passions. In order to improve our community experience, we are temporarily suspending article commenting

Recommended Stories

  • Osaka, Djokovic voice fears for China's missing tennis star

    Naomi Osaka and Novak Djokovic are the latest top athletes to voice concerns about the safety of Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai, who has not been heard from in days after accusing China's former vice premier of sexual assault.Why it matters: The allegations on Peng's social media page were removed earlier this month, and China's state-controlled media has suppressed all reporting on the case, AP reports.Get market news worthy of your time with Axios Markets. Subscribe for free.Tennis authorities

  • Respiratory complaints among children spike as Delhi pollution worsens

    Worsening air quality in India's capital New Delhi has led to a spike in chronic respiratory conditions such as asthma among children, and prolonged exposure to deadly pollutants could impair their cognitive development, doctors said. Pollution has been hitting dangerous levels across New Delhi and other parts of northern India this month. On most days, the Air Quality Index (AQI) has stayed above 451 on a scale of 500, indicating "very poor" and "severe" conditions that affect even healthy people and seriously impact those with existing diseases, according to the federal pollution control board's guidance.

  • Poland faces months of migration pressure from Belarus, minister says

    The crisis on Poland's border with Belarus will last months, the Polish defence minister said on Wednesday, as several thousand migrants remained stranded on the EU's eastern frontier in what the bloc calls a deliberate blackmail campaign by Minsk. Nine Polish service members were injured on Tuesday and Poland used water cannons against small groups of migrants throwing stones across the barbed wire border fence. Belarusian state news agency BELTA said on Tuesday evening border guards had started moving some migrants to a reception centre away from the frontier.

  • Exclusive: Exxon launches sale of shale gas properties in Texas

    Exxon Mobil on Monday launched a sale of its oil and gas properties in the first major U.S. shale field, a spokesperson confirmed, as part of a portfolio reshuffling to focus on more lucrative assets. The top U.S. oil producer set a goal three years ago of raising $15 billion from asset sales, and put several U.S. and international assets on the market as energy prices have recovered from the pandemic-induced slump. Exxon spokesperson Sarah Nordin confirmed the sale process.

  • Prosecutor pleads guilty and resigns as jury deliberates

    As a jury was deliberating over his fate, a Georgia district attorney on Monday pleaded guilty to several charges stemming from improper acts while in office and agreed to resign. Mark Jones had already been suspended as Chattahoochee Judicial Circuit district attorney after the state attorney general’s office obtained the indictment on Sept. 7. It accused him of trying to influence a police officer’s testimony, offering bribes to prosecutors in his office and trying to influence and prevent the testimony of a crime victim.

  • Mom Called Her 5-Year-Old Son the ‘Next Ted Bundy’ Before He Vanished

    New Hampshire Attorney General’s OfficeA New Hampshire mother texted a friend about her 5-year-old’s uncontrollable behavior, comparing her son to a couple of prolific serial killers. “I want him gone,” she allegedly wrote. Four months later, the child’s body was discovered in the Abington woods.The haunting messages from Danielle Dauphinais were shared with The Boston Globe by her childhood friend, Erika Wolfe. Though Wolfe said she and Dauphinais had not spoken in years, Dauphinais reached out

  • Rittenhouse judge back in spotlight during jury instructions

    The judge in Kyle Rittenhouse’s murder trial, already the subject of scrutiny for various actions in the case, drew attention again on Monday for his handling of jury instructions. Judge Bruce Schroeder, who had been expected to file final instructions on Sunday, took arguments from attorneys until the last minute Monday as he edited the instructions on the bench. The last-minute activity focused on a crucial procedure — developing instructions about how jurors should determine whether Rittenhouse is guilty of each charge against him.

  • Two Arkansas men admit to trafficking 6-year-old, sexually assaulting her

    Two Arkansas men have confessed to sexually assaulting a 6-year-old girl after a hospital found she was suffering from multiple sexually transmitted diseases.

  • Four Years On, The Search Continues For A Small-Town Teen Sex-Trafficked In NYC

    It’s been four years since Corinna Slusser left her small Pennsylvania town for the big lights of New York City, only to be sex-trafficked in the weeks leading up to her disappearance. The 19-year-old college student was last spotted on Sept. 20, 2017, as she left the Haven Motel in Queens, a pay-by-the-hour establishment in Rego Park. In the interim between her move to New York and her vanishing two months later, Slusser’s image was circulated on advertisements promoting prostitution. A year la

  • Rittenhouse prosecutor 'very close' to violating 'golden rule' of law, criminal defense attorneys say

    Prosecutor Thomas Binger was "very close" to violating the "golden rule" of law during the Kyle Rittenhouse trial in Kenosha, Wisconsin, according to criminal defense attorney Ajay Pallegar.

  • Coroner says how woman who went missing in Myrtle Beach ended up at Florence fire station

    The Florence County Coroner confirmed to a local TV station that Sheridan Wahl suffered internal injuries. Her body was found at the bottom of the fire station’s training tower.

  • ‘Deal with it,’ woman tells choking child before passing out at FL restaurant, cops say

    The woman was charged with child neglect, deputies said.

  • Woman slain in Atlanta park had letters 'F' 'A' 'T' carved onto chest, report says

    Katherine Janness, who was fatally stabbed July 28 in Atlanta's Piedmont Park, had the letters 'F' 'A' and 'T' carved onto her chest, an autopsy report says.

  • Two women died of overdoses in a Norfolk man’s home. A third told a judge he raped her in his apartment.

    One night in late May, a 39-year-old Virginia Beach woman joined several friends for a night of barhopping. The woman’s son had agreed to serve as the designated driver, and waited in his vehicle in the parking lot while the woman and her friends went into their final stop of the night — Seaside Raw Bar at the Virginia Beach Oceanfront. The last thing the woman remembers about that evening was ...

  • Speeding driver turns out to be teen sex-trafficking victim, Michigan cops say

    The girl was reported as missing or a potential runaway nearly two months earlier, according to police.

  • Texas woman faces up to 20 years in prison for assaulting flight attendant, authorities say

    Federal prosecutors say 50-year-old Debby Dutton Cypress, Texas, shoved a flight attendant multiple times after asking her husband to put his mask on.

  • Rep. Priscilla Giddings censured, removed from legislative committee by Idaho House

    “I would not have done anything differently,” Giddings said on the House floor Monday.

  • Kyle Rittenhouse's mother did not drive him to Kenosha shootings

    Social media posts circulating during the murder trial of Kyle Rittenhouse claim his mother drove him to the town in the US state of Wisconsin where he shot three people. But the prosecutor trying the case says there is no evidence to support the claim, Rittenhouse and a friend testified about the people who accompanied them and did not list his mother, and she told a newspaper that she was in a neighboring state and did not know what her son was doing."Why are we just glazing over the fact that

  • ‘He’s evil’: Victims' family prepares for killer's execution

    If all goes as scheduled, 23-year-old Lindsey Kirk will be at a Mississippi prison this week to watch the execution of the stepfather who terrorized her family, sexually assaulted her when she was a child and killed her mother. David Neal Cox is scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection Wednesday at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman. The state Supreme Court set the execution date after Cox relinquished all appeals.

  • Insane: Thieves smash diamond case with hammers, stealing nearly everything

    Concord police said nine thieves invaded an East Bay jewelry store wielding hammers to crack the display cases. The suspects made off with nearly everything.