After a series of high-profile in-custody deaths and police shootings, leaders of Colorado’s third-largest city are considering creating a civilian agency that would oversee the Aurora Police Department and replace a disciplinary review board that is weak and infrequently used.
Nicole Johnston, the councilwoman leading the effort, said she believes she has enough support from other council members and the community to create an oversight agency. The biggest question that remains is exactly which model they will pursue.
“We don’t have to stay in the status quo if it’s not working,” she said.
The effort comes at a time of change for Aurora city government. Voters in November elected a slate of younger, more liberal council members, many of whom took up police oversight as a campaign issue. On their first day in office, the new council faced brutal public comment about lack of police oversight. The city also will begin looking for a new police chief in January after the current chief’s expected retirement at the end of the year.
The calls for oversight also follow a series of high-profile incidents in Aurora where police wounded or killed people, including the death of 23-year-old Elijah McClain. Officers approached him while investigating a call for a suspicious person, took him to the ground, restrained him and watched as paramedics injected McClain with ketamine. McClain — who was unarmed and not accused of any crime — died three days later. The officers involved returned to work soon after the incident and prosecutors did not charge them with any crime.
“Fundamentally, that lack of accountability is the source of the break down in trust,” said Alison Coombs, who took office this month. The community gets the impression that police are above the law and struggle to trust officers if they don’t believe police will held accountable, she said, like when an Aurora officer kept his job and did not face criminal charges after driving drunk while on duty.
‘I don’t think they can do their jobs where people don’t trust them,” Coombs said.
Johnston said she believes she will have the six council votes needed to create a new ordinance or place a question on the November 2020 ballot. Multiple council members said they were generally supportive of creating a new oversight system, though they were not sure exactly what that would look like.
“The devil’s in the details, right?” said Councilwoman Allison Hiltz, who supports the effort.
Growing trend
Johnston began researching independent police oversight models even before her election in 2017 and was surprised that Aurora didn’t already have one, she said.
Independent oversight of police agencies has grown steadily over the past 20 years and there are now approximately 170 cities or counties with oversight systems, said Liana Perez, director of operations for the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement.
Denver instituted an independent monitor in 2005 and is the only Colorado city to have such an agency, though officials in Boulder also are considering creating a system.
None of the civilian oversight agencies across the country are identical, according to a report from the national association, but they can generally be broken into three categories:
- Investigative model: Agencies that serve as a primary investigators into allegations of police misconduct.
- Review model: Agencies that review completed investigations and assure they are thorough and fair. These are often staffed by volunteers.
- Monitor or auditor model: Agencies that may both review and investigate allegations and also conduct broad, systemic review of police policies. Denver has a monitor model.
Each model has its strengths and weaknesses and costs varying amounts of money.
“There are all types of models but I didn’t find one that I thought would fit exactly with the city of Aurora,” Johnston said, adding that she might pursue a hybrid of the categories.
Independent oversight has become increasingly popular because of the transparency it can provide at a time when police and community relationships nationwide seem increasingly fractured, Perez said.
“I think even law enforcement and elected officials are more on board,” she said.
Aurora Police Chief Nick Metz, who will retire at the end of the year, was generally supportive of the efforts to create an oversight system, Johnston said. She also spoke with the officers’ union and association, she said.
“It’s obviously important to find a fair system that the police can believe in,” Johnston said.
Dated system
Aurora instituted an Independent Review Board in 2014, but city leaders said it is used too infrequently and does not have enough authority to be an effective oversight tool.
The board is overseen by the city’s human resources department and is only convened at the request of the chief of police to review a disciplinary finding or an event that “draws significant community interest,” according to city ordinance. When a meeting is called, a panel of eight people are convened: four members of the police department and four community members drawn from a pool of 20 people selected by city council.
“Right now it’s predominantly folks with ties with law enforcement,” Johnston said. “I’d like to see more of a balance.”
The board has no power to overturn a disciplinary finding and serves only in an advisory function when deciding punishment, Aurora Police Deputy Chief Paul O’Keefe said in an email. The police chief can ignore any recommendations they might have.
Over the past four years, the board has reviewed only six disciplinary cases and one non-disciplinary issue, city spokesman Michael Bryant said. The board has not convened in 2019, despite the series of high-profile incidents regarding Aurora police. In that same four-year period, Aurora police officers have shot and wounded seven people and nine people have died during or after interactions with the department, according to data collected by The Denver Post.
In 2018 alone, the Denver Office of the Independent Monitor reviewed 994 police and sheriff discipline investigations and made recommendations on an additional 274 cases, according to the agency’s annual report.
“It’s more of a perfunctory review and not something that has anything teeth,” Coombs said of Aurora’s review board. “People seem to feel that it’s a process that leads to a foregone conclusion.”
O’Keefe, who attended a review board meeting in 2016 and will become the city’s interim chief on Jan. 1, said the board has been used infrequently and that it often takes a significant amount of time to gather the group.
“With four civilian members and four sworn members, on occasion, just marrying up schedules can prove to be difficult,” he said.
The review board’s structure was common in the 1990s but isn’t common anymore, Perez said. In modern oversight systems, police can advise on law enforcement procedures but do not have a vote.
“That’s kind of frowned on,” Perez said.
Moving forward
Frustration with police flared Tuesday night as a group of more than 50 people met to discuss community relationships with police and what an oversight system should look like.
Much of the discussion focused on questions about McClain’s death, but the group of activists, teachers and city leaders — including at least six council members and the city manager — also talked about the need for more community policing and in-depth de-escalation training.
The facilitator of the event, Ryan Ross, explained that the meeting was the first of several hosted by Johnston and the NAACP’s Aurora branch to discuss police accountability and to aid officials in the creation of a new oversight system. The next meeting will be scheduled for January.
For two hours, the group discussed body cameras and the need for consistent policy about when law enforcement release information and body camera footage of critical incidents. Many said they didn’t want to have an adversarial relationship with the police, but the current structure makes it difficult to have good communication.
“The one thing that’s constant is that community voice hasn’t been heard,” Ross said.
Nobody at the meeting settled on a specific model of oversight, but all agreed that the status quo was insufficient.
“People want answers, people want clarity,” said Topazz McBride, a resident who attended the meeting.
