The monitor overseeing Aurora’s compliance with a consent agreement for systemic public safety changes has looked to the city's handling of a traffic stop in 2021 that could have escalated into deadly force as an encapsulation of shortcomings in the police department’s policy governance and training development.
In a report released earlier this month, the monitor used the incident, which began as a traffic stop, and shortcomings found in the subsequent investigation to explore the need for clear policies for best practices, training, and accountability in the Aurora Police Department.
The monitor, for example, said the city's review of the 2021 incident “should have been much more critical” of and delved deeper into what happened.
On May 15, 2021, an officer stopped a driver who he claimed had nearly hit him during an unrelated stop. The driver reached into his waistband when asked for his driver’s license, insurance and registration, and the officer drew his gun, believing the driver may have been reaching for a weapon.
The officer called for backup, and other officers drew their guns when the driver got out of the car and began walking toward them. Another officer tackled him, and the original officer Tased the driver twice, who was then handcuffed.
The monitor’s report found it “clear from all accounts that the officer misconstrued the attempt of the driver to produce his license and genuinely, but for reasons that are not exactly clear, felt threatened by the driver’s actions.” The officer “failed to take the tactical steps to first prevent the potential confusion by asking where the driver’s license was located, and subsequent steps to reduce the likelihood of needing to employ deadly force and protecting himself,” the monitor added.
The officer admitted mistakes and eventually received re-training and intensified supervision, according to the report.
The report also found shortcomings in the Force Review Board’s probe of the incident. The board didn’t consider one officer’s tackling of the driver while the initial officer still had his gun pointed at the driver, which also put the tackling officer at risk. The review also didn’t look into the officer’s history, which included another incident a month earlier and his involvement in a crash while on duty.
“Simply put, the board’s review should have been much more critical, in the nature of a deep-diving after-action report, with every aspect of how that which occurred could have been avoided and probed for lessons which could be taught both to the involved officer and to the department at large,” the report said.
“The question of what caused the situation to unnecessarily escalate and what training (or policy) might have prevented that from happening was never confronted head on, nor was the issue of what role implicit bias may have played in the encounter,” the report later added.
Aurora agreed to make changes to its public safety agencies when an investigation by the Attorney General’s Office about two years after the in-custody death of Elijah McClain found patterns of bias and excessive force in policing. Aurora Fire Rescue also had a pattern of using the sedative ketamine in violation of the law, the investigation found. The fire department stopped using ketamine nearly two years ago but will need to comply with related mandates in the consent agreement if it ever resumes the drug's use.
The consent decree addresses:
- Racial bias in policing
- Use of force
- Documenting stops
- Use of ketamine and other sedatives as chemical restraint
- Recruiting, hiring and promotions
- Disciplinary processes and oversight
The consent decree contains 70 mandates altogether and the monitoring period, overseen by the Florida-based company IntegrAssure, will last at least five years depending on Aurora’s compliance.
Aurora is in "substantial compliance" with nine mandates, this first report found. The city is in varying stages of compliance with the other 27 mandates examined in the report, according to the monitor. Earlier this spring, IntegrAssure called Aurora's cooperation with their oversight "exemplary."
But the monitor also expressed concerns about whether the city will meet expectations for nine of the mandates, putting Aurora's compliance on a "cautionary track" because of what the company calls a lack of policy governance and training development in the police department.
