Aurora mayor backs civilian review board, body cameras for police
Aurora should have a civilian review board to investigate complaints about police officers, and body cameras for police officers, the mayor said Tuesday.
Mayor Richard Irvin recommended both ideas as the city council heard a 60-day status report about the Community Helping Aurora's Necessary Grown and Empowerment Reform Initiative the city started in June. CHANGE was started to address issues of racial bias, use of force and other concerns about the Aurora Police Department in the wake of the nationwide and local protests over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody.
According to the report, available on the city's website, more than 200 people were involved in groups that met in June and July, including residents, aldermen and police. City spokesman Clayton Muhammad presented the report, which contains 60 recommendations.
Irvin said having a civilian review board and body cameras were two he believes can be implemented fairly quickly.
He also thinks the city can soon post its annual police use-of-force analysis on the website, rather than requiring people to file a Freedom of Information Act request to get it.
And next spring, the city intends to try recruiting police officers from students who attend historically Black colleges and universities.
The city began talking about body cameras in 2019. It sped up the process after the Floyd death, asking 30 companies to provide information. Five did.
The city is now asking those five to submit formal proposals and plans to have cameras demonstrated in September, finalize a purchase proposal in October, and test a program in November and December, Muhammad said.
Over the next 45 days, an ad hoc committee will design a civilian review board. The plan will be presented to the city council Sept. 22.
Currently, complaints against officers are handled by the department's Office of Professional Standards, and sometimes also by the city's Human Relations Commission.
Irvin said he spent a 19-hour stint one day at the police department, speaking with officers. They asked, he said, that he look beyond what people say about police on social media.
So he hired pollsters to ask residents in two wards with the highest Black populations - the 6th and the 7th - what they think of the police.
Of the 540 residents who answered the telephone poll Aug. 8-9, 78% said they had a positive opinion of police, Irvin said, and 70% agreed or strongly agreed that they thought police treated people of different races and ethnicities fairly.
Also among the 60 ideas in the CHANGE report: Tracking why people are asked to get out of a vehicle, including race and gender; stop referring to police officers as warriors; and reduce the annual number of use-of-force alerts that generate a review of an officer from nine alerts to three.