Aurora Police Department has pattern of racially biased policing and excessive force, state probe finds

Colorado’s lawyer wide volition question a consent decree with the Aurora Police Department aft a year-long probe recovered officers’ signifier of racially biased policing and usage of excessive unit routinely violated authorities and national law.

The department’s officers treated Black radical and different radical of colour differently than achromatic people, including arresting and utilizing unit against them, according to the probe released Wednesday. Officers besides routinely utilized excessive unit against radical unnecessarily and failed to decently papers accusation astir radical they stopped, the probe found.

“We observed statistically important radical disparities — particularly with respect to Black individuals — successful astir each important benignant of constabulary interaction with the community, from interactions to arrests to uses of force,” the study states. “These disparities persisted crossed income, sex and geographic boundaries. Together with the different accusation we reviewed, we find that Aurora Police engages successful racially biased policing, treating radical of colour (and Black radical successful particular) otherwise from their achromatic counterparts.”

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser volition question to make a legally binding consent decree with the Aurora Police Department that volition outline the steps his bureau believes indispensable to hole the problems investigators discovered.

“If this effort is unsuccessful, we volition question a court-imposed bid correcting these problems,” the study states.

The probe is the archetypal nether a caller instrumentality passed successful the summertime of 2020 arsenic monolithic protests against constabulary brutality and racism continued crossed Colorado pursuing the execution of George Floyd. The bill, SB-217, gave Weiser’s bureau the authorization to behaviour specified an probe and, if agencies didn’t marque the required changes, to unit them to bash truthful via civilian litigation.

Weiser chose to analyse the Aurora Police Department pursuing a bid of high-profile allegations of constabulary misconduct, including the decease of Elijah McClain astatine the hands of Aurora constabulary and paramedics successful 2019.

“Elevating policing and gathering assurance successful instrumentality enforcement is simply a captious precedence for the Department of Law,” Weiser said successful a quality release. “Our authorization to behaviour signifier and signifier investigations is an important instrumentality for advancing this goal. In this case, our squad conducted a thorough introspection — with the assistance of the afloat practice of the metropolis of Aurora — and developed important findings connected however Aurora tin travel into compliance with the instrumentality and elevate the effectiveness and trustworthiness of instrumentality enforcement.”

Investigators besides recovered that Aurora Fire Rescue had a signifier and signifier of illegally injecting radical with ketamine. On aggregate occasions, Aurora paramedics gave radical doses of the sedative that were excessively ample for their assemblage value and failed to decently show them aft administering the drug. The section stopped utilizing ketamine successful September 2020 arsenic aggregate investigations into its usage of the cause connected McClain continued.

Investigators attributed the failings of the Aurora Police Department to “systemic and terrible civilization problems,” according to the report.

“Aurora does not make and oversee due expectations for liable behavior, which leads to the usage of excessive unit and the usurpation of the civilian rights of its residents,” a quality merchandise from Wesier’s bureau states.

Over 14 months, investigators conducted information analysis, spent 220 hours connected ride-alongs with Aurora constabulary and firefighters, attended dozens of constabulary meetings, and reviewed assemblage camera footage. The investigators work much than 2,800 reports, spoke with Aurora residents and interviewed employees of the 2 agencies.