Enough.

The residents of Aurora are fed up with their community and some of the most vulnerable among us being dangerously used as pawns for a despicable right-wing political farce.

Some Republican lawmakers in the city and region — notably Aurora City Councilwoman Danielle Jurisnky, Mayor Mike Coffman and congressional candidate John Frabbricatore — owe Aurora, the state and the nation an apology for deliberately creating terror in a sordid and blatant attempt at political gain.

In my nearly 40 years as a journalist, the nationally televised fabrication that Venezuelan gangsters are running amok in Aurora is one of the most despicable and dangerous stunts I have ever seen.

Aurora’s interim police chief, Heather Morris, who was late to the controversy, made it clear Friday night that she had released a video in which she stated adamantly: “What we are learning here is that gang members have absolutely not taken over this complex,” Morris said.

A community “overrun” and “taken over” by gangs is the bizarre fabrication Jurinsky has perpetrated locally and nationally. She has done it with the help of propagandists posing as journalists at Fox News, the New York Post and a handful of local TV and print news stations.

This horrific attempt to terrorize Aurora residents in hopes of convincing voters to support anti-immigration candidates and causes must stop.

These people have never, ever cared about the decades-long struggle of some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in the metropolitan area.

Since the 1970s, Northwest Aurora has struggled with gang crime, street crime, apartment crime, prostitution, drug crime, wage theft, homelessness, dilapidated and neglected apartments, incredible transience, and a city government that looks the other way year after year.

And then the public is suddenly supposed to believe that out of nowhere there is a gang problem in seedy apartment complexes that just happen to be destroyed by the same landlord who even called Coffman a “slumlord”?

For those who don’t know, in the 80’s and 90’s, the streets “Alton-Beeler” between Colfax and East 16th Avenue were synonymous with drive-by gang shootings. The problem was so bad that Aurora put up barricades in the area in the hopes that if gang members could no longer “drive by” or through, they wouldn’t slow down and start shooting up the area.

From Monaco Parkway in Denver to Chambers Road in Aurora, along the East Colfax Corridor, neighborhoods are saturated with anti-gang and anti-youth violence programs that have had some success and many failures over the years in curbing gang and youth violence. Despite the ebb and flow of gangs, or gang masquerades, northwest Aurora is — by and large — a safe community where poor people struggle with problems unique to poor people.

There is no doubt that gang and youth violence is a terrible societal disease, but it is not new and it has never paralyzed communities.

Jurinsky’s disgusting and foolish fever dream doesn’t even pass the test of common sense, let alone the evidentiary test.

One of the first crazy stories she retells came from the discredited landlord who owns these buildings. Officials from the apartment rental companies told the sentry and others that itinerant Venezuelan immigrant gangsters were “collecting” rent from apartment tenants and then not giving it to the landlord. This was reportedly the reason he couldn’t pay the apartment complex’s water bill or get the trash picked up.

Haha.

Tell me about the apartment complex where everyone collects cash rent at the door. By Coffman’s own admission—and his lament—most, if not all, of the Venezuelan immigrants in these apartments have been “placed there” by Denver aid agencies, and they pay rent directly to the landlord, just like everyone else.

Even Police Chief Morris said Friday that the story was nonsense and that they could not find a single resident who told this ridiculous story.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t serious problems in some of these apartments. And it doesn’t mean the police and the city don’t lack the resources to address and prevent problems associated with some of these apartment complexes, primarily by ensuring that landlords keep them up to code and enforce the rules and regulations of the apartment community.

But many of these apartment complexes have been the scene of theft, assault and even murder for years, even decades. Jurinsky and Coffman have never before addressed these problems on national television programs.

The real crisis now is that they can openly, or falsely, claim to speak on behalf of the City Council or the City of Aurora.

They do not. Aurora and the nation need to be made to understand that outside of the council platform where they represent only themselves, they do not speak for the city of Aurora.

The only duty and power of the mayor of Aurora is to preside over the meetings of the city council. Coffman does not lead or govern the city. In most cases, he cannot even vote at city council meetings.

The city administrator governs the city according to the policy determined by the city council as a whole.

When Jurinsky began her hysterical, anti-immigrant tirades, which were brought to the public’s attention by unprofessional and unethical local and national media (who have repeatedly refused to fact-check her inflammatory claims), the Aurora police and city government should have responded immediately.

Police and executives offered lukewarm and sometimes confusing email statements to the media. They should have held press conferences to counter the lurid and politicized lies and hyperbole to prevent Jurinsky and other Republican extremists from creating and controlling the narrative of this critical issue.

These vile forces are able to manipulate the narrative based on a video of five young men walking up the stairs of an apartment building carrying handguns and a long gun.

Police have not yet revealed whether they have investigated the authenticity of the video, nor whether they have investigated who these people are and what they were doing.

The video is unnerving. But it’s no more unnerving than similar videos shot in neighborhood stores and other public and private places in the region — for years.

If Jurinsky and Coffman are so concerned about the residents of these apartments, then insist that Aurora or the state police department patrol these apartments 24 hours a day.

Insist that the city, which once inspected every apartment building and every home in the city, make sure that it does so. Also, make sure that these inspections are posted on the city website so that the public can see them regularly.

Instead, they point to the problems with national immigration policy as the reason why this City Council, and virtually every City Council member before it, has failed to control shootings and address poverty, not just in these neighborhoods, but across the city.

Don’t buy it, Aurora. It’s an insane and dangerous deception designed only to stoke fear and sway voters toward a failed political clan of liars, cheats, and election deniers who have been virtually expelled from the state.

Police and city officials need to stop issuing belated press releases and get in front of national and local news cameras to give the public the truth about this problem that Jurinsky and Coffman have turned into a crisis. That truth needs to be backed up by evidence, transparency, and the ability for real journalists to ask questions and check facts.

Aurora pleads with the adults in the room to bring qualified and honest sources from around town before the cameras to set things straight.

So far, everything has been fear-mongering, quackery without morals or conscience, in an attempt to influence the election and not public safety.

Follow @EditorDavePerry on BlueSky, Threads, Mastodon, Twitter And Facebook or call him at 303-750-7555 or [email protected]

Related