September 05, 2024 01:05 PM UTC

Mayor Mike No Help Stopping The Crazy Tren de Aragua

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• by: Colorado Pols

It started with a rally in late July by Venezuelan metro area residents protesting against the fraudulent re-election of that country’s Nicholas Maduro, an event that was impulsively and wrongly condemned by Republicans on the Aurora City Council who should have been on the same side of opposing a socialist dictator but instead gave in to the undifferentiated anti-immigrant animus of the MAGA era.

Throughout the month of August, controversy escalated over the alleged “takeover” of several apartment buildings in Aurora by a Venezuelan gang known as Tren de Aragua, an allegation initially made by far-right Aurora City Councilor Danielle Jurinsky and then picked up by the national conservative media–who proceeded to hype the story into the entire city of Aurora being effectively turned into a “no go zone.”

Last week, the mayors of Denver and Aurora, Democrat Mike Johnston and Republican Mike Coffman respectively, appeared on 9NEWS to denounce the “hysteria” (Coffman’s sexist term, not ours) spreading throughout conservative media, and assure the public that the city of Aurora is not under siege by a multinational “supergang.”

Denver and Aurora’s leaders have said for weeks that Tren de Aragua is in both cities and that police are working to determine the extent of their operations.

On Thursday, after 24 hours of intense national media coverage, Coffman and Johnston said the exaggerated and inaccurate news coverage is creating risks and problems as their cities try to deal with the gang.

“It’s overwhelming our 911 system, or our emergency call center, and so it’s actually hurting our ability to respond to crime,” Coffman said. “I would hope people would not do that. I think we’re in some sort of environment of hysteria right now over this. It’s a real issue. It’s being dealt with. It’s isolated.”

Unfortunately for those seeking to keep this discussion reality-based, Mayor Mike Coffman has proven very far from consistent in describing the situation depending on the media outlet he’s speaking to. Right after appearing on 9NEWS with Denver’s mayor to denounce the “hysteria,” Coffman was on Fox News with a markedly different spin:

Coffman confirmed that at least two apartment buildings within the city limits have been overtaken by Venezuelan gangs…

“So there are several buildings actually under the same ownership, out of state ownership, that have, fallen to, these Venezuelan gangs. [Pols emphasis] I’m trying to walk it back and do the, and do the investigation as to how there’s a concentration of Venezuelans, in these, these three buildings,” said Coffman.

“Somebody put them there and somebody funded it, whether it’s federal government or not, we’re trying to find out who, these gangs apparently, or attracted to where there’s a concentration of, of, Venezuelan migrants. And so, they’ve, in fact, have kind of pushed out the property management through intimidation and then, collected the rents,” he added.

Over Labor Day weekend, unfounded rumors spread that motorcycle gangs including the Hells Angels were traveling to Aurora to engage in some kind of violent confrontation with the Venezuelan gangs said to be in control of the city, which the local HAMC denounced as “absolutely ridiculous and false.” On Tuesday, residents of the apartment buildings in question held a demonstration of their own, as Susan Greene reported for the Aurora Sentinel:

“We’re afraid of your mayor and of the cockroaches and rats in our apartments, not of gangs,” [Pols emphasis] Gladis Tovav, a resident of the six-building The Edge at Lowry complex, said through a translator…

Coffman and, to a greater extent, Councilmember Danielle Jurinsky have parroted the landlord — falsely, according to Aurora police and city staff — that the complex was shuttered because of TdA gang activity when in fact the reason was repeated building violations residents had long complained about.

Mayor Coffman was initially helpful in pushing back on the falsehood that these apartment buildings were overrun by Venezuelan gangs. But under intense pressure from fellow Republicans, plenty of whom have Coffman’s number from his many years on the team, Coffman made the conscious decision to give Fox News the fearmongering they wanted. There’s no way to reconcile Coffman’s mixed messages, and his two-facedness was a key factor in allowing this false story to proliferate.

The truth of this situation, as far as we can ascertain it, is that this gang has a limited presence in the Denver area along with some other areas of the country, much smaller than organized crime both international and homegrown that has been on the ground in Colorado since forever–and like Coffman originally said, it’s “being dealt with.” Were it not for the partisan political need to make a mountain of every molehill this election year, we’d be having a much more levelheaded conversation.

But that’s not how these election-year panics work. As we all learned with previous panics from fentanyl to furries, fear spreading faster than the facts is the whole point.