August 09, 2024 10:59 AM UTC

Aurora Councilmember Doesn't Want To Hear Your Silly Facts

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• by: Colorado Pols

As 9NEWS’ Kyle Clark reports, another head-on collision between online conservative mythmaking and reality is playing out in Aurora, where the city’s nominally nonpartisan but de facto Republican-controlled city government under Mayor Mike Coffman is dealing with a run-down apartment building which has been hyped into some kind of international gangster “no-go zone” by conservative social media–most of whom have never set foot in the city:

The flashpoint of the conflict is the impending closure of an apartment building near Nome and Colfax. The city of Aurora and Mayor Mike Coffman said the unprecedented action by the city is the result of years of dangerous code violations.

An apartment building being shut down over code violations stretching back years normally wouldn’t attract much attention. But if you add an additional layer of fake international criminal intrigue, why, that’s social media gold!

Some of Coffman’s fellow conservatives on Aurora City Council, which is elected in nonpartisan municipal elections, said they don’t believe the city.

“We have a Venezuelan gang problem that has taken over a number of our apartment complexes,” Aurora City Councilman Steve Sundberg said at a Thursday meeting.

The claim has been widely promoted by anonymous, far-right social media accounts. The city of Aurora said the apartment building being closed is not under the control of a gang.

Ordinarily we’d say that when the city inspectors responsible for ordering the building to shut down and the city’s Republican mayor both agree this is not related to gang activity but instead code violations that have gone on for years, that’s probably accurate. But when confronted with the fact that not even the mayor agrees with the rumors she’s spreading, Aurora City Councilmember Danielle Jurinsky says her opinion matters more than the facts.

Which sounds insane, so don’t take our word for it:

“This is what we believe,” Jurinsky said. “Our opinions are not up for debate. [Pols emphasis] This is our belief. The three of us believe that there is a gang problem, a huge gang problem, that apartment complexes and areas of our city are being taken over.”

Except…they’re not.

The city of Aurora said the impending closure of the apartment building operated by CBZ Management near Colfax and Nome is due to years of neglect by the landlord, not gang activity.

“We’ve been working with this building and its owners for a very long time,” Coffman told Next. “They’re out-of-state slumlords, and they haven’t maintained the building.” [Pols emphasis]

This isn’t the first time that Danielle Jurinsky’s unfounded alarmism has gotten Mayor Mike in trouble. Two years ago, Jurinsky told a radio host flat-out that “you are not safe in Aurora,” forcing Coffman to do damage control on behalf of the city’s economy. In this case, Jurinsky has decided to trust anonymous social media sources over the word of nonpartisan city government employees and her fellow Republican mayor. And don’t let any facts get in the way of Jurinsky’s opinion!

It’s notable in part because everyone knows politicians who put their opinions first and the facts second. They just rarely just spell it out so plainly.