October 15, 2024 11:11 AM UTC

So Many Reasons Why Recruiting Aurora Cops At Trump's Rally Was A Terrible Idea

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• by: Colorado Pols

As veteran reporter Susan Greene reports for the Aurora Sentinel, there’s fresh controversy brewing in the wake of last Friday’s visit by Donald Trump to the northernmost reaches of the city of Aurora to promulgate his fictional portrayal of the city and the whole state of Colorado as a war zone overrun by “army of illegal alien gang members and migrant criminals from the dungeons of the third world,” promising to launch what Trump calls “Operation Aurora” in the city’s supposed honor to retaliate with the largest deportations in American history.

Apparently, somebody at the Aurora Police Department thought this congregation of thousands of similarly disinformed Trump supporters would be a great place to recruit new Aurora Police officers:

“It is disconcerting that APD would try to recruit at a political event of any kind, but especially at a rally for a candidate that has attacked our city and harmed our community members,” Councilmember Alison Coombs said Monday.

Coombs wasn’t alone in her criticism.

“That shouldn’t have happened,” said Councilmember Crystal Murillo. “One in five people in Aurora are foreign-born, and police are supposed to be working to rebuild trust in our community. Trying to recruit officers at a rally built on fear mongering, xenophobia, and all the phobias just feels like a really irresponsible thing to do.”

The reproval by both council members and civil rights activists came after the Sentinel spotted two uniformed, on-duty Aurora Police officers standing in the crowd of more than 10,000 people at Trump’s rally Friday exhibiting materials reading, “Join our team, Aurora PD is hiring.”

The Aurora Police Department responds that they conduct recruitment activities at all kinds of events, from Denver’s Dragon Boat Festival to a recent appearance with the city’s Democratic congressional Rep. Jason Crow. But the problem is not appearing at large events to recruit cops, or even partisan political events.

The problem is recruiting new cops at a rally where they are being notified by their candidate for President, despite all of the facts otherwise, that Aurora has been overrun by “the most violent people on Earth,” who just happen to be of a certain ethnicity…well, if you can’t see the incredibly obvious problem with recruiting police officers from a pool of people thusly indoctrinated, it can only be because you too believe the overtly racist and totally unsubstantiated lies that Trump fired off for almost an hour and a half on Friday. The city’s Republican Mayor Mike Coffman, who claims to have learned from his early mistake of subsidizing the lies about his city that spread out of control after Trump canonized them, cannot possibly want police recruits who believe what Trump says about Aurora. If he does, it undermines everything he’s done to belatedly correct the record.

It’s worth remembering that the APD has a longstanding history of monumental problems with brutality and distrust by the community they are sworn to serve. The Aurora PD is currently headed by the fifth police chief since 2022, selected as a controversial sole finalist after years of “interim” leadership while the department reeled from scandal and tight scrutiny under a consent decree to clean up their act. If the Aurora city government wasn’t dominated by partisan Republicans, they might today be looking for a sixth chief. Recruiting new police officers from the crowds who showed up at the farthest edges of town to hear a message of hate and revenge against an “enemy” that local residents and officials alike are clear does not exist, or at least not to the grossly exaggerated extent the situation is portrayed, runs directly counter to the department’s stated goal of regaining trust with the community.

Again, if this isn’t obvious, you’re blind–not just by partisan politics, but by deep denial of what Trump personally is saying in the desperate closing days of this campaign.