Aurora criminall police department finally hitting bottom

Article Published: Wednesday, March 09, 2005 editorial

Update Aurora police oversight

The Aurora Police Department's excellent law-enforcement reputation makes its recent problems all the more startling.

To be sure, new procedures were promulgated in the wake of the Brent J. Brents debacle. Now Aurora should re-examine how city officials will oversee the police.

The cops from Colorado's third-largest city are well-trained and have embraced new concepts like community policing. It seems hardly the type of organization to hide behind the lame excuse that officers were "going by the book."

Yet that's what Police Chief Ricky Bennett did in the case of Brents, the suspected serial rapist allowed to go free after admitting he'd molested an 8-year-old boy. Poor follow-up delayed getting an arrest warrant for two months. Brent used his freedom to go on a violent crime spree.

Other troubling issues:

Twenty-one other investigations that languished without follow-up.

A police spokesman defending the Feb. 27 tasing of Danon Gale, suspected of not paying for his salad in a pizzeria jammed with kids and families.

Perceived foot-dragging in the shooting rest of Aaron Prentice Davis, a black man, and the wounding of his wife in a dispute with a white man outside a Blockbuster store last year.

Bennett resigned as chief last week and took a demotion.

"We need to look at the idea that when we do have a problem, to simply say 'we followed our procedures' is not where we need to go as a community," Mayor Ed Tauer said.

Also, the City Council suspended City Manager Ron Miller and Deputy City Manager Frank Ragan for two weeks without pay. Ragan oversees community services, including the city's 583 police officers, 283 firefighters, and library, recreation and cultural services departments.

Police chiefs report directly to city managers in many other cities with a council-manager form of government, including Colorado Springs, Grand Junction, Lakewood and Pueblo.

Denver puts public safety under a manager who is appointed by the mayor. Several years ago, the Aurora council informally discussed the safety manager concept but felt its system was adequate.

Aurora can restore the reputation of its police department with prompt, well-considered actions. The city may not need a full-time safety manager, but the council should require expert oversight of police by the manager's office.

And the city needs to find a top-flight successor to Bennett.

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Article Published: Friday, March 04, 2005 editorial

Aurora in a defensive crouch

A Chuck E. Cheese pizzeria jammed with families and kids is the last place Aurora police should be firing a Taser stun gun, but it happened last weekend after a diner was suspected of not paying for his meal.

The tasing isn't the only problem currently plaguing the Aurora department, already under fire for allowing suspected serial rapist Brent J. Brents to slip through the cracks after he admitted molesting an 8-year-old boy in November.

On Tuesday, civil rights groups, citing a disparity in the treatment of Brents, who is white, and diner Danon Gale, who is black, called for a federal investigation of the Aurora Police Department.

The Taser episode could have been a garden-variety mistake by officers in the heat of the moment, but the department's continuing defense of its actions raises troubling questions.

Tasers are less lethal than firearms yet have been linked to several rests nationwide and in Colorado.

According to the police, Gale couldn't produce a receipt showing he'd paid for his meal after being seen at the salad bar.

Police spokesman Larry Martinez said Gale, whose two young children were with him, began cursing and claimed he'd lost the receipt. Restaurant employees called police, and two officers arrived to investigate. They asked Gale to step outside to talk, but he refused, and a scuffle broke out.

Police "had to gain control of him because of the manner he was conducting himself - there were children there," Martinez said. But who really put the children at risk? An officer fired a Taser from 2 to 3 feet. Gale and an officer fell into a nearby booth where a woman was holding a 10- month-old infant. That's no place to be firing a Taser, yet it was fired again.

Officers should have waited to collar Gale when he left the restaurant or found another way to subdue him without putting patrons at risk. We're troubled by the officers' apparent disregard for the safety of innocent bystanders but moreso because police representatives continue to defend the use of the Tasers.

Department rules require that a use-of- force report be filed when a Taser is fired. The officer's superiors determine whether misuse occurred. "In this case, that is not so," Martinez said.

We beg to differ. Aurora needs to reconsider its enforcement procedures. A crowded restaurant is the wrong place to fire a weapon at a man who is suspected of not paying his salad bar tab.

We await Aurora's change of heart on use of Tasers. After an initial defense of its effort on the Brents episode, the city has taken dramatic steps to put police procedures on the right course. Police chief Ricky Bennett stepped aside yesterday, moving back into the lineup as a captain.

On Wednesday, veteran city manager Ron Miller was hit with a two-week suspension, as was his deputy, Frank Ragan. City council members said they were acting because of managerial and operational problems revealed by the Brents episode.

Miller said, "We recognize the police department could have and should have handled key aspects of the Brents case better. We're aggressively working to remedy any problem areas within the police department." ----