Leaders in Aurora, Colorado, are looking to boost funding of its police force by roughly $10 million as reports of local Tren de Aragua activity continue to make national headlines.
The City of Aurora’s proposed 2025 budget includes a $125 million increase in funding, with an emphasis on law enforcement as international gang activity and retail crime has increasingly become an issue for the local community. The proposed plan would boost the police budget from $155.7 million in 2024 to nearly $165 million in 2025.
“Right now, we are not at our full complement of officers,” Aurora Police Department Chief Todd Chamberlain said to CBS News Colorado. “Our patrol is impacted by understaffing issues, and so that’s what I’m looking at right now.”
“I want to be able to have our officers have a clear understanding of what they are responding to before they even get there,” Chamberlain continued. “I want to see where our crimes are occurring, when they’re occurring and who they are occurring to.”
Aurora has been subject to massive media attention after footage of armed men inside an apartment complex went viral in August. Federal immigration authorities later confirmed the men in the video footage are members of Tren de Aragua and Aurora city officials have since sought a court order to clear the apartment building, according to Fox 31.
Colorado Democratic Gov. Jared Polis initially pushed back on allegations that gang members had taken over apartment buildings in Aurora, with a spokesperson for his office telling the New York Post last month that “this purported invasion is largely a feature of [Aurora City Councilwoman Danielle Jurinsky’s] imagination.” Jurinsky has consistently spoken out about Tren de Aragua’s presence in Aurora.
Jurinsky was not entirely optimistic when asked how the extra funding could help Aurora combat crime.
“We have increased funding multiple times,” the council member told the Daily Caller News Foundation on Thursday. “One of the biggest problems in this state, and other like minded states like Colorado is that people just don’t want to be police officers here like they used to.”
“We’ve thrown a lot of money at the problem, and I’m not sure it’s being solved,” Jurinsky continued.
The Aurora Police Department earlier this month confirmed that two brothers arrested for a July shooting that left others hospitalized are members of Tren de Aragua. Both men were taken into custody after the shooting, and police say another two men involved in the incident are also suspected of having ties to the international gang.
Tren de Aragua, an international criminal organization that originated in Venezuela, has increasingly gained a foothold in the United States. Immigration experts who spoke to the DCNF said identifying members of the gang can be incredibly difficult, given poor diplomatic cooperation with the Venezuelan government.
“We have next to no vetting for the Venezuelans who are entering the country, because we have no relationship with the government of Venezuela and that’s true of other migrant nationalities,” Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, told the DCNF. “We have no way of knowing whether they were in prison in Venezuela.”
“We have no idea if they’ve been living in a third-world country for years before they tried to come to the United States,” Vaughan continued. “We’re essentially letting them in on their word.”
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