Mayor, Council Member Address Gang Concerns

The following statement from Mayor Mike Coffman and Council Member Danielle Jurinsky, chair of the council's Public Safety, Courts and Civil Service Policy Committee - with the full endorsement of City Manager Jason Batchelor and the Aurora Police Department - addresses new information related to the ongoing discussion of the presence of Tren de Aragua (TdA) in the region:

We would like to clear the record about the widely reported presence of Tren de Aragua (TdA) in Aurora and across the metro area. We want to provide an update about the facts of the situation and the Aurora Police Department's collaborative, ongoing efforts to investigate and aggressively pursue criminal activity linked to TdA members and associates.

The city's duty is to make sure it gathers and presents factual, accurate, and comprehensive information about any issue affecting the community. We reiterate that the safety, security, and well-being of community members and visitors is of paramount concern to us and the city.

As for the perception and reality of public safety in Aurora, please understand that issues experienced at a select few properties do not apply to the city as a whole or large portions of it. TdA has not "taken over" the city. The overstated claims fueled by social media and through select news organizations are simply not true. Again, TdA's presence in Aurora is limited to specific properties, all of which the city has been addressing in various ways for months.

For some time, well before concerns about TdA in Colorado generated national attention, APD had been arresting people for various criminal activities who had suspected, but not necessarily confirmed, TdA connections. To date, APD has now linked 10 people to TdA and has arrested eight of those people. Two of the eight individuals who were taken into custody were involved in a July shooting at one of the specific properties in the city that have experienced issues with TdA activity. In line with these arrests, we can also now confirm that criminal activity, including TdA issues, had significantly affected those properties.

New and more comprehensive information is linked here in a summary of documented members of TdA known to Aurora police to date that we encourage everyone to thoroughly review. APD and its partners will continue to make arrests, seize weapons, and collect evidence. They will keep working to put criminals in jail.

The existence of this criminal element is a regional issue. Just recently arrests have also been made in Denver and Arapahoe County. For this reason, a special task force was established in collaboration with Aurora and other local, state, and federal partners. The focus of the task force is to address concerns about TdA and other criminal activity affecting our communities.

We are optimistic about public safety in our city especially as Chief Todd Chamberlain brings fresh perspective and decades of experience to APD. We will continue to embrace our identity as the most diverse city in Colorado and remain steadfast in our commitment to arrest bad actors.