/AURORA | For more than a week, the story from Fox News and conservative social media influencers is that Aurora has been overrun by Venezuelan gangsters wielding long guns, extorting rent payments from tenants in low-rent apartment complexes and terrorizing the city.
The narrative has gone so viral that a call went out this weekend for Hells Angels vigilantes to converge on Aurora and protect residents. Even Republican presidential contender Donald Trump has started citing the city in anti-immigrant campaign speeches.
Meanwhile, the mostly Venezuelan migrants who live in the apartments — targeted by what local police and Colorado’s governor have said are exaggerations and outright falsehoods — say the real danger is not from gangs, but rather a property owner they describe as a “slumlord” who has let the complex fall into disrepair. Residents say they also see danger in the city of Aurora’s seeming disinterest in holding that landlord and his management company accountable, and city politicians spreading misinformation and threatening their home.
“We’re afraid of your mayor and of the cockroaches and rats in our apartments, not of gangs,” Gladis Tovav, a resident of the six-building The Edge at Lowry complex, said through a translator.
About 50 tenants of the apartments at East 12th Avenue and Dallas Street in Northwest Aurora held a news conference Tuesday in response to Mayor Mike Coffman’s assertion on Facebook Friday that the city was seeking an “emergency” court order to shut down and clear out the complex and an undisclosed number of other properties. Coffman posted that the Aurora City Attorney’s office was preparing documents to request an emergency order from municipal court declaring the properties a “criminal nuisance.”
City staff on Tuesday said the city government has not in fact sought such a court order. Councilmember Alison Coombs went further, saying “that kind of emergency order doesn’t even exist,” and noting it takes months or even years for a city to shut down an apartment complex.
That was the case with a 98-unit complex at 1568 Nome St., which the city evacuated and shuttered Aug. 13 after two years of complaints by residents, many of them also Venezuelans, about building violations including leaks, mold, and bug and rodent infestations long-unaddressed by the landlord. That complex, called Aspen Grove, is owned and managed by the same interests that own and manage The Edge at Lowry. The landlord has claimed some of his buildings in Aurora have been overrun by members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang otherwise known as TdA.
A few hundred families have been displaced since the city shut Aspen Grove down.
Coffman and, to a greater extent, Councilmember Danielle Jurinsky have parroted the landlord — falsely, according to Aurora police and city staff — that the complex was shuttered because of TdA gang activity when in fact the reason was repeated building violations residents had long complained about.
On Tuesday, one tenant of The Edge in Lowry showed news reporters traps with mice, both dead and alive, stuck to them as proof of the problems. He and other residents said there has been no Venezuelan gang activity they know of in the complex, and that a much-publicized video from Aug. 18 showing of men with long guns and handguns surrounding a door of an apartment there involved outsiders not from the Venezuelan community.
They said that, contrary to Jurinsky’s claims, none of them had been extorted by gang members. Several showed receipts of their rental payments to the landlord, responding to the allegations.
Aurora police are investigating that Aug. 18 incident and said in an email to the Sentinel on Friday that, despite Jurinsky’s and Coffman’s assertions that it involved TdA members, the department has no information to suggest that is true. Police declined to give further details, saying the incident is under investigation.
City staffers have urged the public and the news media — but not the politicians they work for accused of spreading misinformation in the first place — not to conflate serious building code violations at a few apartment complexes with TdA activity that may or may not be taking place in the city.
Tenants said Coffman showed up for a sweep at The Edge at Lowry on Monday with city police officers, but wouldn’t agree to sit down and speak with residents worried about getting booted out and displaced. On Facebook, the mayor posted his disappointment that “unfortunately, no one with an outstanding warrant was identified…” in the complex.
Spooked by his claims that the city is trying to shut down their buildings, the residents say it’s unfair the city would effectively punish them rather than their unresponsive landlord.
Gov. Jared Polis last week cast doubt on the extent of Venezuelan gang violence alleged in Aurora, slamming Coffman and Jurinsky for spreading false news and urging them to refrain from stoking public fears.
“He really hopes that the city council members in charge stop trashing their own city when they are supposed to keep it safe,” Polis’ spokesperson Shelby Wieman said in a statement to the Sentinel.
In the meantime, two fellow Aurora City Council members on Tuesday criticized Coffman and Jurinsky — both Republicans who’ve taken outspoken stances against immigrants — for scaring the tenants and for triggering a flood of social media racism against Venezuelans.
“We’re dealing with irresponsible folks who for political reasons want to make a frenzy about immigration in a city that has historically been welcoming of our immigrant population,” said Coombs, a progressive Democrat and longtime advocate for Aurora’s immigrant population. The supermajority Republican to Democrat partisan split on the non-partisan, 11 member city council is a regular occurrence. “Unfortunately we have parties who are unwilling to engage in good faith and in rational discourse.”
Councilmember Crystal Murillo also expressed concerns about her colleagues seemingly willfully spreading untruths.
“We’re getting distracted by unconfirmed false narratives that play on people’s fears,” she said. “If people are spreading false information, there should be consequences. There are real impacts in the community when we use people’s identities as political pawns.”
Jurinsky did not return requests seeking her response.
Coffman, for this part, wrote, “I’m trying to do my best to place this in the context that it is isolated to three apartment complexes and that it does not, in any way, reflect on our entire city. I want to be honest in accurately describing the situation at hand, and not exaggerate it, because I fully understand the potential economic harm to our city.”
He did not address the misinformation he posted — and has not removed — about imminent court action to shut down apartments and confusion he caused by conflicting comments on Fox News and local TV news about the level of gang activity in the region.
Coombs, in the meantime, also blasted Coffman and Jurinsky for unfairly casting doubt on city staff and police in their handling of blighted apartment complexes and alleged organized crime. Given that city employees aren’t directly calling out the misinformation spread by the politicians they report to, she said she would.
“There’s one way Councilwoman Jurinsky tends to operate, and that’s hardcore grandstanding, where facts don’t matter,” she said.
As for Coffman, Coombs said, “Has a history of saying that certain actions are taking place or underway before vetting that those actions are really possible. I don’t know why he does that, but it’s not the first time.
“The mayor has definitely shown a lack of leadership,” she added. “I think he cracked under pressure in terms of promoting the narrative of his party.”
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