Aurora City Manager Jim Twombly must go

All you need to know about the City of Aurora under City Manager Jim Twombly is that the chief of police presiding when police officers heartlessly contributed to the death of Elijah Mcclain got to keep his job, and that the chief of police who fired officers mocking McClain’s death was fired without cause.

Twombly’s loyalties clearly lie with the officers in the Aurora department who are resisting needed reforms. These officers have made it clear through their actions, emails and tweets that they would prefer the department go back to the good old days under Chief of Police Nick Metz when officers were not disciplined for major infractions like driving drunk and shooting a suspect through the window of his house without warning.

Metz retired “on his own terms” in 2019. He left a mess for interim Chief Vanessa Wilson to clean up. She was well on her way to cleaning the house when Twombly called to discuss her “exit plan” this month and then fired her a few days later.

In a letter to Wilson obtained by The Denver Post, Twombly said that Wilson was being fired because she failed to create “a positive culture of stability, employee satisfaction and engagement” and failed to oversee police operations effectively.

We are not surprised to learn that morale is low in the Aurora Police Department. Any change of culture in an institution is bound to bring opposition from the old guard. If Twombly didn’t expect bumps in the road, he is too naïve to lead a major city.

Elijah Mcclain’s mother, Sheneen McClain, put it better than we could during her interview with The Denver Post: “She was hired to be chief of police, not the cheerleader of a football team. It’s not her fault that the police are uncomfortable with all the eyes on them right now. Whoever they put up there next is probably going to be one of the good ol’ boys, who’s gonna be business as usual.”

We certainly hope not.

In a press conference about his decision, Twombly did not give specific examples to support firing Wilson, but he did say her termination was not due to a new report detailing a backlog of police reports that had not been entered into the department’s records management system. Twombly chose wisely not to cite that report as his reason for firing Wilson. It would have been a shocking revelation that the city of Aurora — notorious among reporters for a tendency to wrongly reject public records requests or delay document releases and overcharge for them — suddenly cared about records.

Twombly is presumably taking his marching orders from the new conservative majority on the City Council.

Councilmember Dustin Zvonek tweeted out a link to The Denver Post story on Wilson’s firing, writing: “This ‘ … and we’re going into an era of tough- on- crime leadership.’ Correct.” If Zvonek has evidence to suggest that Wilson, who served for nearly 25 years with the Aurora Police Department, is soft on crime, he should be specific. We also invite him to explain what “tough- on- crime” will look like.

We fear it’s going to look like four Black girls between the ages of 6 and 17 being forced to lay on hot asphalt at gunpoint because incompetent police officers mistook their mother’s car for a stolen motorcycle. We fear it’s going to look like another innocent teenager choked into respiratory distress dying days later at the hospital. We fear it’s going to look like an officer pistolwhipping a suspect repeatedly.

Twombly should be fired, but he won’t be until Aurora residents elect representatives who aren’t clinging to the glory days of the good ol’ boys club.