AURORA | Elected officials and community members are defending assailed Aurora Police Chief Vanessa Wilson in the days after her attorney said she’s being pressured by a top city official to step down.
Wilson’s attorney Paula Greisen said the chief as well as Darin Parker are being targeted by a group of City Council members who want to oust them, alluding to denigrating comments made by Councilmember Danielle Jurinsky in particular.
Other council members said over the following days that they supported the chief.
“This is about politics and not about public safety,” said Councilman Juan Marcano.
He said Wilson has shown a great deal of courage in pushing back against those officers in the department who were caught abusing their power or abusing citizens.
“She is actually holding people accountable,” Marcano said. “She’s earned the respect and admiration of constituents across the city.”
Because of that, she’s become a target of part of the police department irked by demands for accountability among the ranks, he said.
The councilman said that some Republicans on the city council, and especially those elected in November, pandered to a contingent of police determined to oust Wilson and install a chief who would once again look the other way.
“No one police chief is perfect,” Marcano said. “But Wilson has been able to begin rebuilding the public trust in the city’s police. She stands up for her officers.”
Last Monday, Greisen said Wilson was invited onto a Zoom call with Twombly in which the city manager said they needed to discuss an “exit strategy” for Wilson.
“Chief Wilson’s response was that she was not resigning and had no plans to resign,” Greisen said, “and that if the City of Aurora wanted to talk about that, they could contact me.”
Conservative Councilmember Steve Sundberg, who serves on the council’s policy committee for public safety, said he was “out of the loop” regarding any discussions between Wilson and senior city management about Wilson’s resignation.
“All I can really say is I think she’s done a great job building trust with the community at a time when the police department needed it,” he said.
Alison Coombs said during the council’s Monday night meeting that the council should “give some respect to our chief, who has stepped into mess, after mess, after mess that this department already had in place.” She complimented Wilson’s leadership and engagement with the community.
Coombs’ remarks came after Councilmember Dustin Zvonek alleged the police department’s records division was “mismanaged” — citing problems outlined in a recent Colorado Criminal Justice Records Act — and said the council needed “to ensure that we have the leadership capable of leading that department.”
“I hope that our city management will continue to look further into this,” Zvonek said.
Aurora NAACP Chapter President Omar Montgomery said he had “strong concerns” about Wilson being asked to leave while the city is under a consent decree.
He compared the alleged scenario of council members conspiring against Wilson to the controversy that erupted earlier this year when some members of the Douglas County Board of Education reportedly colluded in private to fire superintendent Corey Wise.
“If there’s real issues with Chief Wilson’s performance, let’s talk about it as a community,” Montgomery said. “I have concerns that the community is not involved in these discussions.”
He said the departure of Wilson would result in the department “starting from scratch” as it tries to rebuild trust within the community.
“I think Chief Wilson is doing the best she can to mend these fences,” he said. “If anything, I’ve heard people say they like the direction she’s going with accountability. … We’re definitely in a very important time when it comes to what Aurora’s Police Department is going to look like.”
State Sen. Rhonda Fields, D-Aurora, who was a co-sponsor of Colorado’s 2020 police reform bill, said she found Twombly’s actions baffling, and that Wilson needs more time to try and rebuild the community’s trust in the beleaguered department.
“Chief Wilson deserves a chance, not a resignation letter,” she said. “You don’t change culture on a dime, it’s like turning around a ship. I think it’s premature, and I’m very disappointed.”
She wanted to know if city leadership has spoken to Wilson directly about whatever concerns they have with her performance.
“They want to ask her to resign because she’s holding people accountable for their poor performance?” she asked. “What are we supposed to do, have blinders on, and let (police) continue to do what they’re doing without oversight and leadership?”
Some were unsurprised to hear Wilson was being pressured to step down, arguing that she was “set up to fail” given the conflicting demands of officers, city leaders and community members seeking reform.
“I haven’t always supported all of the decisions she’s made, but I’ve seen her make changes in the police department in ways that no one else has been able to,” said Lindsay Minter, one of the members of a community task force on police reform that was established in the wake of McClain’s death and other police scandals.
“I feel like the amount of change she’s made in such a short time is scary for people, because people hate change,” Minter said. “She’s definitely done a good job of making everyone mad.”
Candice Bailey, a former Aurora City Council candidate and another member of the task force, said she thought Wilson had not met the community’s expectations for reform in the wake of the McClain case. But she also said she thought it was “virtually impossible” to do so given the influence of the two police unions.
Bailey was critical of Twombly’s leadership as well as the role Jurinsky may have played in pressuring the police chief.
“It is not something the community has asked for,” Bailey said. “I have heard the community say to remove the brutality and the culture of violence inside the police department.”
“What kind of pressure is Mr. Twombly under in order to make a decision that he has the sole right to make? … He just overrode the need for the community’s voice. He has slighted our community,” she said.
Greisen told The Sentinel that the chief had no plans of leaving the department. Greisen said she reached out to the city attorney’s office about two weeks ago on Wilson’s behalf to ask whether rumors of a conspiracy to oust the chief were true.
“There has been a campaign against Chief Wilson and the deputy chief orchestrated by certain members of city council,” Greisen said. “They have made it clear their priority is to push her out. They have called her ‘trash’ and said her termination is in the works, and there’s been an ongoing effort to demoralize and demean her.”
Greisen said City Attorney Dan Brotzman told her at the time that he knew of no plans to ask the chief to step down.
When asked by a Sentinel reporter Wednesday to confirm whether he had requested that Wilson submit her resignation, Twombly said he was “surprised” by the inquiry.
“This is kind of a volatile situation, and I don’t really have anything to say about it,” the city manager said before the call abruptly ended.
City spokesman Ryan Luby sent a statement shortly after in which he wrote that it would be “wholly improper for us to engage in speculative conversations on any personnel matter.”
“We remain focused on comprehensive public safety changes that are in the best interests of our community and employees. There have been and continue to be frequent discussions between city leadership and public safety leadership about progress on those changes,” Luby said.
“This is part of a campaign to force her out for her efforts to reform the police department and implement a court-ordered consent decree,” Greisen said. “She has had a laser focus on doing that since she took the position of chief of police.”
Wilson was appointed by Twombly in August 2020 after serving seven months as the interim chief following former Deputy Aurora Police Chief Paul O’Keefe’s withdrawal to lead the department through to its next leader. Aurora City Council members endorsed Twombly’s decision with a 10-1 vote, with Councilmember Angela Lawson casting the lone “no” vote.
Wilson is the first woman and first openly gay person to lead the nearly 750 sworn employees of the department. She started with APD in 1996 as a patrol officer, moving through the ranks and serving various roles with the investigations, intelligence and internal affairs units.
Upon being selected as chief in 2020, amid various police department controversies including the aftermath of the death of Elijah McClain, Wilson told the Sentinel she believed police brutality against non-white people was a “systemic problem” and that changing the department would take time.
“I can’t snap my fingers and have that happen,” she said.
While Wilson, a longtime member of the Aurora Police Association, originally had the endorsement of the department’s chief bargaining union, the Fraternal Order of Police, the two organizations said in October that she’d received a “vote of no confidence” by a majority of the department’s sworn officers.
“She should be removed immediately,” former officer and APA head Doug Wilkinson wrote in an email to tThe Sentinel following the vote. He said he was irked by a then-recent call from Wilson to investigate an incident of officers that had been previously cleared of wrong-doing and called for the vote.
Wilkinson was later fired by Wilson for an email he wrote to fellow officers decrying the department’s diversity policies.
Following the vote of no confidence, Aurora city management staff said the chief had their full support.
“…She was selected because we believed, and still believe, that she is the right person. She accepted and embraced her role knowing significant challenges were ahead,” Deputy City Manager Jason Batchelor said in a statement. “She is responsible for making difficult and, at times, unpopular decisions to meet the needs of both employees and our community. Over the last 21 months, she has been a vocal champion for Aurora police officers while also making it clear that she supports implementing best practices…”
— Sentinel staff writers Kara Mason and Carina Julig contributed to this report.
