‘Time’s up, Todd!’ Community activists mobilize to oust racist police chief

Aurora, CO – Aurora, Colorado, a large and multinational suburb of Denver, has a well-documented problem with racist policing. From the murders of Kory Dillard and Kilyn Lewis to the torture and murder of Elijah McClain, Aurora Police seem to always be in the news for racism, violence and corruption.

After McClain’s killing in 2019, the Colorado attorney general investigated the Aurora Police Department. He found that they were guilty of “patterns and practices” of racist policing and excessive force going back decades. Despite this investigation and the resulting consent decree, APD’s racist terror has continued.

APD has gone through many police chiefs through the years. Many resigned or were fired in disgrace. The current police chief, Todd Chamberlain, is the seventh since 2019. Instead of addressing the issues that create APD’s culture of racist violence, he’s doubled down on them.

“This corrupt, racist police chief, Todd Chamberlain, covers for horrible cops,” said Cassandra Heil, a member of the Denver-Aurora Community Action Committee (DACAC) at a June 8 meeting of city council. “He needs to be fired!”

At the beginning of the year, a new, supposedly more progressive, city council took office. Since then, DACAC and others in the community have campaigned for Todd Chamberlain’s firing, along with democratic oversight of APD.

Chamberlain began his policing career in 1984 in Los Angeles. His time as an officer included years when the LAPD was regularly making national news for violence against Black and Chicano residents. As a captain, racial harassment and sexual abuse among officers in Chamberlain’s charge became so widespread that he was forced to transfer to an entirely different precinct. He was even specifically named as someone who deliberately ignored the racist harassment of an officer under his command in a 2013 lawsuit that paid out $1.2 million dollars.

Had Chamberlain’s appointment been subject to public scrutiny, these stains on his record would have come to light long before he became Aurora’s police chief. Unfortunately, Chamberlain was appointed through a completely undemocratic process under the direction of a far-right city council without any community input whatsoever. These MAGA city council members purposely appointed a chief that shared their far-right, racist agenda.

One of Chamberlain’s first acts as chief – setting up an APD recruitment table at a Trump rally – clearly shows this. It’s further evidenced by Chamberlain’s repeated cover-ups of racist police murders, including the killings of Kory Dillard, Rajon Belt-Stubblefield and Rashaud Johnson. He’s even gone on record excusing the APD murder of a child because the child was undergoing a gender transition.

LaRonda Jones, mother of Kilyn Lewis, stated, “We are tired of systems that ask us to trust them while they repeatedly fail us. We are tired of hearing that ‘justice takes time,’ when injustice happens overnight.” Jones has been attending city council meetings since her son was murdered by Aurora SWAT in May of 2024. “We are demanding that the value of a Black life be recognized not only in words, but in action.”

Small concessions from city council, like the new, unfortunately toothless, police accountability office, have been won by Ms. Jones and the community activists that fight alongside her. Community consensus, however, seems to be that more needs to be done. “Why isn’t it a crime for police to shoot an Aurora resident?” asked activist Alejandra Marinela. “People are dead, mothers and children are grieving while the Aurora city government actively ignores them.”

You can learn more about DACAC, the “Time’s up Todd!” campaign, and how you can get involved at dacac.net/times-up-todd

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