The city government of Aurora, Colorado, is blaming the media for exaggerating its coverage of a Venezuelan crime gang’s takeover of local apartment buildings while also blaming the property owners for enabling the gang’s actions.
In an unattributed message on X (formerly Twitter), the city admitted there was a “small Tren de Aragua (TdA) presence in Aurora and we have been taking it seriously. We have responded. We have made arrests. We will continue to make arrests.”
The city government’s X account also added, “We will continue to address the problems that the absentee, out-of-state owners of these properties have allowed to fester unchecked. Aurora will aggressively pursue all actions available under city code and criminal statute.”
The city acknowledged it was part of a state and federal task force designed to “specifically address concerns about TdA and other criminal activity affecting the metro community.” At the same time, the city was angry over how the story was being framed.
“There has been a lot of misleading information shared about what is happening in our city,” the posting said. “Aurora is a safe community. Media have conflated and considerably exaggerated incidents that are isolated to a handful of problem properties alone … Local, regional and national media are leading the nation to believe that Aurora is wholly unsafe. That is simply not true. While these isolated situations are rightfully of great concern and warrant increased action and scrutiny, violent crime in the city is down in nearly all crime categories.”
“It is tragic that select individuals and entities have mischaracterized our city based on isolated incidents,” the posting concluded. “We encourage you to build up our community and not allow the hysteria of others to tear it down.”
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Oh now the media lies. This is political pressure. I have clients that live in Denver and constantly talk about how bad it is. What do they expect when you make the area a dumping ground.
The governor signs bills that require property owners to rent to people they don’t want to, restrict back ground checks and fees to collect these check, extend time frames to evict people violating contractual covenants to 60 to 90 days depending on the financing of the property, force us to physically present legal demands to criminals (placing our lives in danger) and then tell us that we can’t non renew leases but it is the property owner’s fault that the buildings are getting out of control? Does anyone else see the problem here?
According to X there was a shelter in place order for Aurora, CO for the overnight hours into Thursday Morning.
Weird.
Sure, blame the property owners and not the liberal policies. What a joke.
This is what happens when you have certain influencers running unchecked with sensationalized news and outright lies pandering to an audience that believes everything they say no matter how crazy it sounds. I still laugh at people who believe that space lasers changed ballot marks in the 2020 election. If people just take the time to verify and double check reported info, this problem wouldn’t be so bad.