GOP mayor tries to reassure citizens after Trump comments

AP Photo/Alex Brando

The Republican mayor of Aurora, Colorado, issued a statement Wednesday addressing what he called “exaggerated claims” about a member of a Venezuelan gang that has taken over part of his city — claims that the former president Donald Trump during his debate on Tuesday evening with Kamala Harris.

“You see what’s happening to cities in the United States,” Trump said during the first question of the debate, adding:

Look at Springfield, Ohio. Look at Aurora, Colorado. They’re taking over the cities. They’re taking over the buildings. They’re going in violently. These are the people that they and Biden let into our country. They’re dangerous. They’re at the highest level of criminality and we’ve got to get them out.

The claims coming out of Aurora were initially brought forward by the mayor, Mike Coffmanduring an interview with Fox News in late August, in which he claimed that several apartment buildings had fallen “into the hands” of the Tren de Aragua gang and that gang members were now collecting rent from residents.

A week later, Aurora’s interim police chief Heather Morris publicly refuted those claims, and Coffman, a former GOP congressman, eventually admitted he was “not sure where the truth was in all of this.” The claim was widely circulated on social media and fueled by videos of criminal activity captured on doorbell cameras that appeared to show armed men attempting to break into an apartment.

NBC News investigated how the now-debunked claims spread through the community, on social media and ultimately to the Republican Party’s presidential candidate.

“The viral rumors used tactics from ‘the most common forms of disinformation,’ such as reposting old videos without context, misrepresenting existing data and ‘Frankensteining’ misleading evidence to fabricate a false narrative, according to the News Literacy Project, a nonprofit fact-checking organization that debunked the rumor,” the NBC report said.

The debunked claims that the migrant gang took over apartment buildings in Colorado are similar to claims Trump made during the debate about Haitian migrants in Ohio eating pets. Those claims have also been denied as baseless by community leaders.

Coffman, who is now trying to convince his citizens they are safe after raising the specter of fear, wrote in his statement:

We would like to clarify the facts regarding the widespread presence of Tren de Aragua (TdA) in Aurora and throughout the metro area. We want to provide an update on the facts of the situation and the concerted, ongoing efforts of the Aurora Police Department to investigate and aggressively prosecute criminal activity associated with TdA members and associations. The City’s job is to ensure that factual, accurate, and comprehensive information is collected and presented regarding any issue affecting the community.

We reiterate that the safety, security and well-being of community members and visitors are of the utmost importance to us and the City. As for the perception and reality of public safety in Aurora, please understand that the issues that are occurring at a select few properties do not apply to the City as a whole or large portions of it. TdA has not “taken over” the City. The exaggerated claims that are being fueled by social media and via select news organizations are simply not true.

Again, TdA’s presence in Aurora is limited to specific properties, which the city has been targeting in various ways for months. For some time, long before concerns about TdA in Colorado gained national attention, APD has been arresting people for various criminal activities with suspected, but not necessarily confirmed, TdA connections. To date, APD has now linked 10 people to TdA and arrested eight of those people.

Coffman concluded his statement by also urging unity: “We will continue to embrace our identity as the most diverse city in Colorado and remain steadfast in our commitment to arresting bad actors.”

The statement was co-signed by Aurora City Council member Danielle Jurinsky, who had also made the allegations in several media interviews. Local Colorado news anchor Kyle Clark noted: “Jurinsky was the primary promoter of claims that were uncritically repeated by some local news outlets and heavily promoted by Fox News, InfoWars and other conservative media. Coffman had pushed back on her claims, but he made contradictory statements in interviews, sometimes within hours.” Jurinsky, a Republican, also denied that the statement was a direct response to Trump promoting the claims on the national stage.

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