Kyla Pearce’s piece in The Denver Gazette reports that the Aurora City Council is set to discuss a resolution saying the council “stands in mourning” with people who have lost loved ones in officer-involved shootings. The article says the resolution was co-created by Councilmember Rob Andrews and the City Attorney’s Office, and that it comes to council after nearly two years of activists regularly showing up to criticize Aurora police over past shootings.
The timing is what makes this story so revealing. As Pearce notes, the resolution is being discussed just over a week after an Aurora officer shot and killed a man who, according to the article, stabbed both an officer and a police dog with a butcher knife after officers responded to a call that he was threatening to kill himself and others. Andrews told the paper the resolution “is not about this” incident and instead is meant to acknowledge past incidents, but the political symbolism here is impossible to miss.
That is what happens when politics turns performative. Institutions stop getting defended. They get sacrificed for signaling purposes. The article makes clear that the officer in the recent case and the K-9 are both expected to recover after being stabbed, yet city leaders are still teeing up a statement of “mourning” around officer-involved shootings at exactly the moment law enforcement officers just fought through a violent attack. That is not balance. That is ideology showing its hand.
The Bullet Point Brief
- Aurora council is considering a resolution saying it “stands in mourning” with people who lost loved ones to officer-involved shootings. Because apparently city government now thinks symbolic grief management is a core municipal service.
- The article says the resolution follows nearly two years of protesters attending council meetings to criticize the Aurora Police Department and demand accountability in past cases, especially the shooting of Kilyn Lewis. So yes, this is political pressure producing political theater.
- Pearce also reports this comes just over a week after officers responded to a call involving 23-year-old Amare James Garlington, who allegedly charged a K-9 officer and police dog and stabbed both with a butcher knife before being shot and killed. That detail matters. A lot.
- Councilmember Rob Andrews told The Denver Gazette the resolution is “not about this” latest stabbing and shooting, but about acknowledging past incidents. Maybe so. But when you roll this out right after an officer gets stabbed in the head and a K-9 gets knifed, the public is going to notice the sequence.
- The bigger picture is unmistakable. The council is not issuing some broad statement about the dangers officers face or the burden of keeping order. It is choosing a posture that centers mourning around officer-involved shootings while activists keep hammering law enforcement. Message received.
My Bottom Line
This is what happens when Democrats take over a government. Politics gets performative. Virtue must be signaled, even if it comes at the expense of the institution standing between order and chaos. In this case, that institution is law enforcement. The pressure campaign runs long enough, the activists show up enough, and eventually somebody in government decides the safest move is to offer a symbolic bouquet to the radical base and hope nobody notices who is getting thrown under the bus.
But people should notice. The man in the recent case was not shot for jaywalking, bad vibes, or some bureaucratic misunderstanding. According to the article, he was shot after stabbing a law enforcement officer and a police dog with a butcher knife. That is not a gray-area morality play. That is violent criminal conduct met by force in defense of life. And now, right on the heels of that, city leaders want to issue a statement of “mourning” for families of people killed in officer-involved shootings. You do not have to be a cynic to see what that signals. You just need working eyes.
And that signal is rotten. It tells officers that even when one of their own is attacked, even when the facts point clearly toward justified force, the political class is still scanning the room to see how quickly it can reposition itself for the approval of activists. It tells the public that the criminal’s family gets the emotional spotlight while the officer who got stabbed gets folded into the background as a technical detail. That is backwards, and it is dangerous.
This should stand as a warning. When Democrats invade a government, institutions do not get strengthened. They get politicized. Public safety becomes a stage prop. Law enforcement becomes the designated villain. And the people in charge start confusing moral seriousness with symbolic performance. Aurora is showing where that road goes. Other communities ought to pay attention before they follow it.
Source: The Denver Gazette
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