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The national debate about immigration and crime has continued to focus on Aurora after an alleged "gang takeover" of three apartment complexes hit the news.
Former President Donald Trump name-checked the city, saying immigrants "are taking over buildings," during the debate between him and Vice President Kamala Harris.
This week, Aurora City Council member Danielle Jurinsky appeared on Dr. Phil Primetime for an hour, deriding "sanctuary cities" and talking about crime. The Aurora Police Department accused ten men of connections to the gang Tren de Aragua, charging them with various crimes.
Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman, a Republican, has recently downplayed that national frenzy, saying "the narrative that is being presented nationally about this city isn't true."
Meanwhile, people who live near the three complexes in question, which were all operated by CBZ Management, told us they've been left out of these discussions entirely. They say that crime — and police negligence — has been a rising issue for years, long before anyone from Venezuela moved in.
We wanted to drill down on one question for our latest big story on the controversy: Has crime actually risen in the city, and in these particular neighborhoods? Here's what we learned from the data.
Aurora crime is generally down, but things are more complicated near CBZ's three properties.
We started with data hosted by the Aurora Police Department, which maps confirmed crimes across the city.
Like other U.S. cities, Aurora saw a decline in crime after a COVID-era peak.
That was true for both felonies and misdemeanors.
But that decline didn’t happen uniformly across the city.
We split up those confirmed crimes into U.S. Census block groups to take a closer look. Of about 250 block groups in Aurora, the vast majority followed the trend of decreasing overall crime. Only 13 did not follow the downward trend for overall crimes. (We only looked at crimes confirmed between Jan. 1 and Aug. 31 of each year, for better comparison to this year.)
Felonies also dropped citywide, but there were more areas that did not follow that trend. Twenty-seven block groups, or about 10 percent, saw equal or higher numbers of felonies since the pandemic. Four of those contain or are adjacent to CBZ Management's three apartment complexes.
One block group bordering the Fitzsimmons apartment complex saw a 66 percent increase in felonies in 2024, compared to its prior high during the pandemic. However, the block group that actually contains the building was in line with the rest of the city: felonies there peaked in 2021, then dropped.
The block group encompassing The Edge apartments saw a sharp drop in felonies after the pandemic, but rebounded between 2023 and 2024. It's now running 8 percent higher than pandemic levels.
Meanwhile, the block group encompassing the Whispering Pines apartments saw only a small rise in felonies compared to the last two years.
Still, the data also show that this is part of a historical trend. The neighborhoods around those three buildings — and around Colfax Avenue — usually see more felonies than the rest of the city.
And while crime stayed higher in some areas associated with the CBZ properties, they all remained in line with the block groups in that part of Aurora.
Something did happen around these apartment complexes, but pinning down one cause is tricky.
David Pyrooz, a University of Colorado Boulder professor of sociology whose work focuses on crime statistics, and Catherine Durso, a University of Denver professor of computer science and research statistician, both reviewed our analysis.
Yes, they said, the fact that areas close to these complexes did not see a drop in crime post-COVID does suggest that something is happening here. But this data does not address what changed, they stressed.
Upticks could be caused by new arrivals moving into those buildings over the last year. Or they could be completely unrelated, and attributed to crimes committed by longtime locals nearby.
One major issue in addressing this is a lack of information about where people moved as they arrived in the metro. Nonprofits, doling out state money, resettled thousands of people in and around Denver in the last few years. If we had a list of those addresses, we might be able to see if crime rose in areas beyond apartments run by CBZ.
Mayor Mike Coffman said he's been asking Denver for that information, but hasn't received anything comprehensive. Denver officials told us they do not keep records on assisted move-ins, since those were handled by nonprofits. ViVe Wellness executive director Yoli Casas, who led much of the resettlement charge last year, told us she's not aware if any such documentation exists.
Though Trump and Dr. Phil have asserted that this is a border issue, Coffman told us it might be a mistake to blame the residents of these buildings.
“There’s a criminal element that preys upon the Venezuelan migrant community. And when you have a concentration, like at those apartment buildings, I think that criminal element will superimpose themselves on top of that community and exploit them,” he said.
Aurora Police Chief Todd Chamberlain told us assaults have been a growing problem near the three complexes.
And Coffman said he has had heard from business owners about crimes of desperation, like shoplifting, which he thinks of as a separate issue. One local store manager told him about a 12-year-old girl who was caught stealing food.
“It’s sad that it’s part of a desperation. Stealing food?” he said. “The craziness of all this is they cannot apply for a work permit until they’re here for 150 days.”
Residents at the CBZ complexes fear crime — and looming homelessness.
Anthony Brabo Gonzales, who lives at CBZ's Whispering Pines complex, told us he's seen that play out.
People have come from the street and onto the property, he said, including one person who attacked him. He called the police, he told us, but said officers were hostile to him when he arrived.
"I've been living here for a couple years, and there's only been two times I've seen security," he said through a translator.
Aurora closed one of the three complexes, Fitzsimons Place, in August over uninhabitable conditions. The Edge at Lowry, the where the viral video was captured, is likely next.
