As the two-year mark of the City of Aurora’s consent decree approaches, the independent monitor overseeing its implementation concluded the city has made “significant progress” in pursuing its requirements.

Aurora officials shared details of the progress in a meeting on Tuesday.

The city entered into the consent decree with Colorado Attorney General’s Office in 2021 to implement sweeping changes to policing, notably in the use of force and how officers engage with residents.

Aurora agreed to make changes after an investigation by the Attorney General’s Office found patterns of bias and excessive force in policing. The investigation also found a pattern of using the sedative ketamine in violation of the law by the Fire Department, which has since stopped using the drug but has to comply with related mandates in the consent agreement if it ever resumes use.

The process was prompted by the death of 23-year-old Elijah McClain, who died after an encounter with officers in 2019 as he walked home from a convenience store.

Aurora’s Community Advisory Council, a group of community leaders, lead Tuesday’s conversation, which focused on progress made during the fifth period. IntegrAssure, the third party monitor, released its report on Oct. 15. The report is available at AuroraMonitor.org.

The report shows that the city is in “substantial compliance” for 31 out of 68 mandates the monitor examined, and that it’s on “cautionary track” for 17 others.

The city showed “great progress” in the police department’s recruiting and hiring efforts, with incoming classes originally ranging from six to nine people now having over 30 new recruits in the academy, according to IntegrAssure monitor Jeff Schlanger.

Aurora Fire Chief Alec Oughton said the department has improved their recruiting process, and that, though it is still imperfect and under construction, he’s happy with the progress so far. The department’s focus on increasing diversity involves building new interest in a public safety careers from a new pool of candidates, rather than targeting or hiring from other public safety agencies that lack diversity, he said.

“There’s no finish line for continuous improvement,” Oughton said. “The meetings we’ve had and discussions we’ve had around recruitment is about building new interest in public safety … so I’m pretty proud of that.”

Oughton also mentioned the department’s new program, set to go into place on Wednesday, called “Right Response,” which will use a tiered response system to send 911 callers to the resources they need, rather than deploying a full team with lights and sirens to every call, even those who don’t need full a response team.

Interim police chief Art Acevedo said he can feel the energy of the police department getting better as the consent decree moves forward.

Specifically, Acevedo is excited about the transparency portal, which he said will allow the public to look at police data, policies and what the department is doing to make its own assessments of action it takes.

In terms of use of force policies, Acevedo said the department will soon have a hands-on training, where officers go through scenarios to determine how they would respond.

The report showed bias training still under “cautionary,” but Schlanger, the IntegrAssure monitor, explained this has to do with extenuating circumstances.

Originally, an organization that was supposed to produce the bias training program canceled. When the monitoring team and Aurora staff attended a preview session of the training, they decided that it was “lacking in many ways,” Schlanger said.

“We decided that really what we should try to do is develop a better training,” he said. “What we hope to come out with is really a world class training in this area that is created by police officers for police officers.”

The new training draft is about 85% done, he said, and will be reviewed by the chief, monitoring team, community advisory council and the Attorney General’s Office before it is implemented.

“We don’t just want to check a box,” Acevedo said. “We want to make sure that the training we provide is the very best training we can come up with.”

IntegrAssure’s latest report also showed the city doing “much better” in terms of critical assessment of incidents, meaning they conduct a 360-degree look at incidents involving use of force to understand whether or not there was an appropriate predicate — or probable cause — for stopping an individual and whether or not de-escalation was utilized. They also look at other techniques to determine the appropriateness of a use of force.

While the monitor looks at this process under the consent decree, it does not have any direct investigative role in the incidents.

Of the 31 mandates found in this reporting period to be in “substantial compliance,” 15 were relative to Aurora Fire’s removal of ketamine from its protocols and other chemical restraint policies and mandates.

Six of the mandates dealt with the Civil Service Commission’s “timely submission of rule changes” for hiring and the disciplinary process.

Ten of the mandates applied to the police department’s publication of use of force policies and training.

The next phase of the monitors deals with operational integrity, Schlanger said. This will include reading reports, watching body camera footage and engaging community members in the process of deciding if the reforms are actually translating into practice on the field.

The Attorney General Office’s investigation that led to the consent decree called for changes to first responders’ use of force practices, investigative practices and use of chemical sedatives. The office’s investigation also pushed for changes in recruiting, hiring and promotional practices, along with a greater need for accountability and transparency.

Aurora police Officer Nathan Woodyard is currently on trial facing reckless manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide charges in McClain’s death.

A jury convicted Officer Randy Roedema on Oct. 12 of criminally negligent homicide and third-degree assault, the least serious charges he faced, but acquitted former officer Jason Rosenblatt on all counts. Paramedics Jeremy Cooper and Peter Cichuniec are in the final trial next month in connection with McClain’s death.

Prosecutors said McClain, who wore a black mask because he was often cold, was listening to music when officers responded to a 911 call by a person who reported McClain was acting suspiciously.

The officers took McClain to the ground, and Woodyard put him in a type of neck hold – authorized by the Aurora Police Department at the time — that caused him to briefly lose consciousness by restricting oxygen flow to his brain. About 18 minutes into the struggle, a paramedic who responded to the scene injected McClain with the sedative ketamine.

He went into cardiac arrest and stopped breathing. He died a few days later in a hospital.