The landlord for the apartment complex that Aurora officials shuttered last month over health and safety issues sought to hire off-duty police officers to provide security for their properties, The Denver Gazette has learned.

“The real story is the owner of CBZ Management, Shmary Baumgarten, reached out to the Aurora Police Department on numerous occasions looking to provide additional security at his properties through the hiring of off-duty officers,” Joe Moylan, an Aurora police spokesperson, said in an email to The Denver Gazette.

“He was told we didn’t have the staffing to provide adequate security at all his properties.”

While elevated compared to pre-pandemic levels, Aurora is estimated to have a 6% decrease in violent crime reporting and a 1% decline in property crime, according to a Common Sense Institute (CSI) study released Thursday.

Two properties owned by CBZ Management — according to the CSI report — in the state’s third largest city saw a doubling of citations and reported crime since 2022; one property saw nearly double.

“These three apartments clearly had something going on for the last two years,” said DJ Summers, CSI’s director of policy and research. “We don’t know if it’s from gang activity or landlord neglect.”

Publicly available crime maps, according to the report, do not show a rising crime trend in areas known to have high concentrations of immigrants in Denver or Aurora.

Based in Brooklyn, CBZ Management operates rental apartments in New York and Colorado, with 11 properties in Denver, Aurora, Colorado Springs and Pueblo.

Aurora officials last month shuttered Aspen Grove, evicting roughly 300 people. In doing so, city officials cited a string of health and safety issues that included rodent infestations, sewage backups and trash pileups, water leaks and a lack of electricity.

CBZ Management — through a PR firm — blamed deteriorating conditions at the apartment complex on gang activity, an allegation city officials initially denied and then later walked back.

Aspen Grove is one of three complexes owned by CBZ Management affected by the Venezuelan gang, according to reports. The others are Whispering Pines and The Edge at Lowry.

Tren de Aragua, or TDA, is a Venezuelan prison gang with tentacles in the Denver metro area. The gang boasts a diverse portfolio of criminal activities that includes — among others — human trafficking, particularly of immigrant women and girls, drug trafficking, kidnapping, extortion and money laundering.

Victims who have sought to escape are often killed by gang members, with their deaths publicized as a way to intimidate others from coming forward, according to government officials.

Venezuelans are among the nearly 43,000 immigrants — mostly from South and Central America — who have sought refuge in Denver. More than 7 million Venezuelans have fled since 2013 when President Nicolás Maduro assumed and the country descended into economic and political chaos.

In letters obtained by The Denver Gazette, CBZ Management — through their attorney — complained to Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser and Aurora City Manager Jason Batchelor that the gang had “forcibly taken control” of their properties.

The attorney also said that the Aurora Police Department (APD) informed the company it was unable to take “effective action due” to a consent decree with the Colorado Attorney General’s Office.

Both Weiser’s office and the Aurora Police Department have pushed back on that assertion.

“Nothing in the consent decree prevents the Aurora Police Department from policing and protecting the community,” Lawrence Pacheco, a Weiser spokesperson, said in an email to The Denver Gazette.

Moylan, with APD, described the implication that police were hamstrung by the consent decree as “unequivocally false.”

“Any implication that we are unable to respond to, investigate and solve crimes because of the consent decree is patently and unequivocally false,” Moylan said.

Police officers routinely supplement their income by working security off-duty for businesses, organizations and community events.

Moylan was unable to provide any additional information on Thursday on whether the police department has rejected other requests to hire off-duty officers or why the request from CBZ Management was denied.

“The reference to the consent decree was a side comment about staffing issues, not operational ones,” Moylan said.

One potential implication of that “side comment” is that the consent decree has made it difficult to fill the ranks of the police force, with its implications for effectively responding to crime.

Aurora has 682 sworn officers, according to the most recent city data.

The department is authorized for 748 peace officers.

In the wake of the death of Elijah McClain five years ago and the public outcry over how the Aurora Police Department and Fire Rescue handled the incident, the city and the Attorney General’s Office entered into a consent decree.

McClain, 23, died in 2019 after a paramedic injected him with a lethal dose of ketamine after being detained by police officers.

McClain’s death prompted Weiser’s office to investigate and ultimately led to the 2021 consent decree, which prescribed changes to Aurora’s policing practices.

Specifically, the consent decree was designed to address racial bias in policing, the use of chemical restraints, and the recruitment, hiring and promotion of officers who reflect the community.

At the time of the announcement, Weiser had said that the consent decree was necessary to elevate policing in Aurora.

“Working together, we can protect public safety and civil rights by working with law enforcement to improve how it operates in Aurora,” Weiser said. “As the city does this important work, our department will support it and do all we can to ensure that it succeeds in delivering on its commitments.”