Aurora’s residents can credit their own thoughtful choices on the ballot this past November for a newly impaneled City Council that wants to get back to the business of policing the streets. Amid soaring crime that has been gripping the city, the metro area and much of the Front Range, it’s an especially timely development.

The reconfigured Aurora City Council voted last week to spend nearly 10% of its COVID-19 recovery funds from the American Rescue Plan Act on bonuses for police officers. As reported by The Gazette, each uniformed officer with the Aurora Police Department will receive $8,000 in bonuses in two installments in 2022.

That’s a wise down payment on what we hope is a long-term investment by the city in its renewed crime fight — and in its police force. The bonuses could help head off the flight of more officers from Aurora police ranks following summer 2020’s street unrest and anti-cop rhetoric in some political quarters.

The dissenting minority in the council’s 6-4 vote to award the bonuses was, until just a few weeks ago, the council’s go-easy-on-criminals majority. They harbored some of the most misguided “justice reform” notions from the political fringe — for which rank-and-file city residents are now paying. Voters were smart to sideline them.