Aurora, Colorado seeks $10 million in new police funding amid Tren de Aragua activity

The City of Aurora’s proposed budget for 2025 includes roughly $10 million in increases for the police budget, coming after the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua took over an apartment complex in the city.

The proposed 2025 budget includes $125 million in funding increases overall. The police budget, if approved, would increase from its current $155.7 million budget to $164.9 million in 2025. The plan also adds new positions within the department, CBS News reported.

Aurora Police Department Chief Todd Chamberlin told the outlet, "Right now, we are not at our full complement of officers. Our patrol is impacted by understaffing issues, and so that's what I'm looking at right now."

Chamberlin said there would also be an investment in technology for the department, adding, "I want to be able to have our officers have a clear understanding of what they are responding to before they even get there. I want to see where our crimes are occurring, when they're occurring and who they are occurring to."

The proposed budget increases come after viral videos out of the city showed armed men storming through an Aurora apartment complex. Aurora city officials have sought a court order to clear the building, and federal immigration authorities have since confirmed that the men seen in the viral footage are members of the Venezuelan gang, Fox 31 reported.

A spokesperson from Governor Jared Polis’ office told the New York Post in late August, after reports of the gang taking over apartment buildings, "according to police intelligence this purported invasion is largely a feature of Danielle Jurinsky’s imagination."

Jurinsky, an Aurora City Councilwoman, told the Daily Caller News Foundation, "We have increased funding multiple times. One of the biggest problems in this state, and other like minded states like Colorado is that people just don’t want to be police officers here like they used to."

In early September, the police department confirmed that two brothers who had been arrested in July in connection with a shooting were members of the gang. Police said that two others involved are also suspected of having ties to the gang.