Interim Aurora Police Chief Dan Oates Comes With Some Baggage

On April 20, the City of Aurora announced that Dan Oates, who led the APD from 2005 to 2014, would serve as interim chief during the search for a new hire to lead the department on a long-term basis. Aurora has been operating under a consent decree imposed on the Aurora Police Department by the Colorado Attorney General's Office over its documented pattern of racial bias; it's also been engaging in considerable spin control since the firing of reform-minded police chief Vanessa Wilson.

That continued with its reintroduction of Oates, when Aurora officials focused on the role Oates played in the investigation of the 2012 shooting at the Century 16 theater that killed twelve people and injured seventy others. But Oates also brings plenty of baggage. On his watch, multiple incidents raised the sort of civil rights and excessive force issues that inspired the consent decree years later. And while Aurora officials justified Wilson's dismissal in part because of backlogged police records, Oates was allowed to remain on the job even after staffers mistakenly ruined DNA evidence in dozens of rape cases.

Oates left Colorado in 2014 to become the police chief in Miami Beach — a gig he filled until his retirement five years later. Upon his arrival in Florida, Miami New Times, a sibling publication of Westword, introduced him by way of "Dan Oates Is the New Sheriff in Town," a compendium that drew in part on reporting from this newspaper. Also included was commentary from sources such as Denver-based attorney David Lane, who said of Oates: "A fish rots from the head down. If he has a culture of tolerance and excessive force by police officers, that shows itself from time to time."

An example: In 2019, Westword published a post headlined "Claim: At Least 13 People of Color Abused by Aurora Cops Since 2003." As documented by the ACLU of Colorado, all thirteen of the cases resulted in settlements with Aurora, and four of them occurred while Oates was chief — alleged wrongdoing by officers against Cassidy Tate in 2006, Carla Meza in 2009, Ricky Burrell in 2010 and Juan Contreras in 2011. Note that an officer fired over what was done to Meza got his job back in 2011.

Then there was a controversial episode in March 2011 during which APD officers shot three unarmed men in a car: twenty-year-old Oleg Gidenko, who was killed after taking a bullet to the back of his head, as well as Yevgeniy Straystar and Ruslan Giriyev, both eighteen. That July, the 18th Judicial District DA's office ruled the shooting justified after concluding that Gidenko was driving in a way that "constituted an imminent use of deadly physical force" — a controversial theory at the time, and one that's been widely discredited by many law enforcement experts since then. The Denver Police Department changed its policy allowing officers to shoot at a moving vehicle in 2015.

Another divisive case during Oates's tenure involved police action against Christian Paetsch, who robbed a bank while wearing a beekeeper's mask in June 2012. During the search for Paetsch, a large number of drivers nearby were detained at gunpoint for over an hour — and fourteen of them, represented by attorney Lane, ultimately filed a lawsuit against the city and the police over the treatment they received. In January 2017, Aurora settled the case by agreeing to pay the plaintiffs a lump sum of $325,000.

Officer misconduct also occurred under Oates, as witnessed by the 2010-2011 arrests of two Aurora DARE officers on accusations of sex crimes targeting children. And in June 2013, Oates called a press conference to acknowledge that DNA in at least 48 sex-assault cases had been destroyed improperly. "Obviously, this is not a good day for the department," he said.

There have been a lot of subpar days at the Aurora Police Department of late. No doubt officials hope that Oates will reduce that number rather than add to them.

Continue to see a video of Oates being reintroduced on April 20: