Violent crime in Aurora soars

Last week, Mayor Irvin and Police Chief Ziman held a press conference regarding the recent spike in violent crime in Aurora.

Mayor Irvin overwhelmingly stressed that this was an issue of young brown and black men killing each other.

There were many different solutions mentioned, I honestly could not keep up with their ideas. It seemed as if they were just throwing out all kinds of possible solutions and hoping that one of them will resonate with people. Some new, rather expensive, technology was also mentioned as another possible solution. The technology they were referring to is a system of sensors that will immediately notify officers of exactly where a shooting took place. This does nothing to suppress crime, the notification only goes out after shots are fired. This is akin to calling the fire department after the house burned down.

Mayor Irvin and the City of Aurora recently bought $88k in riot gear for the police. Wouldn't it be more suitable to invest that money into the community? That money could have funded our youth and mentoring programs, which would benefit us all. The mayor just does not understand that the citizens of Aurora need to find living wage jobs and have a stable economy. That would eliminate crimes of necessity and we can stop blaming black and brown people for all of the crimes. Mayor Irvin clearly does not understand the issues that plague our community. If he can not see the real problems, we have no hope of getting the solutions under his leadership.