Denver Suburb’s City Council Approves New Chief

A loud chorus of protesters chanting “shame on you” and “vote them out” followed Aurora City Council’s ratification on Monday of the city’s new police chief.

Eight council members voted to approve former Los Angeles Police Commander Todd Chamberlain for the top job at Aurora’s police department, The Sentinel reports.

Aaron Futrell, an attendee at the meeting, criticized Chamberlain for his comment at a news conference last week that “Uses of force are still going to happen” under his watch, as if they are an inevitability. The difference under his tenure as chief, he added, will be that “the entire department [will] understand what happened” and learn “to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

“It doesn’t have to happen,” Futrell told the council, noting that “it’s really sad” that the most public input the council invited about Chamberlain came in the minutes before they were set to formalize his appointment.