Aurora police on Wednesday offered the first details regarding the scale of a Venezuelan gang’s presence in the city amid an ongoing social-media-led furor about the issue.
Police have identified 10 people linked to the Tren de Aragua gang who are operating in Aurora, and six of those people have been arrested and are in custody, Aurora police spokesman Joe Moylan told The Denver Post.
Details on the identities of the 10 people and the nature of the charges against all of the six arrestees were not immediately available, though some are in custody in connection with a previously reported shooting on Nome Street in July.
Moylan said officers have not arrested any gang members on charges related to collecting rent from residents at three Aurora properties owned by CBZ Property Management.
The properties took center stage in the conversation about the Venezuelan gang in Aurora when CBZ Property Management claimed unlivable conditions at its properties were due to criminal activity by Tren de Aragua gang members.
Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman and other city officials repeated the company’s claim, suggesting the apartment complexes “fallen to” the gang. The claim was then amplified by local and national media and fueled by a viral video showing men with guns knocking on a door in the apartment complex.
Other Aurora officials — and the properties’ residents — have said the unlivable conditions at the company’s properties were longstanding and the result of the company’s mismanagement, rather than an overwhelming gang presence. Aurora’s interim police chief on Friday said gangs had not “taken over” one of the complexes.
Aurora has a population of about 400,000, and a study of its gangs last year identified 36 separate gangs with 1,355 members, about .34% of the city’s total population.
The 10 identified people linked to Tren de Aragua represent less than 1% of Aurora’s identified gang members, though Moylan said officers expect the number of documented Tren de Aragua members to grow as investigations into the gang continue.
“Every day we learn more about TdA, how it operates and how we can identify suspected members,” he said. “…It’s still too soon to try to quantify TdA’s presence in Aurora one way or the other.”
Aurora police have “investigated numerous claims and allegations” about gang members collecting rent from residents at the properties, but “have not yet established probable cause or made any arrests,” Moylan said.
Moylan declined to comment on how many criminal acts connected to Tren de Aragua members are currently under investigation, citing the ongoing investigative work. He said the police department has been investigating the gang for a year and that the residents making complaints about the gang’s activity have largely been migrants who live in the buildings.
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Aurora police have publicly tied just one crime this summer to the Tren de Aragua gang: a July 28 shooting in which two men were shot and a third broke his ankle at the apartment building at 1568 Nome St.
One of the suspects in that shooting, Jhonardy Jose Pacheco-Chirinos, 22, is a known Tren de Aragua member, police said in a statement last month. He was arrested after the shooting and charged with assault with a deadly weapon.
On Wednesday, Aurora police confirmed they also arrested Pacheco-Chirinos’ brother, 24-year-old Jhonnarty Dejesus Pacheco-Chirinos, on attempted-murder charges on July 29. Both are documented gang members and remain in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody.
Aurora police also arrested two other possible Tren de Aragua gang members on charges of tampering with evidence in connection with the July 28 shooting. “These two have gang ties and are suspected to be members of TdA,” police said.
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