The Family of Kilyn Lewis is Fighting to be Heard by Aurora City Council

“With liberty and justice for Kilyn Lewis!”

At the Aurora City Council meeting on July 22, those words rang out with fervent vigor during the pledge of allegiance. The call to action came from the Justice for Kilyn E. Lewis Action Team—including Lewis’ mother, Laronda Jones, Lewis’s father, Robert Lewis, and Lewis’s brother, Kiawa Lewis. They have been attending City Council meetings and town halls and organizing other community events around Aurora to demand justice for the death of Kilyn.

On May 23, Kilyn, 37, was shot by Aurora police officer Michael Dieck during an attempt to serve an arrest warrant. Lewis was found to be unarmed during the shooting, and he succumbed to his injuries two days later.

“I would like for the community to remember Kilyn as a warm, loving, kind person. He always gave a shirt off his back to anybody, whether they were his blood or not. He called everybody his family. He was always a gentle soul, and he was a family man,” Jones tells OFM.

The meeting on July 22 was the third meeting where Jones shared similar sentiments about Kilyn while also calling for justice to be served to Officer Dieck. She lives in Atlanta, but she flew out to Aurora to be here to fight for her son.

Jones was one of 11 people to speak in support of Kilyn at this meeting in the allotted hour for public comment on non-agenda items. After the hour had concluded, eight speakers remained on the docket. Councilmember Crystal Murillo made a motion to allow the other eight speakers to have their time, but the council voted against it.

At that moment, the coalition in support of Kilyn demanded that the other speakers be allowed to speak. Auon’tai M. Anderson, Communications Director for the Justice for Kilyn E. Lewis Action Team, proclaimed that because Aurora City Council canceled town halls in response to protestors arriving at the town hall on Thursday, July 11, everyone should be allowed to speak.

Mayor Mike Coffman attempted to proceed with the meeting as the Action Team continued to demand the other speakers have their time, but he eventually adjourned the meeting to a separate room where the public could not be present.

The same thing happened at the previous city council meeting on July 8. During that meeting, Councilmember Alison Coombs introduced motion 11.a.11 which would express “the Aurora City Council’s apology and condolences to the family of Kilyn Lewis.” At that meeting, members of the same coalition yielded their time for public comment to be heard on 11.a.11.

Then, before the council could vote on that item, Councilmember Stephanie Hancock introduced a motion to remove 11.a.11 and several other items from the agenda. Coombs and Murillo voted to keep those items on the agenda, but the mayor and the remaining seven present counselors voted to remove them as well.

Councilmember Steve Sundberg spoke during a discussion on the removal. Referring to his own 23-year-old Black son, he said, “There is an empathy I feel for the family” before saying they couldn’t put an apology through in a legal fashion because investigations are pending on the shooting.

Councilmember Curtis Gardner echoed Sundberg’s reasoning during a separate interview:

“I think (issuing an apology) is premature only from the perspective of, there’s still a legal process to play out. That process needs to play out before Aurora City Council can take a formal position,” Gardner says.

After the vote for removal passed, Anderson stood up and said:

“We tried to give you the opportunity to do the right thing so we can be heard on 11.a.11. We peacefully approached your podium so that we could do 11.a.11. Because of that, this meeting is now ours.”

Supporters of Kilyn Lewis approached the podium chanting, “Say his name. Kilyn Lewis!” and the City Council moved the meeting to another room where Councilmember Hancock called the people chanting (who, again, include Kilyn’s family) “terrorists.”

In response to Hancock’s admonishment, the Justice for Kilyn E. Lewis Action Team is circulating a petition calling for the censure of Councilmember Hancock. It currently has over 500 signatures, and during the City Council meeting on July 22, those who spoke in support of Kilyn demanded the censure as well.

Councilmember Hancock declined to provide a comment to OFM.

While the killing of unarmed Black men by police is certainly a national issue in the United States, Aurora is one city that is under particular scrutiny for unlawful police practices. According to the A.C.L.U. of Colorado, Aurora paid $4.6 million between 2003 and 2018 in restitution for at least 11 police brutality cases according to The New York Times.

Then, following the death of Elijah McClain back in 2019—for which Aurora Police Officer Randy Roedema and Paramedics Jeremy Cooper and Peter Cichuniec were found guilty of criminally negligent homicide—the city of Aurora signed a consent decree with Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser two years later in 2021.

A consent decree is essentially a court order, and in this case, it was a court order to the city of Aurora to overhaul its police force on numerous levels. Coombs was on the city council when the consent decree was issued, and from her perspective, she did see reforms put in place.

Aurora police officers were dismissed as a result of excessive uses of force. A city council that was split politically between liberal and conservative passed a ban on carotid holds. Coombs voted yes on a successful motion to place a moratorium on the use of ketamine before it was banned at the state level. There was increased anti-bias training as well.

“There was a general attitude and approach of wanting more accountability,” Coombs says. “There are some instances along that whole spectrum where I felt we could have gone further and was in support of stronger resolutions, but again, even with a divided council, those items received support from conservatives.”

According to reporting from Colorado Public Radio, the consent decree laid out 78 mandates for reform, and as of April 2024, the city is meeting more than half of them. Twenty-seven mandates have been fully met; 19 are going to be met by their deadlines; seven are on a “cautionary track,” and five have missed deadlines.

However, according to Coombs, this progress has seen much backlash from the community and the city council beginning in 2021. While no votes have been taken to dismantle the consent decree, Coombs says the council, “has taken an approach that opposes diversity, equity, and inclusion, opposes anti-bias training, and opposes robust accountability efforts from a policy standpoint. Those folks were all elected after the consent decree passed. They came in under a consent decree hostile to that decree and all of its goals.”

As one of the council members who isn’t hostile to the consent decree, Coombs stayed behind in the main council chamber during the July 8 meeting to hear the community’s concerns about Kilyn Lewis after her colleagues left for another room.

“The community members proceeded to conduct the public comment that they had come to conduct. They got up to the podium, and they shared their concerns, their feelings, their issues with what council had done as well as trying to highlight the humanity of Kilyn Lewis,” Coombs says.

I was not at the July 8 meeting, and the video feed to the main chamber was cut when the majority of the council left, so I did not hear what the community said in support of Kilyn. But I can only imagine his mother repeated the sentiments she shared with me during our interview: That Kilyn was a loving person who was always there to lift people’s spirits, and that she wants Officer Dieck to face justice.

With the consent decree in place, there is a chance Dieck will be held accountable for his crimes, but the Justice for Kilyn E. Lewis Action Team isn’t just fighting for Kilyn. They are fighting for the entire Aurora community to be safe for everyone.

Featured image provided by Chris Perez via Denver Westword