The Xenophobic Escalation Continues
This time: Aurora, CO.
Trump reacts to yet another conspiracy theory from his weird media diet:
What is one about now? Here are some basics from The Denver Post: Venezuelan gang arrests show threats, violence at Aurora apartment complexes.
The Aurora Police Department on Wednesday publicly identified nine members of a Venezuelan gang charged in 14 separate criminal incidents over the last 10 months, including at least seven events at the apartment complexes that a property management company has said were “taken over” by the gang.
The alleged crimes connected to the Tren de Aragua members include two shootings, several assaults, thefts and instances of threatening people with guns. The allegations also include intimate partner domestic violence and disputes between roommates.
Court records detailing the allegations show that gang members in some instances intimidated and attacked residents at the Edge at Lowry apartment complex at Dallas Street and 12th Avenue, at the now-shuttered Fitzsimons Place apartments at 1568 Nome St. and at the Whispering Pines Condominiums at 1357 Helena St.
The allegations do not include evidence of broad, organized, systemic gang-led extortion or control at the apartment complexes.
More from USAT: Colorado mayor, police respond to Trump’s claims that Venezuelan gang is ‘taking over’
The announcement of the arrests comes weeks after stories began to spread about the Venezuelan gang “taking over” an apartment complex and making its tenants pay them rent. Interim Aurora Police Chief Heather Morris said in a video shared on Aug. 30 that The Edge at Lowry Apartments is not being “taken over” by the Tren de Aragua.
“We’ve been talking to the residents here and learning from them to find out what exactly is going on, and there’s definitely a different picture,” Morris said in the video. “I’m not saying that there’s not gang members that don’t live in this community.”
Despite Morris’ and city officials’ attempts to debunk the rumors, Trump still made mention of the gang’s presence in the city during the debate Tuesday on ABC News.
[…]
Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman and Council Member and Public Safety Chair Danielle Jurinsky released a statement on Wednesday following the arrests and Trump’s comments.
[…]
“TdA has not ‘taken over’ the city,” the statement continued. “The overstated claims fueled by social media and through select news organizations are simply not true. Again, TdA’s presence in Aurora is limited to specific properties, all of which the city has been addressing in various ways for months.”
See, also, CNN (How an empty apartment complex in Colorado became a national battleground over immigration) and NPR (Aurora police chief says there’s no evidence that Venezuelan gang took over apartment).
I would note that Aurora’s population is roughly 390,00 and is part of the greater Denver metro area of almost 4 million people. That should put all of this into some level of proportionality for anyone who can grasp the relative size of 10 arrests (as per USAT) to a city of ~390,000 embedded in a metro area of basically 10 times that amount.
I would also note that Trump clearly gets his “news” and “information” from dubious sources, and then goes on to extrapolate nonsense (as with the pet-stealing story from Ohio). From the linked NPR piece:
KYLE HARRIS, BYLINE: Last week, a video from the Denver suburb of Aurora was seemingly everywhere on social media and then started airing on TV stations. It showed men with guns in an Aurora apartment complex, allegedly filmed by a scared resident. We haven’t been able to independently confirm the source of the video. But when Donald Trump talked about it on the “Lex Fridman Podcast,” he said the facts are clear.
(SOUNDBITE OF PODCAST, “LEX FRIDMAN PODCAST”)
DONALD TRUMP: You saw in Aurora, Colo., a group of very tough young thugs from Venezuela taking over big areas, including buildings. They’re taking over buildings. They have their big rifles.
Quite obviously, local law enforcement should address gang violence. And, further, federal law enforcement may have a role to play. The notion, however, that “big areas” of an American city are being taken over and that, therefore, federal government forces need to “liberate” them is not only absurd but is patently false.
Trying to constantly drum up fear about a foreign other that requires strong, if not violent, government action is flatly fascistic.
You have to grossly overstate the threat, then massively understate the difficulty of your proposed solutions, if you need people to look past your immoral character and the draconian state response you want to activate. It’s just the way politicians are forced to be in a democracy. It would be so much easier if the president was immune from accountability for criminal acts in their official capacity as POTUS.
If you can’t trust the friend of the daughter of the neighbor of some random dude on Facebook, who can you trust?
In summary, I was forced to vote for Trump.
Fun fact: Even the stupid FB post from which Laura Loomer took her “factz” and told Trump.. only mentioned cats. The dogs? Trump was riffing.
There’s a certain irony to this happening in Aurora, CO, site of a major mass shooting by a domestic terrorist that — if memory serves — led to zero calls for liberating the city.
Further… stopping people from holding guns is now a GOP rallying cry? Huh….
@Kazzy: “Criminals” (read blacks) being prohibited from having guns is a long-standing Republican/conservative talking point going back to Reagan as governor of California in 1967 or 68. No cognitive dissonance at all–just two sets of “rule of law.”
@Kazzy:
Ronald Reagan, then governor of California, signed the Muldord Act which prohibited open carry because Black Panthers were conducting open-carry armed “copwatching” patrols in Oakland. One could say a well regulated militia.
Republicans are entirely for gun control when the person with the gun is part of the Other.
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I’m torn on this. I don’t want to exacerbate an already volatile situation, but “othered” citizens doing open-carry armed patrols where allowed by law would be a bracing reminder to 2ndA absolutists that the law applies to everyone. I obviously see it would be incredibly dangerous, but the impact would be tectonic.
For some, Wounded Knee is a roadmap.
@Kathy:
Wounded Knee is remembered for a reason.
In places where it is legal, anyone could institute an open-carry concerned citizen group and patrol around neighborhoods with loaded rifles. I wouldn’t recommend it, but they could. Vigilante stuff is a major concern.
My thought experiment is what if the Rainbow Brigade did it. It would freak the normies out. They would reconsider laws concerning open-carry.
If you can you do a legally allowed thing, and it’s pretty stupid and very dangerous, but it might make a real difference in polity and public perception on that issue, should you?
@de stijl:
Well, yes, if they’d been white they might be considered a well-regulated militia. The Constitution has a long-standing tradition against the rights of property to keep and bear arms, though.
ETA: And no, the law doesn’t apply to everyone equally. Who told you that it did?
@just nutha:
For which, see Wilhoit. Republican “law and order hasn’t changed since Nixon ran on it.
The Trump campaign, led by Kerry Swiftboat veteran Chris LaCivita, has predictably commenced a series of stunts intended to panic undecided voters into voting for Trump because they’re terrified of the building illegal immigrant wave of violence. It’s the 2024 equivalent of the Islamofascists who were supposedly taking over suburban neighborhoods in 2016 to impose Sharia Law; of the BLM/Antifa mobs supposedly burning cities to the ground across America in 2020. Some tenuous connection to reality would be helpful to their cause, but it’s not essential. Junior Trump was openly ranting yesterday that Haitians have low IQ, and “if you import the third world into your country, you are going to become the third world”. It’s classic xenophobia.
The right has always sought to exploit voters’ fear of The Other, because it’s proved to be very effective. This year is just more of the same, featuring “illegals”, China and the alphabet people.
@Ken_L:
I prefer to call them The Fourth Reich.
@Ken_L: and the Left has always demonised ‘the bosses’…. somewhat boring and useless to whinge on about the habits of the Opposition. They are in the end, the Opposition and will say and do things you don’t like…. Fear of the Other is quite fundamentally human, we are naught but chimps with overly large noggins. Just how one structures the Other.
Rather more useful – how is this exploitable against them right now.
Broaden the threat as sold – make it about lawlessness and scary radicalism on their side – not about your ‘punching down’ concerns, the broader the sense of the lawless threat the better for you. Like for abortion and contraception.