Aurora Police Chief Todd Chamberlain met with Ethiopian residents on Friday, March 6, to talk about safety within the city, telling them that immigration enforcement and surveillance powered by artificial intelligence are nothing to worry about.
The meeting was hosted by the Colorado Ethiopian Community, an Aurora-based group, at their offices on 1450 South Havana Street. According to the United States Census Bureau, nearly a quarter of Aurora’s 400,000 residents are immigrants, fortifying its claim to be “the world in a city.” Mexican immigrants account for more than a third of the local immigrant population, at around 33,000 people. Ethiopians are the second-largest minority group in Aurora, data shows, at over 5,000 people, with over 80 percent of them having immigrated to the U.S. Aurora is also home to 1,000 Eritreans, who identify as Habesha, like Ethiopians, and were part of the same country until 1993.
A woman who said she owned an auto dealership thanked Chamberlain for the police’s role in reducing homelessness, and a man who identified himself as a pastor told Chamberlain that homeless residents loitering and defecating in front of establishments is the biggest problem in his community, but he also thanked the police chief…