AURORA | Sifting out troubled officers and unsuitable police recruits has become a major focus in the struggle to reform Aurora’s Police Department, guided by a comprehensive consent decree agreement between the City of Aurora and the AG’s office.

Stepping up efforts to recruit diverse candidates into the mostly white, mostly male department has been one result of the agreement.

The reform process has also involved a transfer of power away from Aurora’s Civil Service Commission — a panel of five City Council appointees established in 1967 to ensure the city’s police officers and firefighters are hired, fired and disciplined fairly.

Aurora is one of just a few Colorado cities to have a civil service commission armed with the power to reduce or veto discipline against police officers and firefighters. Until recently, it also had the final say in hiring first responders.

While the group has repeatedly expressed its commitment to the consent decree, commissioners have pushed back against what they see as infringements on the role carved out for them in the City Charter, questioning the attorney general’s understanding of their job at the time the consent decree was introduced as well as the city’s authority to dismiss the commission’s attorney earlier this year.

Members of the commission have argued that an independent and autonomous commission serves as an important check on the power of the police department. When asked whether he believes the other parties to the consent decree respect the independent role of the Civil Service Commission, Chairman Desmond McNeal said, “Probably not.”

“I don’t think they’re looking at it from our standpoint of the process needing to stay independent to avoid nepotism and things like that,” he said.

The commission is one of several government entities that play a part in holding Aurora police accountable, even though it has butted heads recently with the architects of the city’s consent decree.

Despite concerns about the group’s independence coming under threat, members can only be removed by a supermajority vote of the City Council, and while they no longer have the final say in police and fire hiring, they’ve retained the power to overturn discipline imposed by the chief of police.