Aurora adopted harsher penalties for theft in the city, a move that supporters said will help reduce theft and one that opponents said will cost the city more in incarceration costs for a strategy that isn’t effective.

Councilmember Danielle Jurinsky brought forward two ordinances at Monday night’s council meeting that add to the original ordinance passed in 2023, which set a three-day minimum mandatory jail sentence for retail theft of $300 or more.

The first of the two ordinances lowers that threshold to $100 in stolen goods and adds provisions for increased jail time for repeat offenders.

Lowering the threshold, according to the ordinance, will “further deter this criminal behavior as is evidenced by the impact of imposing mandatory minimums in the city last year.”

“Council intends to make it known that the City of Aurora is not the city for offenders to commit theft by making penalties more impactful,” according to meeting documents.

In addition to lowering the threshold for the mandatory minimum sentence from $300 to $100, the ordinance also makes the sentence for repeat offenders 90 days in jail, rather than three.

In cases where the defendant has been convicted of retail theft at least twice, they will face a mandatory minimum sentence of 180 days, according to the ordinance.

Tim Babich, a longtime teacher in the Denver area, said children make mistakes and mandatory minimums put things on their records that last forever and keep them from enlisting and going to college.

“Mandatory minimums for shoplifting are bad public policy,” he said. “Not only that, but it doesn’t work.”

The ordinance does not apply to minors, according to Aurora’s City Attorney.

In 2023, the Aurora Police Department reported 1,702 instances of larceny shoplifting, or retail theft. In comparison, the department reported 1,256 cases in 2022.

In an era of privatization, dealing with retail theft should be the role of private security for businesses, he said. 

“Encourage your constituents, in true American tradition, to help themselves,” he said. “Don’t do mandatory minimums. It is morally wrong.”

Jamie Jackson with the NAACP asked council to consider the cost of reducing the threshold for the sentences.

“You should be focusing more on preventative efforts to give people the resources they need to be productive citizens,” Jackson said. “We all know that incarceration is very costly … instead of looking at being more punitive — which research shows does not work and is ineffective in preventing crime, reducing crime and making the community safer — we need to look at putting money toward prevention.”

Pete Schulte, the city’s public safety client group manager in the city attorney’s office, said the ordinance to strengthen the penalties for theft came from conversations with Aurora police, who said they are seeing a lot of cases where people shoplifted just under the $300 threshold. 

Schulte said mandatory minimum sentences don’t really have an impact on felony offenses because people who are “wired” to commit those types of crimes, like murder, will do them anyway. 

However, Schulte said, they do seem to deter people in lower level crimes, such as retail theft. 

Councilmember Dustin Zvonek said they are talking a lot about the cost of the mandatory minimums, but reminded members to consider the cost of theft on businesses.

Letting theft continue affects business retention and the willingness of businesses to come to Aurora, he said.

Following debate among councilmembers, the ordinance passed with three “no” votes from Councilmembers Alison Coombs, Crystal Murillo and Ruben Medina. 

The second of the two ordinances, which applies mandatory minimum sentences on “dine and dash”-type crimes, also passed. It applies the three-day minimum sentence to offenders involved in “defrauding a public establishment,” or not paying after dining, in the amount of $15 or more.

Schulte said many restaurants who see dine-and-dash crimes don’t even call the police and the mandatory minimum sentence would encourage them to get help.

Hunter Parnell, a veteran, said he was offended by the “hypocrisy” of council, who he said adds harsher and harsher penalties for crime for its citizens, but doesn’t give mandatory minimum sentences to its staff, citing the Aurora Police Department consent decree.  

“The Aurora police are under a consent decree for consistently violating the civil liberties that I signed up to die for,” Parnell said. “People have given you their support and I think its disgraceful that leaders would do things and be so hypocritical.” 

The ordinance passed with three ‘no’ votes from councilmembers Coombs, Medina and Murillo.