A provisional Aurora car theft law imposing mandatory minimum jail sentences could become permanent after getting preemptive approval from the city’s public safety committee.

At Thursday’s Public Safety, Courts and Civil Service Policy Committee meeting, committee members agreed to move forward with an ordinance that would remove the “sunset provision” on a law requiring mandatory minimum jail sentences for car theft.

The original ordinance putting the mandatory minimum sentences in place was approved by the city council in July of 2022.

Since the program was new, the council added a “sunset provision” to it, essentially making it more of a pilot program that would expire in 2024 unless the council voted to extend it.

In Thursday’s meeting, committee members brought the sunset provision back to lawmakers, and they voted to move the ordinance getting rid of the provision forward to a future study session. 

“I put in that ordinance that we would have it sunset because we wanted to determine whether or not it would be effective,” Zvonek said. “I actually believe that we should sunset all regulations and all of these types of criminal laws to reevaluate them.”

Aurora Police Department Interim Chief Heather Morris said car theft in Aurora has dropped 22% since the ordinance went into effect. 

“I think this is one piece of the efforts that we’re making in order to reduce motor vehicle theft,” Morris said. “We need to continue what we’re doing.”

The department’s transparency portal shows 6,780 car thefts in 2022, 5,218 in 2023 and 1,272 so far in 2024. 

By the end of April 2022, there had been 2,522 car thefts. By the same date this year, there had been 1,265.

While car theft has gone down in Aurora since the ordinance was put into place, so has car theft in the state as a whole.

State data showed a sharp reduction in car theft in the first four months of 2024, curbing car theft by nearly half since 2022, according to Colorado State Patrol officials. 

The state reported 8,109 car thefts — or roughly 67 cars stolen per day — from January to April. During the same time last year, 11,643 were reported stolen.

Officials have tied this change in part to a 2023 bill that ties the penalty for stealing a car to behavior instead of the car’s value. 

Prior to the 2023 law, the severity of criminal offenses for auto thefts depended on the value of the stolen vehicle — ranging from a Class 1 misdemeanor for a car worth $2,000 or less to a Class 3 felony for a car worth $100,000 or more.

In addition to removing that value-based approach, the new law also stiffened the penalties for repeat offenders: A person who had two prior convictions now faces a first-degree motor vehicle theft, a Class 3 felony, while a person who steals a car that is altered or damaged faces a Class 4 felony.

The new law along with funding for the Colorado Auto Theft Prevention Authority, renewed focus by local governments and public vigilance are all key to the decrease, officials said.

“It wasn’t one thing that changed, but collectively everything,” said Cale Gould of the auto theft authority, a unit within the Colorado State Patrol.

Colorado Politics editors Luige Del Puerto and Thelma Grimes contributed to this report.