Blue City Leaders Ignored Warnings As Venezuelan Gangsters Terrorized Residents
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A Colorado town quickly shot onto the national stage after footage of armed men storming an apartment went viral, but outspoken locals say that Venezuelan gang activity isn’t new and city officials spent months ignoring the problem.
A doorbell camera on Aug. 18 recorded six armed men entering an apartment building, roughly ten minutes before a 25-year-old was shot at the complex and later died from his injuries. Local leaders say the footage prompted the city to finally acknowledge and address what had been percolating for a long time: the emergence of a notorious Venezuelan gang known as Tren de Aragua in Aurora.
Emails obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation suggest that Republican Mayor Mike Coffman dismissed the narrative that problems associated with the apartment buildings were tied to gang activity. CBZ Management, the property management company that owns the apartment complex where the August incident took place, tried warning the mayor and other city officials about the threat of Tren de Aragua, but those warnings came to no avail, the company told the DCNF.
“Zev [Baumgarten] and other people working there did everything possible to get the police to pay attention to the story. They did not,” a representative for the CBZ Management said to the Daily Caller News Foundation, in a conversation that included Zev Baumgarten, who has been described in court documents as the owner of the company. CBZ Management is the owner of several apartment buildings in Aurora that have allegedly been taken over by Tren de Aragua gang members, but the company says they were made out to be the bad guys when they attempted to warn city leaders.
https://dailycaller.com/2024/10/25/aurora-mayor-dismissed-gang-warnings/