Chief discusses recent shootings

AURORA | In a typical year, Aurora police average about three officer-involved shootings, Aurora police Chief Dan Oates said Tuesday. 

But in less than four months in 2010, the department saw five officer-involved shootings, including four in which the suspect was killed. Two officers were also shot, but are expected to survive. 

“Obviously, the volume is disproportionate to our normal activities,” Oates told a meeting of City Council’s Public Safety and Courts Committee Tuesday. 

Oates cautioned against trying to draw conclusions from the recent rash of shootings — which included three fatal shootings in less than a week last month — other than to call the incidents an “unfortunate series of events.”

Police have already turned over the first two incidents — one involving suspected bank robbers in January and one involving a suspected drug dealer in February — to prosecutors who will make a ruling on whether the shootings were justified. 

The three from March have not been presented to prosecutors but police will give those cases to prosecutors at some point, he said.