Did police in Aurora, Colorado, issue a shelter-in-place order for the city on September 4, 2024, in response to Venezuelan gang violence? No, that's not true: Police told Lead Stories that the shelter-in-place order was due to a SWAT operation to arrest a man wanted on a felony menacing warrant. Residents were asked to stay inside for their safety while officers worked to get him to surrender, which he eventually did without any problems.
The claim was implied in a post (archived here) that appeared on X, formerly Twitter, on September 5, 2024, under the on-screen title "Shelter in Place." The post's caption said:
A shelter in place order was just issued for Aurora, CO residents.
But I thought this was all in our imaginations?
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Fri Sep 6 16:22:03 2024 UTC)
The post provided nothing to support its implication that Aurora police issued the shelter-in-place order for the city due to Venezuelan gang violence, which was a hot topic on social media in August and September 2024, a Google News search (archived here) showed.
Shelter-in-place order
The shelter-in-place order was announced in an #APDAlert (archived here) on the Aurora Police Department's X account on September 4, 2024. It appeared online more than three hours before the post that is the subject of this fact check. You can see the alert below:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Fri Sep 6 20:39:47 2024 UTC)
Even though the post by @TaraBull808 said the shelter-in-place order had been "just issued for Aurora," it was already over at that point.
Aurora Police Department
In a September 6, 2024, email to Lead Stories, Joe Moylan, a public information officer with the Aurora Police Department (APD), said:
The shelter in place order was issued due to the SWAT team serving an arrest warrant in the area. The suspect, Alfredo Jaquez (7/2/85), was wanted on a felony menacing warrant out of Adams County District Court. The shelter in place order had nothing to do with gang activity.
At the time of the incident, police said on social media that the order was necessary because the suspect was "not complying with orders to exit the residence."
Google Maps shows below that the shelter-in-place order was limited to an eight-square-block section of the Denver suburb -- a city of about 400,000 people -- not the entire community. The initial social media post by APD said the order covered "Aurora residents residing between Nome and Moline streets and 17th and 19th avenues," outlined in yellow below.
(Source: Google Maps screenshot taken on Fri Sep 6 18:22:06 2024 UTC)
In all, the order lasted about 90 minutes, starting after 10 p.m. MDT and ending before midnight. The all-clear (archived here) was also given on the APD's X account:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Fri Sep 6 20:49:59 2024 UTC)
Read more
Additional Lead Stories fact checks of claims concerning Aurora, Colorado, and Venezuelan gangs can be found here.
