A trio of masked gunmen were caught on camera raiding a home in a Denver suburb and stealing a motorcycle as the Democrat city is overrun by migrant gangs.
Cops in Commerce City shared surveillance footage showing three masked and hooded suspects pull up to a suburban home with its garage door left open early Thursday morning.
Two of them were seen carrying what police described as a handgun and an AR-style rifle, then using flashlights to look around the garage.
Eventually the suspects kneeled down and dragged a motorcycle out of the garage, before fleeing in what police describe as a dark-colored, older-model Ford pickup with a silver stripe on the bottom.
‘We always take property crime seriously… but when you bring an AR-style rifle to a home burglary/motor vehicle theft, we can’t help but wonder how much worse this could have been and how dangerous you really are,’ police wrote in an apparently since-deleted post, according to KDVR.
It remains unclear whether the motorcycle thieves were part of a Venezuelan migrant gang that have taken over the nearby city of Aurora.
In July, the Tren de Aragua gang was blamed for a shooting in a Target parking lot.
‘Those Venezuelans is taking over,’ a man can be heard saying in a video posted to TikTok by user 100packsavvy.
The July 29 footage shows bedlam in a Target parking lot in Aurora where Venezuelans had gathered in a weekend demonstration over the elections in their homeland.
While the demonstration was mostly peaceful, migrants swarmed the shopping center, completely taking it over, with cars sardined, bumper-to-bumper.
This forced Target and other retailers in the area to close early, fearing their customers might get caught up in the demonstrations, according to Telemundo Denver.
As night fell, the trashed parking lot littered with garbage turned from disgusting to dangerous.
Police wound up responding to several incidents, including gun shots being fired, the Spanish-speaking outlet reported.
The TikTok users who made recorded the video claimed he and his companions were almost run over.
‘We almost just got hit,’ one man says.
Then just last week, a heavily armed-mob was seen storming through an apartment complex in Aurora brandishing guns.
A man in a hoodie could also be seen lugging a high-powered rifle and pounds on a door in the building, while several others wield pistols.
‘A GANG HAS TAKEN OVER several apartment complexes in Aurora!’ local council member Danielle Jurinsky wrote on X.
The couple who filmed the takeover at The Edge at Lowry in Wednesday, Cindy and Edward Romero, also told Fox 31 that it was recorded shortly before a shootout at the complex – which left one person grievously wounded and damaged several vehicles were also damaged.
‘It’s been a nightmare, and I can’t wait to get out of here,’ Cindy Romero said as she packed up her possessions to flee the crime-torn city.
The couple had placed an elaborate system of locks running from the top of the door to the bottom before the shooting.
‘Every day when we come home, we have to do this every time we go outside to take out the garbage,’ Cindy said, demonstrating how the locks worked.
‘Every time we go to bed at night. We have to keep like this so that nobody can kick in the door,’ she added.
Cops have refused to confirm whether the gunmen in the video from the apartment complex belong to the infamous Tren de Aragua cartel, but council member Jurinksy told Fox 31 that the building had been overrun by a Venezuelan gang.
‘This isn’t just Americans. Other Venezuelans are being extorted by this gang,” Jurinsky said.
Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman also told FOX News on Thursday there are ‘several buildings’ that have ‘fallen to these Venezuelan gangs’ in the city.
He said he believed the buildings were used as taxpayer-funded migrant housing, which is what gave the gangs a foothold.
‘This is an organized criminal effort,’ the Republican mayor said. ‘Whether it’s a trend, a drug war, that remains to be seen.
‘They’ve, in fact, have kind of pushed out the property management through intimidation and then collected the rents.’
Coffman claimed the city is a ‘victim’ of federal policy and Denver’s sanctuary city policy.
‘I think we’re a victim of a failed policy at the southern border,’ he said, arguing: ‘Venezuela does not cooperate with the United States in criminal histories.
‘You’ve had these massive waves of migrants coming across the border that many of them crossed the border illegally, we were arrested, asked for a political asylum, were not adequately vetted, were released into the country, the city of Aurora.
‘We did everything we could to quite frankly, keep them out of the city because it’s not our problem. This is a federal problem.’
Under the Biden administration – which appointed Vice President Kamala Harris its ‘border czar’ – illegal immigration into the US ballooned into 8million crossings. It is now expected to rise to 10million by the end of September.
The migrant crisis has since moved into the city, with more than 40,000 reportedly arriving to the Denver area since December 2022.
The problem in Colorado has been bolstered by Democrat Gov. Jared Polis’ policies making it easier for migrants to get drivers’ licenses, attend school and obtain taxpayer-funded resources.
But Polis has argued that the migrant takeover is a figment of Councilwoman Jurinsky’s ‘imagination.’
‘The governor ha already let the mayor know that the state is ready to support the local police department with assistance from state troopers and the Colorado Bureau of Investigation,’ Shelby Wieman, a spokeswoman for the governor, told the New York Post.
‘But according to police intelligence, this purported invasion is largely a feature of Danielle Jurinsky’s imagination.’
The spokesperson went on to say that ‘it is illegal to take over buildings in Colorado’ and if Jurinsky has ‘knowledge of such activity’ the governor’s office is ‘ready to assist cops in taking them back.’
When the Post asked again whether Polis wants to backtrack his statement, given the video evidence of the takeover, Wieman said the governor ‘really hopes that the city council members in charge stop trashing their own city when they are supposed to keep it safe.
‘Over the last month, Gov. Polis has been in regular contact with the City of Aurora and the Aurora Police Department and has offered all state assistance to support their efforts if requested,’ she said, adding that the governor’s office expects to see violent crime continue to drop in the city, as it had in 2022 and 2023.