Amare Garlington’s mother said her son’s death and the injuries to an Aurora officer and K-9 could have been prevented if he had been admitted for care earlier.
AURORA, Colo. — Aurora’s independent monitor is calling for a broad review of the city’s behavioral health crisis system after the April 9 officer-involved shooting that left a 23-year-old man dead, and an officer and police K-9 seriously injured.
The special report, released Wednesday, begins with Amare Garlington’s death. According to the monitor’s summary of public reporting, Aurora Police and mental health clinicians responded on April 9 to a reported behavioral health crisis involving a 23-year-old man.
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Responders spent about 20 minutes trying to communicate and deescalate before the encounter escalated. The report says Garlington exited with a knife and stabbed Officer Mark Moore and K-9 Cyrus. Less-lethal tools were used, but proved ineffective, and Moore fired the fatal shots.
“The central lesson of April 9 and other recent incidents is not simply that crisis scenes are dangerous,” the monitor wrote. “It is that even a city that has made real progress must continue strengthening the behavioral health treatment and crisis-response continuum so that fewer people reach the point at which a police-centered response becomes the last available option.”
The report does not determine whether any officer acted lawfully or within policy. The criminal and administrative investigations into the April 9 shooting of Garlington remain pending. Instead, the monitor said Aurora should examine whether its larger network of police, fire, clinicians, hospitals, dispatchers and behavioral health providers is doing enough before a crisis reaches officers.
Garlington’s mother, Michelle Garcia, said her son had a history of mental illness and a history with law enforcement.
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“I asked them, ‘Please, make him go into a psychiatric hospital,’” Garcia said.
She also said that years earlier, she tried to ask her son’s probation officer to get him help.
“Even weeks before, I had called or texted, like the 988 line, and like looked for mobile crisis units because I saw it coming,” she said.
The monitor’s report says that is the kind of history Aurora should examine after serious behavioral health incidents: prior warning signs, attempts to obtain help, contacts with mental health, medical and public safety systems, and all attempted interventions. The goal, the report says, is to determine whether the system operated as designed and where gaps may exist.
The report also cites two other fatal Aurora police shootings.
In September 2025, officers fatally shot 17-year-old Blaze Balle-Mason after he called 911 and reportedly said he intended to open fire inside a gas station and shoot responding officers. Investigators later determined he was unarmed, according to the report, which said later reporting described the case as having apparent “suicide by cop” dynamics.
In May 2025, Aurora Officer Brandon Mills fatally shot 32-year-old Rashaud Johnson after responding alone to reports of a barefoot man behaving erratically near Denver International Airport. Johnson was unarmed, barefoot and appeared to be experiencing some form of mental crisis, according to the report.
The monitor wrote that the three cases should be understood as part of a broader system issue, not simply as individual police encounters. The report says Aurora has made meaningful progress in behavioral health response, including the Aurora Mobile Response Team, Crisis Response Teams that pair trained officers with clinicians, 24-hour crisis services through Aurora Mental Health & Recovery, and access to 988.
But the monitor said those resources should now be tested against real-world outcomes.
“Behavioral health infrastructure should not be viewed as adjacent to public safety,” the report says. “It is part of public safety. It is part of violence prevention. It is part of officer safety. It is part of family support. And it is part of community trust.”
Garcia said she does not blame the officers who responded on April 9.
“I don’t blame anything on the officers at all,” she said. “It’s the system, you know, the mental health system.”
She said by the time police are called, the crisis may already be too far gone.
“By the time the police come, I think people are already so far into a mental crisis that what can law enforcement do?” Garcia said.
The monitor made 14 recommendations, including that Aurora map its behavioral health continuum, audit emergency mental health hold pathways, review dispatch routing protocols, clarify the roles of officers and clinicians during co-response calls, assess high-risk crisis-response strategies, improve continuity of care and create stronger data systems to track crisis outcomes.
One recommendation focuses on families. The monitor wrote that families are “often the first to recognize serious deterioration and the least well-positioned to navigate a fragmented system under pressure.”
The report recommends that Aurora assess whether family-facing support is strong enough and whether resources are “understandable and practically usable when help is needed most.”
Garcia said she felt the system was too difficult to navigate.
“They make things so difficult that I think they make people with mental illness give up,” she said.
The report also recommends that Aurora create a more structured process for people who repeatedly come to the attention of the system through crisis calls, threats of self-harm, repeated clinician contact or repeated family requests for intervention. Those cases, the monitor wrote, should not “simply cycle through the same emergency pathways.” Instead, they should trigger coordinated review, information-sharing and proactive follow-up.
Garcia said that description fits her son.
“Amare had a history of mental illness,” she said. “He had a history dealing with law enforcement.”
The monitor urged the city to convene a task force that would include APD, Aurora Fire Rescue, city officials, Aurora Mental Health & Recovery, the Colorado Behavioral Health Administration and other agencies involved in behavioral health. The task force would review the three fatal incidents and identify gaps in current services.
The report also recommends Behavioral Health Incident Reviews, a multidisciplinary review process modeled as a system-learning tool rather than a use-of-force investigation. Those reviews would examine the full sequence of events before and after significant crisis incidents, including pre-crisis indicators, prior system contacts, dispatch decisions, intervention tools, emergency holds, transfer decisions and follow-up care.
The monitor said Aurora’s current framework does not appear to clearly establish one point of accountability for coordinating the behavioral health crisis system as a whole. Without that, the report says, different parts of the system may function well in isolation, but fail to operate as “a cohesive, accountable system.”
Garcia said families should be included in that kind of review.
“Getting their input and feedback can help because you don’t understand until you live it,” she said.
She said she believes Amare’s death and the injuries to Moore and Cyrus could have been prevented if her son had been admitted for care earlier.
“Had they put a hold on him that Wednesday, I don’t believe any of this would have happened,” Garcia said. “My son would be here. Poor Officer Moore and Cyrus wouldn’t have gotten injured.”
She said she hopes the report leads to changes that could help other families before their loved ones reach the point hers did.
“In one sense, it makes me glad,” Garcia said. “Because then maybe my son’s death will not be for nothing.”