Robin Niceta was sentenced to four years in state prison and six months in jail in May 2024 after she was found guilty of attempting to influence a public servant, a felony, and misdemeanor false reporting of child abuse.

Niceta, 43, became embroiled in scandal in January 2022 after Aurora Councilwoman Danielle Jurinsky criticized Niceta’s then-partner Vanessa Wilson, who was Aurora’s police chief, on a talk radio show.

Prosecutors said Niceta called in a false child abuse tip about Jurinsky. Niceta later pleaded guilty to lying about having brain cancer in order to delay her trial and was sentenced to probation in that case.

Niceta is listed as on parole on the , which does not specify when she was released from prison. A DOC spokesperson did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment about Niceta’s release.

Robin Niceta pleaded guilty to two counts of attempting to influence a public servant, forgery and evidence tampering, all felonies, as well as two counts of misdemeanor forgery and criminal impersonation in October.

Niceta will not serve prison time in the case if she completes three years of probation, according to the 18th Judicial District.

Niceta, 42, is incarcerated at in Pueblo for filing a false report against Councilwoman in January 2022 after Jurinsky criticized Niceta’s then-partner — Vanessa Wilson, who was Aurora’s embattled police chief at the time —  on a talk radio show.

During the case, Niceta’s attorney tried to delay the trial and have her competency evaluated, claiming she was terminally ill and including reports from a New Mexico oncologist who allegedly diagnosed her with glioblastoma.

But law enforcement found the oncologist did not exist, the doctor’s office Facebook page and phone number were linked to Niceta and the MRI scans could be found online.

Niceta was sentenced to four years in prison in that case in May and is expected to be eligible for parole in January, according to Colorado Department of Corrections records. Her next parole hearing is set for October.

Jurinsky told The Denver Post she was completely disheartened by Niceta’s sentence, particularly because Niceta pleaded guilty to more felony charges in the cancer scheme case but received no prison time.

“I find this devastating, particularly for the people of Colorado. This is supposed to be representative of justice but it����ap not,” she said. “This is not justice.”

Robin Niceta, 42, pleaded guilty to criminal impersonation, forgery, tampering with physical evidence and attempting to influence a public servant,

Niceta was arrested after she called in a fake tip in January 2022 against Aurora Councilwoman Danielle Jurinsky after Jurinsky criticized Niceta’s then-partner — Vanessa Wilson, who was Aurora’s embattled police chief at the time —  on a talk radio show. She was sentenced to four years in prison and six months in jail in May.

During that case, Niceta’s attorney filed paperwork to delay her trial and evaluate her competency claiming she was terminally ill, including reports from a New Mexico oncology doctor who allegedly diagnosed her with glioblastoma.

But investigators found the New Mexico doctor did not exist, the papers contained errors and improper terminology and the MRI scans could be found on the internet, according to the district attorney’s office.

A Facebook page and phone number for the oncology practice were also linked to Niceta. She was indicted by a grand jury on 10 charges in the case in July 2023.

In a statement, Arapahoe County District Attorney John Kellner described Niceta’s actions, including the false child abuse claim, as “absurd.”

“Her actions were spiteful, vindictive and wasted numerous county resources,” Kellner said. “I believe her nefarious conduct warrants additional time in the Department of Corrections.”

An attorney for Niceta declined to comment on the case. Niceta is set to be sentenced on Jan. 17.

Updated 3:33 p.m. Oct. 14, 2024: Because of a reporter’s error, a previous version of this story misreported which attorney submitted court filings about Niceta’s fake cancer diagnosis. The attorney who filed the false information was representing Niceta.

The city is on the hunt for its sixth chief in five years as the turmoil at the top of the troubled law enforcement agency continues. Interim police chief Heather Morris announced Friday that she would not seek to be the police department’s permanent leader.

The city opened its application process for the permanent chief position on Monday and was set to stop accepting applications at the end of the day Friday, Morris wrote in an email to police employees earlier in the day.

“After thoughtful consideration, I have made the personal decision not to apply for the position,” she said in the email, which was distributed to news media by Aurora city spokesman Ryan Luby.

Morris took the helm in January from former chief Art Acevedo, who left the city after 13 months as interim chief. The two worked together in Houston and during a contentious stint in Miami before both joined the Aurora Police Department.

When she was hired as interim chief, Morris said she’d “consider it a privilege” to be the city’s permanent police chief. On Friday, she said her reasons for leaving should be “secondary” to a focus on a smooth transition to the new chief.

“I’m looking forward to assisting in any way I can with the process, and the selection of a chief who is not interim,” she said. “That is something this department needs.”

The APD has seen five different leaders in the last five years. Chief Nick Metz, who retired in 2019, was followed by Chief Vanessa Wilson, who was controversially fired in April 2022. Former Chief Dan Oates then briefly came out of retirement to head the department until Acevedo was hired on an interim basis in December 2022 following a failed hiring process to find a permanent replacement.

Aurora city manager Jason Batchelor will select the next police chief, who will then need to be approved by a majority of City Council members, Luby said in the news release.

Whoever takes the role will face several challenges, including navigating a court-ordered reform effort within the agency after the state’s attorney general found the city’s police officers routinely conducted racially biased policing and used excessive force.

Robin Niceta will serve six months in jail in addition to the Colorado Department of Corrections sentence after she was found guilty by a jury in Arapahoe County District Court on Nov. 7, according to court records. The case was prosecuted by the Denver District Attorney’s Office.

Her attorney declined to comment Friday.

Niceta was arrested after she called in a false tip in January 2022 against Aurora Councilwoman Danielle Jurinsky the day after Jurinsky criticized Niceta’s then-partner — Vanessa Wilson, who was Aurora’s embattled police chief at the time —  on a talk radio show.

Wilson was fired by now-retired City Manager Jim Twombly in April 2022, a decision she alleges was the result of pressure by Jurinsky and other conservative City Council members who weren’t happy with Wilson, according to a discrimination lawsuit Wilson filed against the city.

Attorneys for Wilson allege she was the victim of a smear campaign over her efforts to reform the Aurora Police Department following a 2021 consent decree mandated by the Colorado Attorney General’s Office after it found a pattern of racist policing and excessive force at the department.

Jurinsky sued Niceta over the false child abuse report, alleging it was retaliation for her criticism of Wilson.

An Arapahoe County District Court judge ordered Niceta to pay Jurinsky $3 million in damages in December 2022.

Niceta is also facing six felony and four misdemeanor charges, including attempting to influence a public servant, forgery and tampering with evidence, after she was charged with lying about a brain cancer diagnosis so she would be found incompetent to stand trial.

Niceta pleaded not guilty to all charges, and that case is set for trial in September.

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The violent arrest has put the former officer, John Haubert, on trial facing assault and other charges with opening statements expected Tuesday.

The trial follows the convictions last year of a police officer and two paramedics from the city’s fire department in the 2019 death of Elijah McClain, who was put in a neckhold by police before being injected with the sedative ketamine by paramedics.

Haubert����ap lawyer, Reid Elkus, did not immediately respond to a request for comment to the allegations but said at a a recent court hearing that there was a rush by police to investigate and charge Haubert.

Haubert, who resigned, has pleaded not guilty.

His arrest of Kyle Vinson in July 2021 renewed anger about misconduct by the city’s police department. The department����ap then-chief, Vanessa Wilson, who had vowed to try to restore trust, announced Haubert����ap arrest four days later, calling the handling of Vinson’s arrest a “very despicable act.”

Haubert also held his hand around Vinson’s neck for about 39 seconds, according to Haubert����ap arrest affidavit, which referred to Haubert as “strangling” Vinson.

Vinson was taken to a hospital for welts and a cut on his head that required six stitches, police said.

Vinson was with two other men sitting under some trees when police responded to a report of trespassing in a parking lot. Two of the men got away from police, but Vinson was ordered to get on his stomach and put his hands out. He complied but repeatedly protested, saying he had not done anything wrong and police did not have a warrant. Police said there was a warrant for his arrest for a probation violation.

In 2021, Vinson told The Associated Press he was a homeless Army veteran who was trying to take a break from the midday heat when police approached. When the arrest turned violent, he said he thought about never being able to see his brother or his friends, ride his bicycle or eat again.

Vinson said he tried to comply with the officers’ orders as best he could and control his emotions so he would not be killed, noting the deaths of George Floyd and McClain.

“If someone was even not compliant just a little bit, they could have lost their life,” he said.

Another former officer, Francine Martinez, was found guilty of failing to intervene to stop Haubert, a misdemeanor crime created by state lawmakers as part of a police reform law passed shortly after the killing of Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020. She was sentenced to six months of house arrest.

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Wilson’s employment was terminated in April 2022, and her attorneys notified the city in November of that year of her intent to sue. On Friday, her team submitted a 35-page complaint in the U.S. District Court for Colorado. It details accusations that former City Manager Jim Twombly fired Wilson “because of her association with and advocacy on behalf of individuals of color, and in retaliation for, and in anticipation of, Chief Wilson engaging in protected activities.”

The complaint alleges a violation of her civil rights and wrongful termination.

“Vanessa Wilson was unjustly fired,” said Scott Medlock, one of Wilson’s attorneys, in an interview. “She was doing her job. She was cleaning up a very disturbed police department, and that made some of the officers — who had been engaging in racist and brutal behavior for a long time, with nobody doing anything about it — pretty unhappy about it.”

The lawsuit claims that Wilson’s firing was the result of pressure from conservative City Council members Danielle Jurinsky, Dustin Zvonek and Steve Sundberg as well as police officers who didn’t like the changes she was making.

Those included abiding by a consent decree with the Colorado Attorney General’s Office. The Aurora Police Department agreed to a court-monitored, five-year plan to implement changes related to the use of force and addressing bias within the agency after an investigation into the 2019 death of Elijah McClain.

The statement also noted that the city had supported Wilson’s decisions during her time as chief and remained committed to the consent decree.

But Medlock said the city was supportive “until it wasn’t.” After new council members came into office in 2021, they clearly did not back Wilson, he said — pointing to Jurinsky calling Wilson “trash” on a conservative talk radio show as an example.

In the lawsuit, Wilson alleges that Jurinsky, Zvonek and Sundberg called for her firing publicly while privately strategizing about how to force her out and pressured Twombly to fire Wilson, or else he’d get fired.

On Monday, Jurinsky declined to comment until she had read through the lawsuit. Zvonek called the complaint the “same fact-free claim she has made before” and said, “Unfortunately for her, you can’t just make stuff up. Having evidence or some sort of proof is required for a lawsuit to move forward.”

Sundberg did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The complaint states that Wilson was forced out of the agency after working there for 25 years, including as the first woman police chief, after holding officers accountable in multiple high-profile incidents. She also attributed the firing to her involvement with Aurora’s diverse communities, participation in Black Lives Matter protests and actions to eradicate racism from the APD. The latter included her efforts to diversify the department and to eliminate racist officers from the ranks, the lawsuit says.

It also states that she was prevented from keeping her badges after she left APD, which the city has allowed others to do. She was unable to get a law enforcement officer safety card that would allow her to carry a concealed weapon.

Wilson is seeking unspecified compensation for damages, including attorneys’ fees.

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AURORA — The police officers who wrestled Elijah McClain to the ground as the unarmed Black man walked home in 2019 went “hands-on” too quickly, Aurora’s interim chief of police said Thursday in an about-face from the police department’s initial stance in the case.

Interim Chief Art Acevedo, who joined the police department more than three years after McClain’s death, commented on the officers’ actions days after former Officer Randy Roedema was sentenced to 14 months in jail with the option for work-release on assault and criminally negligent homicide convictions in McClain’s death.

“We don’t want our officers to go hands-on so quickly, unless there’s an actual threat to them,” Acevedo said during a Thursday news conference.

The position is a reversal of the department’s initial stance in the McClain case, in which investigators from the and Denver Police Department cleared the officers of all wrongdoing.

Aurora police contacted 23-year-old Elijah McClain on the night of Aug. 24, 2019, after a 911 caller reported that McClain was wearing a ski mask and waving his arms as he walked. Officer Nathan Woodyard went hands-on with McClain within eight seconds of approaching him.

Woodyard, Roedema and a third officer, Jason Rosenblatt, tackled McClain to the ground. Woodyard used a chokehold on McClain, who struggled to breathe and begged for help until Aurora Fire Rescue paramedics Jeremy Cooper and Peter Cichuniec arrived and injected McClain with an overdose of ketamine, leading to his death.

“We failed Elijah McClain as a department, we failed (his mother Sheneen) McClain as a department, we failed our community as a department. We also failed the officers that encountered him that night,” Acevedo said. “…They failed because of the attitude, the mindset of: ‘You ask someone to do something, you tell someone to do something and then you make someone do something.’ If you look at the approach to Elijah McClain, we went from ‘asking’ to ‘telling’ to ‘making’ very quickly, and we should not be going hands-on and making someone do something unless there is an immediate threat. It’s tragic.”

Asked what police will do differently in similar situations going forward, Acevedo said officers should better explain their actions.

“There’s going to be a lot more talking,” he said. “It’s a consensual contact, right? We are going to discuss it, we are going to talk to him, and then if we don’t have legal cause to detain, we are training our people to get back in the car and do one of two things: leave, or just watch the person.”

An independent investigation commissioned by the city found the Aurora officers did not have a legal basis to stop or detain McClain. Acevedo said Thursday that the police department is already seeing officers better handle such situations.

“We needed to do better and thank God, as a result of that tragedy, our men and women are doing phenomenal work,” he said.

All five first responders were charged with crimes in connection with McClain’s death. Roedema and paramedics Cooper and Cichuniec were convicted. Then-officers Rosenblatt and Woodyard were acquitted. The paramedics are due to be sentenced in March.

Following the paramedics’ trial, Aurora Fire Rescue Chief Alec Oughton said he was “discouraged” by their felony convictions “for following their training and protocols in place at the time and for making discretionary decisions while taking split-second action in a dynamic environment.”

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A jury has found Robin Niceta, a former Arapahoe County social worker, guilty of both felony attempt to influence a public servant and misdemeanor false reporting of child abuse.

The verdict came down on Tuesday afternoon after closing arguments were made earlier in the day. The prosecution asked for her personal recognizance bond to be reassessed. It was changed to a $10,000 cash bond.

Her sentencing is scheduled for Jan. 19 at 11 a.m.

Niceta was previously accused of filing a false child abuse claim against Aurora City Councilwoman Danielle Jurinsky after the councilwoman criticized former Aurora Police Chief Vanessa Wilson, who was at the time still Aurora’s police chief, on a conservative radio talk show in January. At that time, Niceta and Wilson were dating.

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Robin Niceta, the former partner of ex-Aurora police Chief Vanessa Wilson, is being indicted on multiple charges related to allegedly fabricated medical records claiming she had a brain tumor and was not fit to stand trial in Colorado.

Niceta, who is a former Arapahoe County social worker, is accused of filing a false child abuse complaint against Danielle Jurinsky, an Aurora city councilwoman, after the councilwoman criticized Wilson, who was at the time still Aurora’s police chief, during a radio interview.

Niceta’s mother, Janice Dudley, is also facing charges related to the allegedly false brain tumor scans. The 18th Judicial District Attorney’s Office filed the grand jury indictment on Friday.

Niceta is facing 10 new charges that include multiple counts of conspiracy to attempt to influence a public servant, forgery and tampering with physical evidence. Dudley is facing four counts of conspiracy to attempt to influence a public servant, tampering with evidence and forgery.

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