Law enforcement leaders urge law makers to address rising crime - FOX21News.com

COLORADO SPRINGS – Ahead of the start of Colorado’s legislative session starting up in Denver on Wednesday, Jan. 12, law enforcement leaders from the Pikes Peak Region are urging law makers to take steps, and undo previous actions, to address the statistics of rising crime across the state.

District Attorney for the Fourth Judicial District Michael Allen said in a press conference Monday, Jan. 10, that the Colorado legislature’s combination of actions to reform bond and restructure sentences for lower level felonies and misdemeanors has let people out of jail or prison who pose a danger to the public.

“Too often we’re siding with getting people out of custody as opposed to protecting the public,” Allen said.

Allen reports increasing violent crime in Colorado (24%) and Colorado Springs (23.8%).

In 2021, the legislature made two major actions that will go into effect in the spring of 2022. One, Senate Bill 21-271 reduces the sentences for misdemeanors–no matter the nature–to 364 days, a full year less than what the previous allowed.

The other House Bill 21-1280 restricts how long someone can be held in custody before a bond hearing.

Allen also takes issue with a bill Governor Jared Polis signed in 2019 that reduced drug possession charges from a felony to a misdemeanor including fentanyl–the drug many public health experts say is fueling the deaths behind the current opioid crisis.

“Of the policies that you saw over the last several years, we should note that especially in Colorado, a lot of those policies are bipartisan in nature and polices that we recognize probably shouldn’t move advance, didn’t move forward,” Senate President Leroy Garcia of Pueblo said on Monday, Jan. 10, in a press conference on the steps of the State Capitol.

El Paso County Sheriff Bill Elder sees the affect the reforms have made in the county’s jail. Combined with COVID-19, the average daily population in the jail has decreased from 1,800 in 2018 to 1,300 inmates today.

“We no longer have the ability to hold inmates in our jail that should be in our jail,” Elder said.

While both men argue that more offenders are being let out before they should and causing a public health crisis, they also acknowledge the role of mental health in the crime increase and that incarceration is not the best form of rehabilitation for those individuals.

“The less years that a violent offender spends in prison without really effective rehabilitation, which is few and far between in the prison system, means that person is going to be out of custody sooner and victimizing more people,” Allen said.

Elder reports 60% of inmates in the county’s jail have mental health issues. He estimates 20% of them are dealing with serious mental illness.

Elder says given the lack of a more rigorous community-based system to treat mental health, the Jail has had to step in and be that resource for people with those problems, who end up committing crimes.

“It’s a revolving door in our community. They come into our facility, they get treated with maybe some of the best mental health treatment they’ve ever seen, because we’re forced to do that,” Elder said. “Then, when they’re done with that, they’re released back into the community to limited resources, to a limited ability to seek those same services, and they don’t go back and seek those services when they’re in the community. They just re-offend and come right back in.”

Elder says the state legislature has failed in the past to come up with substantial resources for mental health treatment across the state.

Garcia says that is a top priority for the 2022 session.

“We are investing $1 billion dollars in some of the deeply rooted problems to address the crime challenges: A lack of affordable housing and access to behavioral and mental health services so we can prevent crime from occurring and protect Coloradans from being victims in the first place,” Garcia said.

source: https://www.fox21news.com/news/law-enforcement-leaders-urge-law-makers-to-address-rising-crime/

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