Colorado
Opinion: A city doing all it can to reduce crime needs help from state government.
The crime wave crashing throughout Colorado is a critical problem dealing with communities in practically each nook of our state. In Aurora, we put ahead the Aurora Motion Plan, a complete set of methods aimed toward addressing the rise in crime. Our plan requires totally staffing and totally funding our police division, a homeless tenting ban, and reinstating applications that successfully handle youth gang violence.
However there may be solely a lot we will do on our personal. We desperately want state lawmakers to behave, and to behave now.
To make every of our communities’ protected locations to dwell, work, and lift households, the Colorado Normal Meeting should deal with a number of critical points that solely it’s empowered to handle.
Firstly, the Normal Meeting should reform private recognizance bonds. Damning investigations from CBS4 and KMGH Channel 7 discovered that 1000’s of criminals, together with these charged with violent crimes, are being launched with out having to publish bond. Big numbers of them don’t return to courtroom.
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We can’t launch violent criminals again into our group based mostly on little greater than a pinky-promise to point out up. Laws was just lately launched to appropriate this grievous flawed. Legislative Democrats promptly killed the invoice. That’s unacceptable.
On the subject of violent criminals, the Normal Meeting additionally should act to cease letting violent criminals out of jail early on parole. There ought to be no early parole for violent offenders, plain and easy. Parole ought to be reserved for non-violent offenses solely.
Third, the Normal Meeting should shut the loophole that permits tens of 1000’s of convicted felons to own weapons in our neighborhoods. Due to flawed laws handed simply final yr, drug sellers and automotive thieves convicted of felonies at the moment are allowed to hold weapons underneath Colorado regulation. With our speedy rise in fentanyl deaths, and Colorado main each different state in automotive thefts, permitting these harmful criminals entry to weapons is is not sensible. It’s harmful.
Talking of fentanyl and unhealthy legal guidelines which damage public security in Colorado, the Normal Meeting should repair the heinous regulation they handed in 2019, which diminished the possession of as much as 4 grams of fentanyl from a felony all the way down to a misdemeanor. That quantity of fentanyl is sufficient to actually kill 1000’s of Coloradans – in no universe ought to that be the identical stage offense as shoplifting. Since 2015, fentanyl deaths in Colorado have elevated greater than 1,000%. This can be a disaster that calls for speedy and critical corrective motion, not political grandstanding that fails to handle the actual drawback.
Lastly, the Normal Meeting must work to help our police throughout the state. The near-constant cries from out-of-touch politicians and activists to “defund the police” has brought on critical hurt, with officer morale plunging and police departments throughout the state dealing with extreme staffing shortages because of this.
In Aurora, we’ve misplaced document numbers of officers over the previous 2 years and have struggled to rebuild our police power to adequately meet the rising wants of a group determined to be protected from surging crime. Police departments throughout the Denver metro space are dealing with dire staffing shortages.
It isn’t simply the general public assaults on police which have depressed division ranks, however the stripping of certified immunity from police within the title of reform. Whereas we clearly want reform and will by no means hesitate to carry police accountable for misconduct, outright stripping of certified immunity has made officers frightened of doing their jobs proactively, lest they be personally sued into poverty.
We are able to have significant reform with out decimating the ranks of our police departments. The state Normal Meeting must strike that acceptable steadiness.
In Aurora, we are going to proceed to do every part in our energy to make our metropolis the most secure place to dwell in Colorado, however we can’t do it alone. We’ve restricted powers. We don’t write the state’s legal guidelines; state lawmakers do.
Colorado’s offender-friendly legal guidelines should change if we’re going to stem the tide of the crime wave crashing throughout our communities.
Dustin Zvonek, of Aurora, is a member of the Aurora Metropolis Council.
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