AURORA | Adams County jailers turned away an Aurora car thief last week only after Aurora officials ignored complaints that the city was exceeding its allotted number of municipal inmates, Sheriff Doug Darr said today.
During a press conference aimed at responding to yesterday’s complainst by local police chiefs about the jail’s controversial limit on municipal inmates, Darr said Aurora had 15 municipal inmates in the jail last week. That’s almost four times the limit of four that the city is supposed to have based on a cap instituted in 2012.
Darr said his jailers reached out to the city to tell Aurora court leaders that the city was again exceeding the limit, but nobody from Aurora replied.
“Unfortunately we could not get a return call,” Darr said.
When city marshals delivered the convicted car thief to the jail May 20, jailers refused to take the man. Since, the jail has refused another six people convicted in Aurora Municipal Court of low-level offenses.
The jail’s decision led to harsh criticism from several area police chiefs on Tuesday, including Aurora police Chief Dan Oates, who said the move puts public safety at risk. The inmates need to be in jail because they pose a risk, Oates said.
“I don’t think anybody disputes that, particularly the next person whose car he would steal if he weren’t in jail,” Oates said after the chiefs’ press conference Tuesday.
But Darr stressed today that the inmates are still locked up, just at the Denver jail, where Aurora has an agreement to house municipal inmates that Adams County won’t take.
The issue, Darr said, is that cities like Aurora regularly sentence petty criminals to county jail sentences, often on charges that had they been filed in a state or county court, could not land someone in jail by law.
Those inmates further tax an understaffed jail that is already “bursting at the seams,” Darr said.
Still, leaders in Aurora and other cities point out that the municipal offenders make up such a tiny portion of the jail — only about 5 percent of inmates — that the sheriff needs to find other solutions to his crowding issues.
Darr countered Wednesday that the municipal inmates are the “lowest level, nonviolent offenders” in the jail, so it makes the most public safety sense to limit them, as opposed to other inmates who pose a greater threat to the community.
The county’s inmate limit has been controversial since it took effect in early 2012 and in April this year, county commissioners formally rescinded it. But Darr said it would be at least 18 months before he was able to hire and train enough jailers to handle more inmates.
The cap means the jail will only house 30 inmates a day from municipal courts around the county, which tend to handle lower-level crimes. Before the cap, the jail housed about 120 municipal offenders each day.
Since the cap began, Aurora has used more than 1,100 “bed days” at the Denver jail at a cost of more than $60,000.
The Adams County jail still houses hundreds of inmates arrested in Aurora as long as they are prosecuted in county or district court.
For Aurora, the municipal inmate cap has meant only about four beds for municipal inmates, down from about 20 each day. But the cap hasn’t been firm and the cities regularly exceed the number of beds allotted. Jail officials have regularly warned city officials that they were exceeding the cap, but last week marked the first time they barred an inmate from the jail.
Aurora is the only city in Adams County that has seen a municipal inmate refused, but the chiefs from the other cities said it could easily be their inmates who are barred from jail in the future.
Finally someone has the guts to challenge Oates on something he says. The city of Aurora and this chief need to understand that they can’t keep doing whatever they want, whenever they want to people, and expect everyone to make allowances for their arrogance indefinately.
Ignoring Darr’s call was not only childish it was inappropriate and unprofessional. Here is just another example of the animosity Oates is creating and council is allowing him to continue so, Darr took you to school. He contradicts and clarifies the public’s safety being at risk scare tactic of our chief. Then in a professional way, Darr essentially says that is a lie.
Instead of creating problems, a chief should solve them and we can’t have one that takes advantage of calling in the media because someone had the audacity to tell him no. Or, tried to anyway.