Aurora to release inmates early because of Adams County cap

AURORA | Six inmates — who have been arrested a combined more than 100 times — will be released from jail early next week because the Adams County jail will not house them, city manager Skip Noe said in a letter Friday.

The letter to Adams County Sheriff Doug Darr is the latest salvo in an ongoing feud between the sheriff and Aurora officials over housing municipal inmates at the county jail.

Citing staffing woes, Darr has capped the number of inmates sentenced from municipal courts to just 30 at a time, down from more than 100 before the cap was instituted in 2011.

Since then, Aurora has contracted with Denver to house those inmates at the Denver County Jail when Darr wouldn’t take them.

But in a letter Friday, Noe said Denver no longer has space for Aurora inmates and the city has been unable to find other jails to house them. The inmates will be moved to the Aurora jail from the Denver jail Friday.

Noe said the inmates will them be released from custody March 3.

The city jail is only allowed by law to hold inmates for three days.

“We have every expectation that premature release will result in these individuals offending again during time they should be serving in your facility,” Noe wrote.

Darr did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday afternoon.

The letter didn’t identify the inmates or say what they were sentenced for. But, Noe said the inmates have been arrested before on charges including child abuse, burglary, assault with a deadly weapon and domestic violence.

Aurora officials have been working with Douglas and Broomfield counties in recent weeks to try to hammer out an agreement to house Aurora inmates at those facilities, but Noe said the deals are not yet complete.

The ongoing spat between Darr and other cities in Adams County has included the jail refusing inmates from Aurora, but this is the first time inmates have been set free because there wasn’t room for them at the jail.

“It is unfortunate that your actions have resulted in the premature release of criminals back into the streets of our community,” Noe wrote.

The release comes just weeks after Aurora and four other Adams County cities filed a lawsuit against the county asking a judge to force the sheriff to allow more city inmates at the county jail.

In response to the lawsuit, Adams County Commissioners last week unanimously voted to reinstate the cap. Commissioners last year lifted the ban in hopes that Darr and the cities would work out a deal, but that never happened. Like their vote last spring to lift the cap, the commissioners’ move this week was largely symbolic. Darr has maintained a cap on municipal inmates for several years now and the cap hasn’t fluctuated at all, despite the commission’s efforts.

According to a joint statement from the five cities who filed the lawsuit — Aurora, Commerce City, Thornton, Federal Heights and Northglenn — the cities want a judge to compel Darr to accept municipal inmates.

Darr last week declined to comment on the lawsuit. He said he and his staff are working to hire more deputies to work in the jail, but it takes time.

“When it comes to the process for selecting, hiring, training and deploying a law enforcement officer, generally speaking, that timeframe is in the neighborhood of a year,” Darr said.

In addition to lifting the jail cap last spring, county commissioners signed off on a plan for 13 additional deputies in the sheriff’s office.

Those new hires, which will cost about $630,000, mean the sheriff will have the staff necessary to oversee some units in the jail that currently sit empty. Darr said last week that those deputies aren’t yet ready to work so, at least for now, things remain status quo at the jail.

The statement announcing the lawsuit said Aurora, which remains the only city to have an inmate turned away from the jail, is also seeking monetary damages, though it didn’t specify how much.

Darr has repeatedly said that municipal inmates are the lowest-level offenders, and thus the least dangerous among his inmates. So it makes sense to turn those inmates away as opposed to other, more dangerous offenders.

City officials, however, contend that many of those inmates are dangerous and that because Aurora taxpayers pay for the jail, the city should be allowed to use it as needed.

Aurora inmates sentenced in district or county court are still housed at the jail, but those offenses tend to be more serious.

Since the cap took effect, which limits Aurora to just four Adams County inmates from municipal court at any given time, Aurora has relied on Denver to house the overflow inmates.

Last year Aurora inmates spent more than 2,500 nights in Denver’s jail at a cost of more than $134,000.