On April 6, a 22-year-old Aurora man received what Court Administrator Zelda DeBoyes called “a gift.”
The unusual saga began when Aurora police arrested the man on suspicion of misdemeanor motor vehicle theft before transporting him to the municipal jail off of East Alameda Parkway Monday afternoon. And just as they’ve been doing for several weeks, staffers at the detention center administered a health screening in a sallyport beside the entrance. They asked the man if he was sick, had been around a person who is sick or recently traveled to a country known to be rife with COVID-19.
DeBoyes said the man was exhibiting cold symptoms: sneezing, sniffling and coughing. He was turned away from the jail while officials awaited a medical clearance.
That’s when the limbo began.
Upon being cleared by medical professionals — meaning he was deemed well enough to be booked into jail — DeBoyes tried to get the man transferred to the detention center in Arapahoe County, where he was wanted on an outstanding warrant for the class-six felony charge of possession of a controlled substance. They refused.
DeBoyes then turned to her colleagues at the jail in Adams County, where the man was also wanted on a warrant stemming from a case in which he was feloniously charged with being a juvenile in possession of a weapon. After initially agreeing to transfer the man to the jail in Brighton, Adams County authorities ultimately changed course after learning of his symptoms.
“They refused their own warrant,” DeBoyes said. “ … That’s the shocking piece, when they say ‘Hey, I don’t care if it’s our warrant or not, we’re not accepting him.’”
The man, whom DeBoyes declined to identify, was eventually released.
He did not post a bond. He was not charged for any crimes related to the suspected car theft.
“He is probably somebody who should be in jail somewhere,” DeBoyes said. “Will we get him in the end? Yes, we will get him in the end because this bonehead will do it again and again and again. It’s sad to say, but he will bring himself to the attention of law enforcement … he was given a gift and he will likely not be smart enough to realize he was given a gift.”
Such is the state of the criminal justice system in Colorado in spring 2020.
As the COVID-19 pandemic has upended daily life, courts, cops and jailers have scrambled to keep people out of local cells, which are largely seen as viral tinderboxes merely awaiting a match. The result is an incongruous miscellany of policies and protocols.
“It seems that because there are no statewide rules or requirements, you’re getting a very uneven patchwork of responses and it basically depends on which jurisdiction you’re in and which county you’re in as far as your likelihood of contracting the novel coronavirus because you’re held in jail,” said Tristan Gorman, legislative policy coordinator at the Colorado Criminal Defense Bar.
Data suggest that each person with COVID-19 infects at least two additional people, a rate almost double that of influenza. In overcrowded jails, where effective social distancing is nearly impossible, officials fear the virus could spread with alarming speed, resulting in an outbreak that could be deadly in the facility and hazardous to the outside world.
“It’s not if the virus will take hold in the jails, the question is when, and the when is right in front of us,” said ACLU Colorado public policy director Denise Maes.
That’s why Maes’ organization supported a recent effort filed by Gorman’s group and other criminal defense entities calling for the state supreme court to craft a blanket policy intended to reduce the number of inmates currently incarcerated in county jails. The court denied the pair of petitions the same day they were filed.
“I think that gives an indication of the level of seriousness with which they are treating our request,” Gorman said of the court’s speedy dismissal.
Still, recent data from the three county jails that handle Aurora inmates suggest administrators are successfully slashing the number of people residing there each night.
The largest of the three facilities, the Arapahoe County detention center, reported housing 697 inmates on April 7, a roughly 37 percent decrease from its average daily population in 2019. About 85 percent of those people are pre-trial detainees, meaning they’ve been charged with criminal activity, but have yet to be convicted in court or accept a plea deal from prosecutors., according to Ginger Delgado, spokeswoman for the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office. In Adams County, as many as 60 percent of the 627 inmates reported in that jurisdiction’s jail Monday were pre-trial detainees. The facility has also cut its population by about 37 percent since the beginning of the year. The Douglas County jail, which only serves a minute fraction of southeast Aurora, has cut its population by about 28 percent in recent weeks, reporting only 233 inmates on Monday. More than 60 percent of those detainees are awaiting trial.
The Aurora municipal jail, which only holds prisoners for up to three days, boasted an average daily population of 19 people last month, according to DeBoyes. The facility typically houses about 40 people at any given time.
The reductions are part of a multi-pronged effort by police, attorneys and judges to empty jails before the virus slithers through their fenced perimeters.
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Local cops and sheriffs deputies are actively working to keep people out of courts by writing summonses in lieu of making physical arrests whenever possible. In Aurora, that resulted in a 22 percent drop in the number of physical arrests between February and March, according to statistics provided by the Aurora Police Department. Officers issued 365 criminal summonses, which is a drop from the 418 such citations issued in February but a bump from the 350 handed out in January.
Law enforcers are still required to arrest people suspected of crimes related to domestic violence and the slew of serious offenses outlined in the state’s Victim Rights Act, including murder, sexual assault, leaving the scene of an accident, and many others.
In the courts, prosecutors in Arapahoe County have been revisiting cases that had either stalled or faced an impending statutory deadline, according to Matt Maillaro, assistant district attorney in the 18th Judicial District, which covers the bulk of Aurora.
“With a little bit of creativity and some work we can resolve some of those cases and get those people out of custody,” said Maillaro, who’s also a candidate to replace current District Attorney George Brauchler in the fall. “ … That’s been a change in philosophy.”
Maillaro said district attorneys have agreed to grant personal recognizance bonds in more cases where a defendant has previously failed to appear. Typically, such a bond would not be granted to someone who has skipped court numerous times and appears likely to continue eloping. That’s a tradeoff attorneys are increasingly willing to make, Maillaro said.
“We are going to lose some of these guys,” he said. “They’re not going to just show up willingly down the road, — we hope they will — but the bigger issue now is to keep them out of the jail.”
Big jails, Big risks
So far, detention facilities in Aurora have largely managed to avoid cases of COVID-19 within their walls, but they’re prepared for potential transmissions. There have no confirmed cases in the city’s three county jails as of April 7, but officials from the trio of facilities said they have the ability to test for the virus and would isolate any positive cases in solitary cells.
As of April 1, Arapahoe County officials said they had tested two people in the jail for the coronavirus. Officials with that sheriff’s office confirmed last month that one deputy was confirmed to have contracted the virus.
Adams County jail had not conducted any tests on inmates as of Monday. It’s unclear whether any staffers have been tested.
Douglas County jail staffers had tested eight people as of Monday, according to a spokesperson for the sheriff’s office. Detention workers there monitor and quarantine all new inmates for two weeks upon arrival, officials said.
DeBoyes’ facility hasn’t confirmed any cases of the virus in detainees, although her staffers don’t have the ability to run tests. She’s ordered a handful of inmates to get medically cleared before entering, and most have been returned to her custody after getting the green light from a doctor or nurse. She said she’s prepared to provide masks to potentially symptomatic detainees and isolate them in a cell by themselves.
The implementation of similar protocols at a north Aurora detention center privately operated by the GEO Group Inc. on behalf of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been erratic, with information coming in dribbles or not at all. But calls for ICE to do more in its detention facilities have been steadily increasing.
The immigrant prison was the site of a “drive-by” protest last week, where protesters honked from their cars to avoid being near each other.
Ten detainees were isolated for 14 days in March at the facility, owned and operated by GEO Group Inc., for possibly being exposed to COVID-19. Two sources inside the facility told Denver Westword last week a guard tested positive for the virus.
Sofia Halpin, an organizer with Abolish ICE Denver, said her group has heard that possibly many more detainees have been quarantined for longer periods of time. An ICE spokesperson was not available for comment as of this publishing, but previously said the agency is “taking important steps to further safeguard those in our care.”
ICE officials say they have protocols in place to prevent virus transmission.
“ICE continues to incorporate CDC’s COVID-19 guidance, which is built upon the already established infectious disease monitoring and management protocols currently in use by the agency. In addition, ICE is actively working with state and local health partners to determine if any detainee requires additional testing or monitoring to combat the spread of the virus,” ICE spokeswoman Alethea Smock said in a statement last month.
Aurora Congressman Jason Crow, who has been calling on more transparency in the ICE detention center for more than a year, said in a letter to ICE officials he wants people with non-violent immigration charges “who do not pose a public safety risk” freed from the Aurora facility and others like it.
“ICE detention centers and their contract facilities are a hotbed for the spread of the coronavirus and are a tremendous threat to the health of the detainees, staff, and community as a whole,” Crow said in a statement. “If there are measures we can take to prevent the spread of the virus, we take them. That’s how this needs to work.”
The detention center at 1330 Oakland Street has faced harsh criticism for how it’s handled infectious disease outbreaks in the past, and while no inmates have yet been confirmed to have contracted the virus yet, previous incidents are fresh on Crow’s mind.
“The situation is compounded by our concern about the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s ability to protect the health and safety of detainees. Last year, detention facilities in Colorado, Arizona, and Texas instituted quarantines resulting from viral disease outbreaks among their detainee populations,” according to the letter Crow and 14 other legislators signed. “Despite these public health issues, ICE expanded their capacities and transferred detainees into facilities impacted by these outbreaks. At the time, ICE showed no indication that they would provide additional health care staff or resources to address the viral disease outbreak. At the end of the viral disease outbreak, CDC reported a total of 898 confirmed and 19 states reported probable mumps cases in adult migrants detained in 57 facilities (34 private company operated facilities, 19 county jails that housed detainees, and four ICE-operated) between September 1, 2018 and August 22, 2019. There were 33 confirmed cases among the facility staff.”
A ‘highway of transmission’
The inevitability of spreading the novel coronavirus has left a lot of local leaders asking how to mitigate the disease in places where the six-feet social distance recommendation is impractical. In most Colorado jails, two or three inmates share a cell and nearly all use communal bathrooms.
The Aurora City Council unanimously agreed on Monday that regional detention facilities housing Aurora inmates should do as much as they can to reduce spreading the virus. No specific detention center is named in the Aurora resolution.
Councilman Curtis Gardner sponsored a resolution asking the centers and court systems to take precautions such as enhancing transparency to the public, checking people for symptoms before they enter the facility and discontinuing pre-trial detention when possible.
“I think it’s possible to advocate for vulnerable populations while upholding the law,” he said, adding that taking additional measures in courts and jails helps to protect staff in detention centers and courts and the general public.
Maes with the ACLU estimated that about 600 inmates are being released back into communities across Colorado each day. An outbreak in a jail or prison couldn’t be confined there for long.
BY THE NUMBERS
January 2020
713 physical arrests
350 criminal summonses
February 2020
723 physical arrests
418 criminal summonses
March 2020
565 physical arrests
365 criminal summonses
Statistics provided by the Aurora Police Department
“That is a highway of transmission to the general public,” Maes said. “Some people might not care what happens in a detention center, but there are people coming and going back into the community, maintenance workers, interpreters, the officers and deputies. So, there’s a lot of reason to be concerned.”
Concerns about federal and state prisons have been growing, too, as more facilities become hotbeds for the disease and agencies attempt to prevent even more spread.
On April 1 the Federal Bureau of Prisons said it was locking all its 146,000 inmates in their cells for two weeks in an attempt to limit the number of cases. That came as one Louisiana prison saw three inmates die of the virus and 20 others hospitalized.
The agency said in a statement that “to the extent practicable” inmates should still have access to services like mental health treatment and education programs.
On March 25, Gov. Jared Polis signed an executive order temporarily suspending a bevy of statutory requirements related to the state Department of Corrections with eyes toward getting more people out of incarceration. Scheduled to expire April 25, the order disallows prisons from taking in most new inmates and eases some parole and intensive supervision requirements.
Days before, DOC announced it was suspending the arrests of parolees for low-level violations.
“These low-level technical violations might include things like not being able to locate employment, establish a residence, see their parole officer in person, restitution requirements, etc.,” officials wrote in a news release March 23.
While still slated to be temporary, such changes could spur broader policy changes in the coming months and years, according to Maillaro with the DA’s office in Arapahoe County. “I think we come out of this whole thing and we realize, ‘Hey, there’s a lot of things we can do together. Let’s do this when our back’s not against the wall,” he said. “ … I think that ultimately it does lead to better relationships and a frank assessment of how we’re communicating and collaborating with our partners in the system.”
Still, Gorman with the state criminal defense bar said she’s not predicting extensive changes upon the full re-opening of courts in the coming months.
“I think a lot more needs to be done,” she said. “Given the intransigence of the system to do what’s necessary, I’m not particularly optimistic that any kind of sweeping criminal justice reform is going to come out of this crisis.”
— Sentinel Staff Writer Kara Mason contributed to this report
