Aurora lawmakers have made a host of mistakes recently, all for a noble cause.
The Aurora City Council has for the past few years been preoccupied with “getting tough” on thieves, hoodlums and assorted riffraff in a vain attempt to reduce crime.
It’s not working. History and vetted research shows how and why it won’t work.
Now the city is digging itself deeper into a hole filled with potential civil rights abuses. That’s a quagmire that Aurora — a city trying to redeem itself from being disciplined by state authorities for allowing police to brutalize the public, and especially people of color — really needs to avoid.
About three years ago, a handful of pro-police conservatives won city council seats. Their campaigns were throwbacks to Colorado’s 1980s when similar conservatives passed a library full of laws that sponsors were just sure as hell would take a big bite out of rising crime.
It didn’t.
At the time, Aurora and Denver were in the thick of being introduced to the national gang problem. The big Colorado “oil bust” was decimating the economy, and communities were nervous about a rise in gun violence, shoplifting and car theft.
Sound familiar?
Then Jefferson County District Attorney Don Mielke was the statewide celebrity pushing what he claimed to be just common sense: the harsher the punishment, the less-likely bad guys will do bad things.
Sound familiar?
Mielke climbed to the top of local media headlines by consistently telling anyone who would listen that his sympathies were with victims of crimes, not perpetrators, and Colorado should do whatever it takes to lock up black hats to keep the white hats safe, no matter their age or background. Equal opportunity incarceration was his mantra.
“A criminal is a criminal is a criminal,” Mielke famously said. He famously said and did a lot of things that appealed to conservative types. He pressed, successfully, to try kids as adults in many cases. It would have been all cases if state lawmakers and courts had never stopped him.
It was about this time that “three strikes and you’re out” made the state’s “habitual offender” law a way to remand mostly young, delinquent minorities to prison for decades.
Did it make a lot of headlines? Yes.
Did it fill up a lot of jails and prisons at huge costs to taxpayers? Yes.
Did it prevent crime? No.
Sound familiar?
In a perfect illustration of the tenet that those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it, Aurora ended up in the state House committee chamber of doom a couple of weeks ago, trying valiantly to justify one useless and bad law after another.
Aurora officials gave it their best shot in front of the state House Judiciary Committee, swatting at House Bill 1174.
The measure would make illegal the city’s “get-tough” sentences for crimes like shoplifting and trespassing. The city infamously mandates minimum jail time for walking out on a restaurant tab of $15 or more.
While state law allows for up-to-year-long jail sentences, sometimes more, for egregious shoplifting culprits, Aurora created “mandatory minimum” sentences for some misdemeanor and petty offenses.
Civil rights attorneys and, so far, a majority of state lawmakers, say Aurora’s get-tough tactics are clear violations of the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment.
I’ll keep this simple, because it is. The 14th Amendment requires the state to ensure that “all individuals within a state’s jurisdiction are treated the same way under the law.”
It means that if you are convicted of stealing a TV from a Walmart in Englewood, the punishment can’t be more harsh than if you steal the same TV from a Walmart in Aurora.
Like it or not, it’s way-settled law across the nation, and it’s a critical part of the foundation of American justice.
Aurora, however, is arguing that the state Constitution guarantees chartered cities, like Aurora, have local control over making constitutional laws and constitutional sentences.
And Aurora is absolutely right — except — Aurora must govern within the confines of the U.S. and Colorado constitutions. Unless Aurora city lawmakers can persuade the state Legislature to impose 30 days mandatory jail time for walking out on a $15 tab, proponents are wasting everyone’s time and taxpayer money.
But they already have been.
The underlying problem with Aurora’s fascination with spending $40,000-$80,000 of your tax dollars a year to lock up shoplifters is that it doesn’t discourage other people from shoplifting, or stealing cars, or even murder.
It may be a secret to Aurora lawmakers and some others that stiffer fines, harsher punishments and even the death penalty does not affect the crime rate. It does not create some kind of moral appeal to potential scofflaws to take their sticky fingers to another city where the fines are less.
If you’re surprised and skeptical, go ahead. Search online. The studies are endless, all coming to the same conclusion: harsher sentencing does not prevent crime.
What does prevent crime, however, is persuading people that they will get caught, according to just as many studies.
When cities like Aurora increase police presence or simply make it clear that they have a way of identifying people committing criminal behavior and prosecuting them, that makes a difference, and sometimes a big one.
This isn’t the first time Aurora was taught that lesson. Back in the 1990s, when it became clear that tough-on-crime laws were useless but get-caught changes were useful, Aurora proposed, and adopted, a Two-Per-Thousand police staffing mandate.
City officials agreed that tougher sentences weren’t nearly as valuable as more cops driving around in cop cars, riding on bikes and wandering in and out of stores, and the city needed more cops.
The rule meant the city must hire at least two sworn officers for every 1,000 Aurora residents to meet the staffing needs.
It’s not cheap, but it works.
Aurora gave Two-Per-Thousand its best shot for several years before realizing the city was growing too fast and training cops to replace the ones who quit or retired was just too hard.
The pandemic came and crimes like car-theft and shoplifting spiked in Aurora, and Denver, and Lakewood, and across the metro area, and across the country.
When the pandemic essentially ended two years ago, all those crime tallies started shrinking in Aurora, and Denver, and Lakewood, and across the metro area, and across the country.
Aurora lawmakers and some police officials keep pointing to ebbing crime stats in Aurora as proof of their policies’ marginal success. What they don’t point to is identical drops in crime in neighboring communities, regions and states across the country.
Trust me, and the data, and the science, Aurora’s politicized anti-crime antics ain’t making potential shoplifters in Colorado Springs change their minds.
Aurora needs to stop punching itself in the face on issues of crime and public safety. City lawmakers each have access to computers and a fleet of highly-trained city staff that can do the science needed to make decisions that have a provable profound effect on everyone.
For those in charge who just can’t find a way to believe the long-established truth and science when it comes to managing people and cities, fight the urge to follow your mistaken instinct. Fight hard. Fight harder.
We really do need less crime and a safer community, and to get those things, we need leaders willing to do what really works, not what really sounds good.
Follow @EditorDavePerry on BlueSky, Threads, Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook or reach him at 303-750-7555 or dperry@SentinelColorado.com
Advocates like Mr. Perry reigned supreme in states like California and Oregon ten years ago before crime started to spiral out of control. We have seen the terrible outcomes of such foolish ideas. Some never learn.
While it is true that the probability of getting caught and punished is the real deterrent, there is a lot to be considered under that. Part of that probability is that you will be punished for sure. Having been involved in thousands of arrests and having been a detective who followed what happened to the criminal, I have a better understanding of the realities involved. Our criminal justice system has so many holes in it where we give criminals breaks that there is virtually no certainty to it. I arrested a burglar who showed me eighty houses that he burglarized. The DA’s office didn’t want to prosecute all of those burglaries, so they told me to file ten good cases. The burglar’s attorney got them to let him plead guilty to one burglary. He got a fairly light sentence because none of his crime wave was allowed into court. This is fairly normal functioning of a system that is sometimes overburdened and often lazy. So, if you are a criminal, there is great uncertainty that you will get caught and even more uncertainty that you will be punished. In the juvenile system, the juveniles are given so many chances to not be punished that we teach them that they have nothing to fear from the justice system. When you consider that about 60% of the crime is committed by juveniles, you can see that we are creating a pretty good base of criminals. Criminal gangs know that the justice system is soft on juveniles, so they are often used to commit murder.
Our liberal legislature made it far less likely that criminals would be caught by attacking the police with SB217, a bill that supposedly eliminated police misconduct. That bill, opposed with only a slight whimper by police leaders, basically destroyed proactive policing. The bill has vague and dangerous use of force guidelines and actually keeps police from legally doing normal parts of their jobs. I have found no one who can explain what the bill means. One City Attorney said that all she can get is that the legislature doesn’t want officers to touch anyone. It is nigh on impossible to do police work that way. The bill made everything a use of force. Police officers can only use force to make an arrest, protect themselves, or to prevent an escape. The thousands of officers who left the job could see that they were being set up for prosecution if the angry mob did not like the arrest. They could see that their families were no longer safe from a legislature that wanted to do away with implied immunity and wanted to second guess their every action based upon hind sight from the body cam. Implied immunity was created by the courts and is only allowed in about a third of the cases after being decided by a judge. The new officers are not really aware of their risks, and if they are, they are not stopping people.
It is clear that the liberals don’t want minor stops made because someone, especially a person of color, might resist and get hurt or killed. It is lost on them that so many officers are shot on traffic stops because they have stopped someone very dangerous. Those stops are where we find the wanted criminals. As you drive around now, notice all of the cars that have no license plates or expired plates. So, if you are criminal, you have little chance of being stopped in the stolen car that you are using to do your crime. If you don’t have a license plate or you have a stolen plate, the business cameras are not going to be a help in finding the suspects.
If the argument of this editorial is that strict on crime is useless, then we must consider how that increases the certainty of punishment. If you are liberal, like our democrat controlled legislature, you should look at what you have done to retain police officers under your ridiculous guidelines. The City Council is doing what its can to put some certainty into the justice system. Too bad they can’t do something about the legislature’s bill that got rid of thousands of good officers. If they knew something about SB217, they could begin to educate the public about the problems created. A number of officers have been wrongfully prosecuted under the hysteria created by our legislature.
I was watching some Aurora officers touching people to get them out of the way of a bus. Under Colorado law, that would be unlawful force. Is that what the legislature intended? If there is a mob smashing the windows of your business, the police cannot use any force to move them away from your business, not even just pushing them. The police can only make arrests, protect themselves, or prevent escape. Tear gas has been overused under the leadership of incompetent police leaders. But it is virtually useless under the guidelines of SB217.
At any rate, you may question the City Council’s get tough approach, but the opposite liberal approach offers you nothing but a dangerous society.
Perry will never confront you in person. They’d be destroyed and look like a loon.
Dave,
Wow. You’ve definitely jumped into the pool with the rest of the socialists. And jumped into the deep end. I can agree with you on some things, but certainly not this. Our Colorado legislature continues to tell criminals that it’s ok to steal and hurt people with their light on crime approach. As a citizen of Aurora (and a Democrat), I’m thankful our city council is doing SOMETHING. Maybe you like being stolen from, but I certainly do NOT.
And – have a real lawyer tell you the law about “equal protection.” It’s horrid that you would state something is “law” as a non-lawyer (and not provide the source).
Your evaluation of “equal protection” is incorrect. It’s based on each jurisdiction. There is zero evidence out there that Aurora is violating equal protection rights of the defendants who appear in their Municipal Court. Look at the way a person can be prosecuted in both state AND federal court for the same offense – and receive vastly different punishments. No violation of equal protection there!
As of people in the Springs would ever spare a thought on Aurora except to mock it as the Third World wannabe municipality that it’s become in the last generation.
The copium in this article is absolutely nuclear level.
In case you didn’t all of read it: Perry says to hire more police and make more arrests. He thinks the most important thing is to make sure people get caught. His view is based on evidence. There’s nothing “soft on crime ” about it.
An important distinction needs to be made between “tough-on-crime” and “tough on any poor schmuck who comes to the attention of the law.” What we need, instead, is a concept of tough-on-crime which means serving certain justice through due process of law and protecting the public order through serving ALL of the Colorado public.
It does NOT mean creating a culture of perpetual punishment for those who have broken one of the better part of 100 thousand laws in the Colorado Revised Statutes alone (with over a thousand more grinding their way through the Legislature this session alone). It does not mean ramping up the “usual” (mandatory) statutory punishment well into the “cruel” range just to “get tough.” It does not mean piling restrictions on businesses to the point of putting them out of business.
We must not tolerate “tough on any poor schmuck who comes to the attention of the law.” We (I’m talking to YOU, MADD!) must not tolerate trying to convict on DUI charges when the poor schmuck was blowing ZERO. We must not tolerate law enforcement lying when informing schmucks, as is their 6th Amendment right, “of the nature and causes of the accusation” against them. We must not tolerate prosecutors sitting down by schmucks and pretending to be a defender or friend, telling them about fake evidence so “It will be best for you to accept this plea bargain.” while not telling them that it waives their right to a Jury Trial and to any hope of being cleared “not guilty”. We must not tolerate judges who consider it part of their job to be “tough on any poor schmuck who comes to” their courtroom, let alone entire judicial Districts who suspend Trial by Jury “for the good of the people.”
We must no longer tolerate a Polis State. You may be the schmuck tomorrow morning.
* A lot of what is going on at the Colorado State Legislature these days involves people willing to treat their oath-of-office commitment to both the U.S. and Colorado Constitutions like some kind of quaint, antiquated recitation at a coronation, to be forgotten the day they take power. In the interest of full disclosure, I swore my oath to the U.S. Constitution long ago and far away, and made a similar pledge to the Colorado constitution just off I-25 rather than I-225. Its possible that my mentioning MADD comes from my own biggest failure in not being willing to risk my job pushing back against using the Federal Highway Trust Fund to bully the states to “get tough” by raising the drinking age everywhere to 21. I only went as far as my immediate supervisor pointing out that this was defiance of the 10th amendment and fraudulent use of the Trust funds rather than pushing to the point of being “fired.”
As for yourself, Mr. Perry, thank you for your commitment to the “vested” source (see Colo. Const. Art II, Section 1) of all Colorado Government knowing what we need to know for our role. I’ll trust you to correct my use of the governor’s name as you see fit, and to cut off my rant at any point you think it no longer contributes to that commitment … even unto circular-filing the whole thing ;^)