I have always been interested in law enforcement, and during my last two years of active duty, I took advantage of an opportunity offered by the Air Force Academy’s Security Forces (the AF name for military police) and became a part-time cop on the Academy. I was just a regular patrolman, but as I was also a lieutenant colonel, the young airmen I worked with liked having me around. When, for example, a captain stopped for a traffic violation tried to pull rank on the junior airman cop, they would have me drop by and I’d have an “earnest” discussion about rank and duty with the aforementioned captain. I was a widower at the time, and so I would teach during the week and patrol nights and weekends. I ended up with over 2,000 hours of patrol, made felony arrests, wrote a lot of tickets, and, was once covered in cocaine.

Or so I thought…

Late one summer night I was called to a vehicle that was suspiciously parked at the overlook on I-25 where, during the day, lots of tourists pull off to watch skydivers and planes taking off and landing at the Academy’s airfield. But when I got to the overlook, it was dark and no one was jumping out of planes, so the lady stopped there (and pulled *way* off the end of the parking lot) was worth checking on. In searching her vehicle with a couple other cops that came to help, I opened a tin and a cloud of white powder poured out and covered me. My first thought was, great, I have just been covered in cocaine and I’ll have to burn this uniform. Happily, it turned out to be talcum powder, so I was ok, and smelled of lavender for quite a while. Police work is often not what it seems, can be extremely complicated, and is always challenging. 

Which, of course, brings me to the new session of the Colorado state legislature scheduled to start next month, sort of. 

A recent Colorado Politics story does an excellent job of reviewing the continued work on criminal justice reform that we should expect in the upcoming session, as well as a few new proposals to improve policing and law enforcement generally. 

One interesting idea deals with revoking fewer people’s drivers licenses for a variety of offences. The thought seems to be that if, say, a person fails to pay child support, a sanction is certainly needed, but if that person needs to drive to work to make the money to pay the support, automatically taking said individual’s drivers license might not be a good idea.

The chair of the Senate Judicial Committee is state Sen. Pete Lee, D-Colorado Springs (full disclosure: an old friend to whom I’ve donated), wants to take on what he calls “draconian” sentencing in cases of felony murder for people who were involved but were not responsible for the murder itself.  Knowing Pete, I know that this is straight from his heart and from his many years of experience. Pete’s work on restorative justice is a model for the nation, and we are fortunate to have him here in Colorado. 

I am pleased to see that there seems to be quite a bit of cross-aisle cooperation on many of these proposals. Many of these proposed pieces of legislation have both Democratic and Republican sponsors, and include input from cops, district attorneys, and other key parties. One idea is to rethink no-knock warrants, which can be useful in some situations but, as we have seen, can result in horrific outcomes if mistakes are made. GOP state Sen. John Cooke of Greeley is concerned about possible limits on no-knock raids, believing (correctly in my view) that there can be situations where such warrants are needed and therefore a blanket prohibition would be a mistake. But I would also assert that those “proper” situations are likely to be quite rare. 

Other interesting proposals include a discussion about a defendant’s right to a speedy trial. In normal times, Colorado prosecutors must bring charges against a person within six months of a not guilty plea. Following a Colorado Supreme Court decision last June, prosecutors get an additional six months if key evidence – such as in-person witnesses – is not available due to the pandemic. As jury trials have been drastically reduced and/or delayed across Colorado due to the virus, the legislature may seek to codify in state law what a speedy trial really means in difficult times.

While the antics of the wannabe strongman in the White House gets most of the news coverage these days, it is very important to remember a common theme I often rant about: state and local governance is far more important to your day-to-day lives than is the national stuff. The law enforcement items I mentioned above are a clear example of that importance, and the fact that our legislature is taking up this wide range of proposals shows that government can and does often work just fine. And so, I urge you to keep informed and key your eye on the legislature.

Also, be careful of tins full of powder, our you might smell of lavender.