It is of course a relief to know that the man who committed a brutal attack on a woman along a bike path in Aurora – and had attacked another woman who was bicycling with her children – will spend at least some of the next 25 years in prison.

As reported in The Gazette this week, the 18th Judicial District Attorney’s Office announced the sentencing of Julio Cesar Gonzalez, 25, on Monday. It closes the case involving his terrifyingly random acts of violence back in 2020 and, perhaps, provides some closure for the victims.

Gonzalez was sentenced on charges of first-degree assault with a deadly weapon causing serious bodily injury, second-degree assault causing injury with a deadly weapon, and menacing with a real or simulated weapon. He had attacked a woman with a board while she was on her early-morning walk along Aurora’s stretch of the Denver metro area’s popular High Line Canal Trail. She sustained serious head and hand injuries but survived. Only days earlier, the woman who had been bicycling suffered hand injuries after a similar attack by Gonzalez.

The lasting takeaway here – aside from lifelong trauma for the two women and their loved ones – isn’t just that those recreating in public spaces should watch their backs. Indeed, exercising caution amid Colorado’s crime wave probably goes without saying these days.

Rather, the case has broader relevance for all Colorado metro areas; notably, authorities traced Gonzalez to a nearby illegal camp of street drifters. It was one of many such camps that foul urban and suburban areas along the Front Range. It was a potent reminder that the camps breed violence and other criminal activity. That’s over and above the impact of their squalor and disorder on the overall quality of life for nearby neighborhoods and businesses.

The occupants by and large lead a lifestyle of addiction to drugs and alcohol and in many cases suffer from mental illness. They need help, but not the false and futile help of “housing first” or other such nonsensical policies. They first need rehabilitation and recovery from their addictions and treatment for their mental illness before they can hold jobs and pay rent.

Meanwhile, it turns out police were able to implicate Gonzalez in the crime because – get this – he had been wearing a court-ordered, GPS ankle bracelet for a previous offense. That’s right; he was out and about, free to wreak havoc after having previously run afoul of the law.

Fortunately, investigators were able to trace Gonzalez’s virtual footprints via the bracelet’s GPS data, placing him at the time and place of his crimes.

Gonzalez’s sentence seems richly deserved; let’s never mind, for the moment, that in Colorado’s current, lax justice system, he is unlikely to serve anywhere near his full prison term.

Let’s face it: Colorado has been cultivating a permissive culture that fosters these kinds of crimes.

Our state’s elected policymakers as well as judges and even prosecutors in some Colorado communities are largely to blame. They have rewritten our laws and abdicated their own authority in ways that have led to a threefold leniency – toward criminal suspects, toward street vagrants and toward drugs. Too many suspects probably should be in jail rather than “sentenced” to wearing an ankle bracelet. Too often, vagrants are allowed to camp in clear violation of local camping bans. And decriminalization of hard drugs by the legislature in 2019 only lures more drifters and camps.

So long as law-abiding Coloradans expect no better of their elected leaders, the old saw will apply: We get the government we deserve. The same could be said of our justice system.

Denver Gazette Editorial Board