The shooting death of a 12-year-old in Denver earlier this month – in an exchange of gunfire with the owner of a car that the youth allegedly had stolen – says a lot about the epic crime wave that has been battering Colorado.

It suggests our state’s flourishing criminal culture has emboldened kids too young to fully grasp the implications of their lawbreaking, and has given them easier access to guns.

It illustrates how auto theft – Colorado has the highest rate in the country – has become an epidemic in its own right. Incredibly, the pre-teen killed in the Feb. 5 incident lost a 16-year-old brother to gunfire in an auto theft in October in Westminster, The Gazette reported last week.

It reflects how everyday Coloradans are fed up with the criminal element – and sometimes take great personal risks to defend themselves and their property.

And it’s a reminder of the role our state’s policy makers have played in fostering that criminal culture. Bent on “justice reform,” lawmakers have gone on a crime spree of their own at the State Capitol the past several years. They decriminalized the possession of hard drugs including deadly fentanyl; they slashed penalties for a host of felonies, and they passed legislation making it harder for cops to do their jobs.

The legislature seems to have made a special effort to coddle auto thieves. Colorado law was changed in 2014 to reduce the penalties for auto theft – which began escalating around that time. In 2021, another “justice reform” bill passed, making it a misdemeanor to steal a car valued $2,000 or less. It previously was a felony to steal a car valued $1,000 or more. Absent practical consequences for motor-vehicle theft, is it any wonder we top the nation?

In that light, can an auto theft by kids, followed by a car chase and a street-side gun battle, come as much of a surprise? And as this auto theft turned tragedy makes clear, it can involve much more than a loss of property. This was only the latest such incident that turned violent.

There was a shooting involving a stolen vehicle at a light-rail station in Douglas County last October that left two suspects dead and a law officer injured. County sheriff’s deputies were patrolling the station’s parking lot when they noticed a suspicious vehicle with no license plates and the locks punched out. The deputies announced themselves and knocked on the windows and the suspects opened fire through the vehicle’s side windows. The deputies returned fire, and the vehicle’s two occupants died at the scene. Flying glass shards hurt a deputy.

Just this month, a trio that led police on a high-speed chase in a suspected, stolen vehicle in Fountain. They crashed the car and fled on foot, with Fountain police Officer Julian Becerra running after them. The policeman fell 40 feet from a bridge and later died from his injuries.

Auto theft is in fact often linked to the commission of other, violent crimes. It behooves our policy makers to take it more seriously.

State Sen. Julie Gonzales, a Denver Democrat who has led the legislature’s justice-reform crusade, attended a vigil the other day for Elias Armstrong, the 12-year-old who was killed. As reported by The Gazette, she said she turned up because she wanted to listen.

Such gestures won’t repair the damage, of course. If she really wants to help, she can do so at the Capitol – repealing her reckless soft-on-crime agenda.

Denver Gazette Editorial Board