Beth McCann’s announcement she will not seek a third term as Denver’s district attorney is welcome news. It’s only too bad her current term in office doesn’t end until January 2025.

It would be easy enough to take the polite tack and publicly thank McCann for her time in office, however undeserved those thanks may be. But that would sidestep an important opportunity to encourage voters to set a higher standard in choosing their next DA on the November 2024 ballot. It is critical that they do so – and that they elect a real crime fighter.

Yes, DAs by definition are supposed to be crime fighters, but McCann never had a stomach for it. Until she is replaced, the city cannot curb the current crime wave to which her lax law enforcement has contributed.

McCann all too often has used her two terms as Denver’s top prosecutor to advance the same reckless and naive “justice reform” agenda that has driven soft-on-crime legislation at the Capitol in recent years. In place of stiff penalties, she has touted offender-friendly “restorative justice.” Rather than keep high-risk suspects with lengthy criminal records behind bars pending court proceedings – so they can’t menace the community – she has shown a preference for easy-release, personal-recognizance bonds.

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Sometimes, she even has turned justice upside down. When violent mobs took to the streets of downtown Denver in summer 2020 amid demonstrations that turned into riots, Beth McCann actually prosecuted the victim of a street rabble that had swarmed her car, jumped on its hood and smashed the windshield. The victim only had pushed back in self-defense, brushing her main assailant to the ground with her car’s fender. He was uninjured.

Prosecuting the perpetrators in that case apparently never occurred to McCann.

Alongside all that, McCann has had a poor relationship with Denver police. She should be their partner in law enforcement; instead she is a stumbling block.

Former Denver Police Chief Paul Pazen made that clear when he publicly called her out on her office’s failure to keep dangerous criminal suspects in jail. Former Mayor Michael Hancock also chided the DA in his last interview as mayor with The Gazette’s editorial board in May.

Noting he felt the courts also bore some blame, Hancock told our board, “…we need the district attorney’s representatives in the courts to be more (focused on) people who are repeat offenders and to make sure that we are holding them accountable in our city.”

“I think the DA and her administration have not really held up their end of the bargain in terms of dealing with repeat offenders, in particular ex-felons carrying weapons,” Hancock said. “You know, even on some of the drug charges, we simply have not done the job in the district attorney’s office in terms of holding people accountable.”

Even so understated a rebuke speaks volumes coming from a politico like Hancock, known to measure his words and avoid conflict during his 12-year tenure.

San Francisco, of all places, recalled its notoriously soft-on-crime DA last year. Chicago’s mayor was turned out of office earlier this year over that city’s soaring crime. Doesn’t Denver deserve better?

Surely, Denverites want their top elected law enforcer to enforce the law. The same city elected Mitch Morrissey as DA and Bill Ritter before him. Both served well with a sensitive, yet sensible approach to crime and punishment. That’s the baseline voters ought to demand.

It’s time to set aside the failed experiments of justice reform. Elect a DA who will restore justice to Denver.

Denver Gazette Editorial Board