When it comes to addressing Colorado’s struggles with lawlessness, the Denver-Boulder progressive elites in control of the Gold Dome are at odds with the rest of our state. This tension between competing views of how best to achieve public safety and justice screams for more local control — not less. Could local control over other crimes allow communities to better protect themselves?

Theft

Less than two years ago, as Colorado continued to struggle with a pre-COVID crime tsunami, the Democrat-controlled legislature watered down the classification and penalties for theft charges. Currently, anyone who steals under $300 faces — not a misdemeanor — a petty offense that could result in a mere fine. If there is jail — it cannot be more than 10 days. But there is no guarantee of jail. Not one second. No matter how many times a thief steals from us. In fact, our legislature has seen to it as recently as 2020 that no amount of theft guarantees incarceration — not one second.

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Aurora disagrees. Last year, Aurora’s city council boldly changed the law to create the promise of punishment for those who steal from Aurorans, specifically, three days of mandatory minimum jail for anyone who steals up to $300. This past Monday, Aurora doubled down on attacking thieves — Councilwoman Danielle Jurinsky’s proposal to lower the dollar threshold for theft to earn mandatory jail from $300 to $100.

A Denver District Court prosecution of $1 million in theft can result in probation alone — a thief gets released right back into our small businesses — but stealing $100 in Aurora will get at least a 3-day stay in the gray-bar hotel. A repeat offender in Aurora gets at least 90 days jail. Repeat retail thieves — 180 days. Boom.

As a matter of common sense and a rudimentary understanding of human behavior, which situation is more likely to discourage theft? For those who believe thieves do not weigh consequences before stealing, nearly three decades in the criminal justice system tells me otherwise. And then there’s the obvious: incarcerated thieves cannot steal from us.

Fentanyl

Currently, there is no local alternative to Colorado’s statewide drug-friendly scheme. Remember when then-GOP Rep. Shane Sandridge sponsored legislation that reduced possession of up to four grams of the most addictive drugs — including heroin, meth, cocaine and the deadliest drug we have seen so far, fentanyl — to a mere misdemeanor? The number of fentanyl deaths in our state soared. In 2018, Colorado lost 102 people to fentanyl. After Sandridge’s 2019 law, the number more than doubled each of the next two years. By 2021, the total was 910. Bad laws kill. This one was predictable and preventable — and it remains fixable.

Last year, the harm-reduction cabal in the legislature — the ones focused on keeping addicts on the streets with clean needles, pure drugs and government-run injection sites — fumbled the re-felonization of killer fentanyl by creating an escape hatch for drug dealers and users in the form of “I didn’t know it was fentanyl.”

Enter Rep. Mike Lynch and Sen. Byron Pelton to fix this mess. HB 1306 is a simple, 3-page bill that makes possession of any amount of fentanyl — two tiny milligrams of which can kill — a fourth-class felony. Such a designation provides the criminal justice system the resources and incentives to address addiction, while providing a larger hammer for the more recalcitrant. Predictably, the House Judiciary Committee killed the bill on a characteristic party-line vote this past Wednesday. There is no option for Aurora or any other locality to take steps to protect their own communities.

Immigrant crime

In the face of an unprecedented immigration crisis that sees Denver strangled by self-inflicted sanctuary policies, GOP Rep. Richard Holtorf and Sen. Mark Baisley launched HB 1128, a legislative effort to reinstate a 2006 law that provided for local law enforcement authorities to share information with their federal immigration enforcement counterparts. The 2006 law was repealed in 2013 by a legislature incapable of foreseeing a single-year surge of 40,000 immigrants. Faced with the unprecedented and the crime attendant to it, the Democrats in charge of the General Assembly did exactly what you would predict: maintained the ineffective status quo by assigning the bill to a kill committee. It died earlier this week.

Again, the Denver-Boulder elite substituted their statewide follies for local concerns and control.

As Aurora lights the way for other local governments to reject the failed criminal justice laws of the state and set the standards for their individual communities, expect Democrat legislators to take note. And then expect them to change the law to prevent Aurora and the other upstarts from thinking and acting on their own.

Until then, pay attention to, and support, local efforts to curb crime — while they are allowed to last.

George Brauchler is the former district attorney for the 18th Judicial District and is a candidate for district attorney in the newly created 23rd Judicial District. He has served as an Owens Early Criminal Justice Fellow at the Common Sense Institute. Follow him on Twitter(X): @GeorgeBrauchler.