While rank-and-file Coloradans have been weathering a crime wave, their oblivious elected lawmakers have been preoccupied with the well-being of the culprits. It has been a familiar theme in Colorado’s crime-coddling Legislature over the past several years, and the 2024 session promises more of the same.

That’s not to presume all pending bills that would go easy on lawbreakers or undercut law enforcers will survive the legislative process or the governor’s pen. Nor is it to ignore voices of reason among majority Democrats who dare challenge the implicit premise of the prevailing “justice reform” movement, i.e., that criminals are ultimately victims.

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Yet, a look at some legislation now on the table at the state Capitol reminds us how detached many of our elected lawmakers are from the reality of crime in Colorado communities, from the streets to the classrooms.

HB 24-12372, just approved by the House Judiciary Committee, would shackle – and then micromanage – police in their use of the standard “prone restraint” to immobilize and detain potentially violent criminal suspects.

Even after the bill was amended in committee last week to allow for the maneuver’s continued use – it was prohibited in most uses by the original draft – it still will have a chilling effect on police procedure.

Lawmakers who haven’t a clue about the perils of police work – who never had to subdue a dangerous suspect or take one into custody – have decided to target yet another common police tactic used untold times daily nationwide without incident.

There are assorted claims and some studies yielding wide-ranging numbers of suspects who died while in prone restraint. None of those purported findings – often propagated by anti-law enforcement interest groups – suggest a rampant problem considering the countless times the hold is used by police. More likely, the deaths involved other factors related to those suspects’ underlying health.

But don’t expect the lack of a bona fide problem to stop lawmakers from legislating a solution. Their true aim is to disarm police while making political hay along the way.

Meanwhile, a laudable crackdown on human trafficking was nearly derailed after it was watered down in the House of Representatives at the behest of the criminal defense lawyers’ lobby. Senate Bill 24-035 sought to extend the statute of limitations for human trafficking of adults to 20 years.

A key provision added in the Senate to ensure DAs would be able to seek stiffer sentences under the law was disabled by the softer-on-crime House. That’s the version that now is heading to the governor.

The self-styled justice reformers driving the undoing of law and order in our state even are meddling in K-12 campus discipline. House Bill 24-1320, which creates a task force to study and make recommendations on student violence against teachers, was amended to ensure that the task force doesn’t recommend a crackdown on student violence.

Seriously.

The amendment, added to the bill by the House Education Committee, reads in part, “The solutions must not include policies that focus on additional student discipline or criminal referral of students …”

Really? Even if it involves criminal violence against teachers?

The Capitol crusaders bent on redefining justice apparently want even Colorado’s kids to learn early in life there are no consequences to wrongdoing – as their parents are left to wonder how the world got so dangerous.

Coloradans only will turn the corner out of the current crime wave when they elect a new crop of legislators who prioritize public safety – and who are willing to put perpetrators where they belong.

Denver Gazette Editorial Board