Crime has surged in Denver, despite the city council increasing the budget to a record high of $265 million in 2022.
Crime has surged in Denver, despite the city council increasing the budget to a record high of $265 million in 2022.
T he last weekend in July was a violent one in and around Denver, Colo.
Early Saturday, a 31-year-old man was shot and killed in Northglenn, a northern suburb of the city, the first of at least six area shootings that sent at least four others to the hospital that weekend. Around 3 p.m., a man was stabbed to death on Denver’s north side.
The weekend concluded with the late-Sunday killing of Kevin Piaskowski, who was driving home from his job at the airport when someone in a pickup pulled up alongside him on the interstate and fired shots into his car. Denver police called the killing a “senseless act of violence.”
As crime has spiked around the country over the last couple of years, much of the attention has focused on the nation’s biggest cities, like New York and Chicago, and places like Minneapolis, Seattle, and Portland, where the defund-the-police movement took root and where riots over George Floyd’s killing were most intense and long-lasting. Crime in cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco received intense scrutiny after voters elected progressive district attorneys who stopped prosecuting low-level offenses, helping to create a sense of lawlessness.
While it hasn’t received the same level of media attention, the rise in crime in Denver — and in Colorado generally — has been among the worst in the nation.
Through Friday, Denver police had investigated 58 homicides this year, on pace to break last year’s record of 100, and already more homicides than the city recorded in 2012 (39), 2013 (42), 2014 (31), 2015 (52), 2016 (56), or 2017 (57), according to police data.
Over the last few years, Colorado has had a higher rate of auto theft than any other state, behind only Washington D.C., according to a December report by the non-partisan Common Sense Institute that analyzed the cost of the Colorado crime wave. Colorado also has led the nation in bank robberies and porch piracy, according to the report’s authors. Violent crimes, property crimes, retail theft, and the illegal carrying of weapons are all on the rise, data show.
When most people around the country think of Colorado, they likely think of skiing, maybe South Park, the Broncos, or legalized pot. “What they really should be thinking about is a runaway crime tsunami. That’s what we’ve got,” said George Brauchler, a former Colorado district attorney and state prosecutor who co-authored the Common Sense Institute report.
The question, of course, is why is this happening in Colorado? In November, Axios reported that, after a dip in 2021, Denver’s police budget reached a record high of $265 million in 2022, despite the vocal support of some city councilmembers for the defund movement.
To police-reform advocates, the message is clear: Funding the police isn’t the answer. “Until Denver is willing to make an investment in the underlying issues that contribute to crime and violence — poverty, education, mental health, housing — [the city] will continue to get the same results,” Robert Davis, head of a task force to reimagine policing, told Axios.
But it’s not clear that Colorado or the city of Denver cut back spending in those areas, at least in any meaningful way that would explain the booming crime. “We’ve been investing in those things,” said Mitch Morrissey, a former district attorney of Denver, who is also a co-author of the Common Sense Institute report.
Brauchler, a Republican, and Morrissey, a Democrat, both point to a more direct explanation for the rise in crime: Over the last decade or so, left-wing leaders in Colorado have intentionally made it less costly to be arrested and accused of committing a crime in the state.
“What we’re dealing with is the way that repeat offenders in the state of Colorado are being treated. And they’re not being treated like the criminals they are,” Morrissey said.
At the same time, state leaders have made it harder and more costly to be a police officer, leading to an exodus of veteran cops. “You won’t find a metropolitan police department in Colorado that is not down a serious number of officers,” Morrissey said.
Rising Crime and Homeless Camps
While the rise in crime has been a focus of national media attention since around the time of the George Floyd riots, the Common Sense Institute report found the rise in crime in Colorado dates back well before that. Data show that the Colorado crime rate had been trending up for about decade, before dipping slightly in 2019 and then spiking in 2020 and 2021.
The average monthly crime rate in 2021 was 28 percent higher than a decade earlier, according to the report. Between 2011 and 2020, Colorado had the largest property crime rate increase of any state. In 2020, the violent crime in Colorado reached its highest level in at least a quarter of a century, on par with the so-called “Summer of Violence” in 1993.
“You have to go back to the old crack cocaine gangs battling it out days to see the kind of violence that we’re seeing in Denver these days,” said Morrissey, who worked as a prosecutor in the city for more than three decades before serving for 12 years as D.A.
Downtown Denver has also struggled with homeless encampments. Last September, the city shut down its Civic Center Park for almost two months so workers could clean up the human waste, rat infestation, and accumulated trash and needles, according to local news reports. The city recently launched an initiative to pay new businesses to open in now-vacant storefronts.
“The city offering incentives for businesses to move downtown is nothing I’ve ever seen, and it’s something the city of Denver has had to do based on what’s going on on those streets,” Morrissey said. “You’re dealing with a lot of young people that are here because of the legalization of marijuana. You smell the marijuana everywhere. It’s just not a place where conventioneers want to come anymore. It’s tough.”
Joshua Sharf, a researcher with the libertarian-leaning Independence Institute in Colorado, said the city’s crime problem is closely tied to its homeless problem. “It can create an air of lawlessness, and an air of unsafety, which then chases away the nightlife, chases away the average law-abiding person, and feeds on itself,” he said.
In the wake of a police-involved shooting, the city recently banned food trucks in Lower Downtown on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, to stop people from gathering outside bars and nightclubs. Police have labeled the popular Lodo area a hot spot for crime. Sharf said moves like banning food trucks, and some recent efforts to deter crime at the city’s Union Station bus terminal — deactivating electric outlets, removing benches — make things harder and less convenient for law-abiding citizens, not just people causing problems.
“It’s unclear how food trucks are contributing to a safety problem,” Sharf said.
Criminal-Centric Crime Policies
The rise in crime in Colorado has come on the heels of statewide legislation and policy changes designed to keep people out of jail. Brauchler and Morrissey believe those changes have instead emboldened criminals, and also helped to create more habitual offenders.
In 2014, for instance, Colorado lawmakers downgraded penalties for the theft of vehicles worth less than $20,000. Denver Police Chief Paul Pazen has pointed to that law and other policy changes as reasons why auto theft has skyrocketed 135 percent over a decade, compared to 3 percent nationally. “It’s not like the Rocky Mountain water that we drink breeds people that steal cars,” Pazen told the Denver Gazette in July. “Somebody please explain to me how this is a policing issue, and not a policy issue.”
One of the sponsors of the 2014 law lowering auto-theft penalties was then-state representative Beth McCann. She is now the district attorney in Denver. McCann denies that her legislation is behind Colorado’s No. 1 ranking as the car-theft capital of the country. She told the Gazette “people steal cars because of their drug addiction or intention to commit other crimes not their value.”
Morrissey disagrees. “The thing that nobody gives criminals credit for is they understand these levels. If you make theft of $500 the felony bar, they’ll steal $499,” he said.
In 2019, in an explicit effort to lower incarceration rates, Governor Jared Polis signed a law that made the possession of less than four grams of most hard drugs, including fentanyl, a misdemeanor rather than a felony. That was directly followed by a sharp increase in fentanyl-related deaths. In 2021, there were more than 800 fentanyl-related deaths in Colorado, a 260 percent increase over 2019, according to the Common Sense Institute.
“In Denver, drug trafficking and drug possession and drug use is out in the open,” Morrissey said. “Civic Center Park is a drug market.”
Last year, as part of a “criminal justice reform” effort, the Colorado legislature amended the Colorado Criminal Code to allow many convicted felons — including drug dealers and car thieves — to possess guns. The move to rearm convicted felons was supported by the state’s Democratic attorney general, Philip Weiser, who has recently tried to obfuscate his position.
Colorado bail reform efforts have also led to fewer criminals being held in local jails and more out on the streets continuing to offend. In Denver, the use of personal-recognizance bonds increased more than 60 percent between 2019 and 2021, according to the Common Sense Institute report. And the number of low-value bonds – bonds of $2 or less – increased from 29 in 2010 to 574 in 2020, a 1,879 percent increase. About a third of felony suspects released on PR bonds in Denver do not show for future court appearance.
Brauchler said a revolving jailhouse door lowers the costs for criminals. “When you stop them from going into jail to begin with, all you’re really doing is saying, ‘Hey, please don’t do that again. And pretty please with sugar on top, come back to court on this day,’” he said.
“These people know there are no consequences to stop them,” Brauchler added. “On the tail end, we’re seeing an increase in the number of parolees, and the number of people who are pushed out of the prison system out on the streets. And there are horrific anecdotes about how that has turned out into some major crimes.”
Tyson Worrell, president of the Denver police union, told Fox News in January that too often criminal behavior “goes unaccounted for” in the city. “We go out and arrest somebody, put them in jail, and there is no bond,” he said. “They walk in the front door of the jail and they go out the back door, and they’re out with the promise they’re going to come back to court.”
“It’s not working out well,” he added.
As part of its analysis, the Common Sense Institute researchers calculated that the total cost of Colorado crime in 2020 — including everything from the value of stolen property to lost wages and societal and prison-related costs — was in excess of $27 billion, or $4,762 per resident.
Sharf said the people most impacted by the rising crime are the people who are least able to afford it. “The people who get hurt by this are not the sort of cultural curator class,” he said.
‘Young People Don’t Want This Job’
While Denver never defunded its police department, police staffing levels in the city and in departments around the state have dropped since the 2020 George Floyd protests and the increased scrutiny of the profession. A police reform law passed in June 2020 allows officers who act in “bad faith” to be held personally liable for their actions. They can now be forced to pay up to $25,000 of a settlement out of their own pockets.
In the summer of 2020, after rioters in Denver set fires, blocked traffic, fought with police, vandalized businesses, and smashed out windows in the Capitol building, at least two city council members publicly supported the defund movement. One councilwoman proposed replacing the police department with a vaguely-defined “peace force.”
Worrell said that kind of anti-police rhetoric by some city leaders led to a surge in retirements, and struggles with retention and recruitment. “We’re not getting people applying for the job like we used to,” Worrell told Fox, adding that officer morale is “very low.” He said the anti-cop rhetoric has also empowered criminals. “We’ve had several police officers that have been shot at, ran over by cars,” Worrell said.
Earlier this year, Pazen, the Denver police chief, reported that while crime and 911 calls were up, his department was down 170 officers. That has led to increased response times to high-priority calls. Pazen attributed the staffing shortage to a budget shortfall last year.
Denver isn’t the only Colorado city struggling with police staffing. In Aurora, police staffing has reached “critical levels,” according to news reports. Department leaders have recommended changing hiring requirements that would allow more candidates with military and corrections experience to be eligible for jobs.
Morrissey said departments around the state are competing with one another for job candidates, offering good salaries and benefits, and they’re still struggling to hire.
“What we were seeing was the people who were eligible to retire going, like, ‘It’s not worth it. Not only are we personally liable, but we are not backed up by the politicians. The district attorney wants to prosecute us for anything she possibly can,’” Morrissey said. “You have this mass exodus, and you have nobody that will come and do the job.”