What’s being done to address crime
Crime keeps rising in Denver, and its top public safety leaders say the solutions include improving addiction treatment, hiring more police officers to fill vacant positions and reviewing who has to pay money to get out of jail after an arrest.
Mayor Michael Hancock pledged Thursday to address the “scourge” of crime and released a seven-page Public Safety Action Plan that outlined how the police, fire and sheriff’s departments would make Denver safer.
“I’m not going to allow this to continue to happen on my watch,” Hancock said. “But I also realize this is a marathon, not a sprint.”
Denver’s 2021 violent crime rate of 928 crimes per 100,000 residents is the highest recorded in the city since 1994, according to FBI data collected by The Denver Post. The 2021 property crime rate of 5,865 crimes per 100,000 is the highest since 2005.
Data collected by The Post shows that most categories of crime in 2021 increased more than 5% compared with 2020: robberies, aggravated assaults, burglaries, larceny, arson and motor vehicle theft. Per capita rates for all of those categories are also higher than the threeyear average.
The numbers also show the rise slowed in many categories in 2021. For example, the rate of aggravated assault rose 23% in 2020 compared with 2019. It continued to rise in 2021, but by 7% compared with 2020.
“This isn’t just a Denver challenge or a Denver-area challenge or even a Colorado challenge,” Hancock said of rising crime. “It’s an American challenge.”
Hancock said there’s no single cause of the increase and thus no single solution. He pointed to a slew of potential factors: a rising number of illegal guns in the city, an influx of cheap drugs, unmet mental health needs, increasing youth violence and a justice system that releases people from incarceration too easily after arrest.
“We can’t solve these issues
with law enforcement alone,” he said. “This is a multifaceted public health crisis. We can’t simply arrest our way out of it.”
The city’s plan to address crime includes:
• Expanding the number of “crime hot spots” Denver police will focus on.
• Hiring 184 police officers over the next year to fill vacant positions.
• Creating a resource center where police can take arrestees instead of jail.
• Expanding non-police response programs, such as STAR.
• Allowing Denver Sheriff Department deputies to investigate alleged crimes in the jail, freeing up Denver police officers who used to do those investigations.
• Expanding the jail’s medicated-assisted treatment program to treat more incarcerated people with addiction.
• Reviewing the risk-assessment tool judges consider when setting bail and reviewing the bail schedule, which guides how judges set bail.
• Working with nonprofit Life-line Colorado to create a network of Youth Empowerment Centers that provide services to young people.
Denver Police Chief Paul Pazen announced in May that officers would focus on five “hot spots” of concentrated crime: South Federal Boulevard and West Alameda Avenue, Colfax Avenue and Broadway, East Colfax Avenue and North Yosemite Street, East 47th Avenue and North Peoria Street, and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and North Holly Street.
Pazen on Thursday said there had been significant reductions in shootings in four of those five areas and that the city would add three more “hot spots” to the list: West 14th Avenue and Federal Boulevard, East Dartmouth Avenue and South Havana Street, and West Mississippi Avenue and South Lipan Street.
Police will also continue to focus on arresting people at Union Station.
Hancock on Thursday also said bond reform, while needed, created a “revolving door loophole” that allows people who pose a public safety risk to return quickly to the streets after an arrest. He specifically criticized the use of personal recognizance bonds, which allow a person to leave jail while they wait for trial without paying any money.
When asked, Hancock said he didn’t know what percentage of people released on personal recognizance bonds reoffended while waiting for trial and instead provided anecdotes of people released on personal recognizance bonds committing crimes.
City Attorney Kristin Bronson will review the use of personal recognizance bonds and the evaluations that pretrial services use to decide how much of a safety risk a person poses.