CCJRC Open Letter to Mayor Hancock, DPD Chief Pazen, and Governor Polis

June 3, 2020

Night after night civil rights marchers and others have been confronted by riot-geared police firing tear gas, rubber bullets, foam bullets and explosive devices while you, Governor Polis and Mayor Hancock, escalated this outrageous and excessive use of force by calling in the National Guard.

But you each would have us believe some version of a common sentiment that you feel the pain of the marchers and stand ready to join hands with those hurting to work for justice.

But, first, we ask you to look at some of your choices that seem to contradict your recent statements and understand what led you to make those choices.  Without that reflection, we cannot believe that you will make more conscious choices moving forward.

And we need you to be making better choices because there is more than one way to put a knee on someone’s neck.

Mayor Hancock, in 2005 you and your fellow City Council members unanimously and aggressively engaged in a persuasion campaign to convince Denver voters to approve a ballot measure to use $600 million in tax revenue to build a new jail and courthouse because it would make us safer.

CCJRC and many others across Denver opposed that ballot measure and urged the City to pivot away from over-policing and mass incarceration and embrace a new vision for public safety that put at the center much greater public investment in community-led services and strategies, particularly in communities of color that have been most impacted. These communities are deserving of reparations and restoration for the historical and present day harm.

This criminal justice reform strategy is frequently known as Community Reinvestment.  Since 2014, community advocates in Colorado have been successful in several state legislative campaigns and  funding is now being deployed deeply into affected communities to support community-led services and strategies aimed at crime prevention, effective prison reentry, helping underserved victims, and expanding harm reduction efforts.

The state investments are modest, in comparison to corrections spending, and already are demonstrating that community members, themselves, are uniquely qualified and competent to respond to health and safety challenges in their own neighborhoods. (for example, go to transformingsafety.org)

But that wasn’t the choice made in 2005 and Denver lost the opportunity to chart a more effective and equitable path to promoting community health and safety.  Instead, since then, the Mayor’s budget has cumulatively spent billions and billions on perpetuating and more deeply rooting a criminal legal system of oppression and racial discrimination in Denver. It hasn’t made us safer.

A public budget is not just an operational document; it is also a moral document that should reflect our values and priorities as a community.  Yet, budgeting processes are almost impossible for community members to meaningfully participate in, despite the fact that budget decisions are more likely to determine the quality of life, or lack thereof, in the community more than any other policy decision. Even as this is written, state legislators are debating a state budget that is slashing education, treatment and countless other services aimed at meeting the needs of Coloradans while the Department of Corrections budget is slated to get almost $1 billion.

So here we are today. No one should be surprised. Very little real change in police and criminal justice reform has happened and the wounds have been festering and the number of people directly impacted has grown.

While it’s convenient to try and dismiss the anger and violence as coming from “outside agitators”, we would all be better guided by an understanding that good people, who are Colorado residents, and care deeply for their lives, their children’s lives, and their community, have had ENOUGH. To be clear, CCJRC doesn’t condone the violence or property damage. But we also know it is a symptom, and not the disease.

The depth of the grief, fear, trauma and anger is legitimate and deserves caring responses. But that wasn’t the choice made by any of you. Even though the overwhelming majority of marchers were peaceful, the impulse was to rely first on brute force. Why was that? It’s only days later that you are starting to reach out for community dialog and connection.

Instead, over 338 people have been arrested, the majority for violating a curfew order. Curfew violations don’t warrant arrest and prosecution and we ask you to have those charges dismissed.

And Governor Polis, last week you made the choice to let your Executive Order lapse that gave the Department of Corrections more tools to help release lower risk and medically vulnerable people as a way to prevent the needless deaths of people who have no ability on their own to engage in social distancing or proper sanitation.

CCJRC, ACLU, the defense bar and many other civil rights and faith organizations asked you to not only extend your original Executive Order but to expand it.  You declined despite knowing that COVID was a real threat that had already taken the lives of two people in prison in Sterling, and was still threatening the lives of thousands of incarcerated people and staff.  We aren’t asking you to release dangerous people, and we resent the mischaracterizations you’ve made in the media that we are. You believe you are more thoughtful and nuanced in your thinking than that.

For example, there are over a thousand people currently in prison serving a sentence for drug possession or walking away from a halfway house.  Those laws changed in March and are now misdemeanors, meaning they aren’t even eligible for a prison sentence anymore. These people should be released from prison unless there is evidence that they pose a real public safety risk.

Similarly, there are also hundreds of people in prison who are very vulnerable to COVID-19 due to underlying medical issues or age that could be safely released.  But you haven’t created an expedited commutation process to consider those individuals for release. Your choice was to let the Executive Order lapse and go back to ‘business as usual” rather than doing everything in your power to prevent a human rights catastrophe inside Colorado’s prisons.

It’s hard to imagine a moment when Coloradans have faced more overwhelming and simultaneous stresses that affect almost every facet of life. But these stresses are more acutely felt by people of color because of persistent and structural racism and discrimination.

Over the past week, we needed you to be agents for healing, unity and equity, and you weren’t, especially for the young people leading this moment who are fighting for their lives and their futures.

There is much work to do and CCJRC is committed to being part of the solution in rebuilding a more inclusive, equitable, and safer Colorado.

In the short-term, we ask Mayor Hancock to lift his curfew order and dismiss charges against anyone being prosecuted for a curfew violation in Denver.  We ask Governor Polis to rescind his request for National Guard involvement, support the newly introduced Police Accountability bill, SB20-2017, and issue a new Executive Order to facilitate responsible prison releases in order to better protect the health and safety of inmates and staff.  We also support the independent investigation into allegations of excessive use of force by the Denver Police Department against civil rights marchers, members of the media, and even bystanders.

We also ask that there be much more transparency around how federal CARES funding will be allocated at the state and local level, especially regarding additional funding to law enforcement, jails, prisons or any other criminal justice agency. We also ask that neither the state nor any local jurisdiction in Colorado ever participate in the new federal law enforcement grant program called Operation Relentless Pursuit that is overtly intended to “crack down” on crime through a surge in the number of local and federal law enforcement deployed in specific cities.

We look forward to being part of the discussions with you and the broader community so we can collectively answer the question, “what does different look like?”

In solidarity,

the staff of the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition

Juston Cooper, Jasmine Ross, Terri Hurst, Henry Price, Pam Clifton, and Christie Donner