To Governor Jared Polis; Senator Jessie Danielson; Representative Chris Kennedy; Senator Leroy M. Garcia, Jr.; Senator Rhonda Fields; Representative Leslie Herod; Representative Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez
Dear Governor Polis and esteemed members of the Colorado General Assembly,
I am writing to express my high level of concern regarding SENATE BILL 20-217 as currently written. While I understand the need to do something given the current climate of anger, frustration, and worry, rushing a bill of this magnitude and impact will result in bad law, diminished trust in the process, and misplaced financial impact.
Briefly – I spent thirty-five years as a law enforcement officer for a Front Range Department, twenty-one of which were as a first-line supervisor. I spent twenty-seven years teaching in the police academy, and five years assigned as a supervisor to the Jefferson County/Lakewood PD Academy, arguably the premier academy in Colorado. I spent ten years as an adjunct faculty member at Metropolitan State University. I have practiced law in Colorado and New York.
I began my studies in Criminal Justice in 1972 as a direct result of disillusionment with what I was seeing on the TV news about police corruption, a lack of training and discipline, and an overall sense that departments were unresponsive to the needs of their communities. When I began my career in Colorado in 1979, the professionalism wave had picked up momentum – there was still a lot of work to be done.
There is still a lot of work to be done. Recent events have highlighted that reforms still do not prevent uncommon but totally unacceptable aberrant behavior on the part of officers. High-profile, intolerable, shocking and fatal episodes of police mis- and malfeasance appear, on their face, to be immune to incremental or traditional means of reform. That much does not abide disagreement in any form.
The natural reaction among leaders is to do something, on the reasonable theory that anything is better than the status quo. It is comforting to put down into words anguish, frustration and a sense of powerlessness, clothed in the legal structure of proposed legislation that has a facial relationship with progress.
What is now on the table, what passes for reform, has so many pitfalls in the shape of unintended consequences that I wonder – perhaps it is time not for haste, but for prudence. Here in Colorado, we have the advantage of our temperament, our western style of common sense problem-solving, and a very real sense that policing in our state is, for the most part, woven successfully into the fabric of a society nominally at peace with itself.
I do not presume to tell you how to lead. I only make one basic suggestion, which I think will make the resulting legislation something for the rest of the country to emulate, and something for which Coloradans can be proud.
Before sending anything to Governor Polis’s desk, begin the inquiry by asking the advice of the average Coloradan. Police Chiefs and command officers are fine men and women, but their relationship with line policing is attenuated by the distance between their office and the street. Find out the frustrations of the officers who are tasked with solving Colorado’s law enforcement issues, and see what tools they would want.
Find out what citizens want, not by asking so-called community leaders, but the average citizen. What are their expectations of government, of public safety and the law. Surveys and studies have their places, but what does the average citizen say.
Colorado can easily be broken up into three distinct regions. Do your efforts attempt to address problems that don’t manifest themselves in – say – Grand Junction, or Sterling?
Finally, please understand – as well-meaning as any effort is, we are people. Flawed, fearful, freedom-loving and generous. We can do this, together. We can make Colorado a beacon of hope in turbulent times. We successfully balanced the priorities of a vibrant state during the recent pandemic by listening to an array of Colorado voices. Law enforcement reform is no different.
Thank you. God bless Colorado, and the United States of America.
James Greer
Lakewood, CO
Well said
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