{"id":15719,"date":"2025-11-12T18:17:38","date_gmt":"2025-11-13T01:17:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/juvenile-handgun-cases-rise-in-montezuma-county\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T21:50:56","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T03:50:56","slug":"juvenile-handgun-cases-rise-in-montezuma-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/juvenile-handgun-cases-rise-in-montezuma-county\/","title":{"rendered":"Juvenile handgun cases rise in Montezuma County"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Judge
Judge Todd Jay Plewe swears in 22nd Judicial District Attorney Jeremy Reed in January at Montezuma Combined Courts in Cortez. (Aaron Lewis\/Special to the Journal)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

Officials with the Montezuma County District Attorney\u2019s Office told commissioners during Monday\u2019s workshop that they\u2019ve seen an increase in serious crimes over the past year, with a notable uptick in juvenile handgun cases.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019ve seen is an increase in the types of seriousness,\u201d 22nd Judicial District Office Manager Clarisa Osborn told the Montezuma County Board of County Commissioners.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not getting as much low-level crime. We\u2019re getting a lot of more serious cases. One main concern is we have a lot of juveniles with handguns.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although she noted \u201cquite a few filings over the summer,\u201d Osborn said filings haven\u2019t necessarily increased compared with previous years. She suggested the office may have a lower overall caseload this year.<\/p>\n

Osborn said the office\u2019s juvenile attorney was meeting with law enforcement and the court to discuss the increase in juvenile firearm cases.<\/p>\n

The notable rise mirrors recent trends in neighboring San Juan County, New Mexico, where youth shootings, beyond simply youth possession of firearms, have increased.<\/p>\n

In September, Farmington Police Chief Steve Hebbe called a recent surge in shootings<\/a> involving teenage suspects \u201creally alarming but not totally unexpected.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both Osborn and District Attorney for the 22nd Judicial District, Jeremy Reed, said some youth likely stole guns from unlocked vehicles. Guns were also taken from households, Reed added.<\/p>\n

Reed said the DA Office\u2019s diversion program has been successful in keeping youth out of the criminal justice system as adults.<\/p>\n

Reed added that the increase in severe cases doesn\u2019t necessarily indicate a broader shift in crime rates.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think we\u2019ve really seen more cases coming in, and in my experience, these things can be cyclical,\u201d Reed told the BOCC. \u201cWe\u2019ll have a stretch of more serious things, and then it\u2019ll hopefully calm down again.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said the office is \u201ccurrently pending three first-degree homicides.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DA\u2019s office reports more serious crimes; guns often stolen from unlocked vehicles or homes<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15720,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-15719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15719"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15719\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19806,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15719\/revisions\/19806"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15719"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=15719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}