{"id":39005,"date":"2022-08-10T04:15:00","date_gmt":"2022-08-10T10:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/crime-will-change-with-different-leaders\/"},"modified":"2022-08-10T10:15:00","modified_gmt":"2022-08-10T10:15:00","slug":"crime-will-change-with-different-leaders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/crime-will-change-with-different-leaders\/","title":{"rendered":"Crime will change with different leaders"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Kristi
Kristi Burton Brown<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In early May, my car was stolen from a parking lot. Two hours after I left it outside of a park, it was gone. Far too many Coloradans are familiar with this experience.<\/p>\n

When the police arrived, they asked what else I had in my car. Fortunately, I had left a backpack with my laptop computer in it. The officer asked if I could use the \u201cFindMy\u201d app on my phone to get the location. When I pulled it up, my computer pinged in at a storage unit roughly 15 minutes away in Aurora.<\/p>\n

The officers were able to track down my car through impressive detective work I won\u2019t recount, but it was returned to me within two hours. It\u2019s likely that the person who stole my car was working with a ring of car thieves who were hiding stolen vehicles in the storage unit. They had hammered my ignition and lock in order to steal the car, and drive it off.<\/p>\n

While I am one of the lucky Coloradans who got my car back mostly intact, a record number of families are having their own experience with crime and stolen cars. The Denver murder rate is already exceeding 2021 numbers. Our state is No. 1 in the nation for auto theft. We\u2019re No. 1 in the nation for bank robberies. Colorado is No. 2 for fentanyl overdose deaths. Violent crime and property crime is on the rise across our state \u2013 and it\u2019s disproportionately rising compared to the nation.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t all by chance. Rising crime is tied to actual policy, passed by the party in charge of our state \u2013 the Democrats. SB19-143 is one example of a new law that increased the number of criminals released to go re-commit their offenses. Police will tell anyone who asks how many car thieves are constant repeat offenders who suffer no real consequences.<\/p>\n

Recently, Attorney General Phil Weiser decided to run a meme campaign on social media telling people what to do about auto theft. His ideas? \u201cAvoid leaving documents with your address in glove box.\u201d \u201cBuy comprehensive insurance that covers stolen vehicles.\u201d Wow, thank you, professor. No person in Colorado has ever thought about buying insurance or leaving documents at home. And neither of these \u201cideas\u201d are solutions to auto theft. Neither prevent our cars from getting stolen.<\/p>\n

What really matters is that when Weiser had the chance to support better criminal laws in Colorado, he failed to do so. In fact, he has been on the wrong side of auto-theft law, the wrong side of fentanyl law and on the wrong side of criminal law in general. Since he\u2019s never prosecuted a criminal case in his life, it makes sense. He doesn\u2019t get it, and he\u2019s unqualified to serve as Colorado\u2019s top law enforcement officer. At a recent forum, Weiser said that once someone steals \u201cthree or four cars\u201d in \u201csay, three months\u201d it would be time for consequences. No wonder Colorado is No. 1 in auto theft.<\/p>\n

If you think crime hasn\u2019t come to your neighborhood yet, unfortunately, it\u2019s on the way. Unless we change who\u2019s in charge, we aren\u2019t going to change results. Violent, rising crime is here to stay unless we elect different leaders. Let\u2019s start with the attorney general\u2019s office, and elect a qualified prosecutor to get the job done and build a safer Colorado for all of us.<\/p>\n

Kristi Burton Brown is the chairwoman of the Colorado Republican Party.<\/em><\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Burton Browncca In early May, my car was stolen from a parking lot. Two hours after I left it outside of a park, it was gone. Far too many Coloradans are familiar with this experience. When the police arrived, they asked what else I had in my car. Fortunately, I had left a backpack […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39006,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-39005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39005","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=39005"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39005\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39005"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=39005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}