'Not Going To Allow This To Continue To Happen On My Watch': Denver Mayor Releases Sweeping Plan To Address Rising Crime
DENVER (CBS4) - After two shootings, a stabbing, and four deaths in one weekend, Denver Mayor Michael Hancock issued a call to action Thursday, unveiling a wide-ranging public safety plan.
"We have to move in with the best tools we can and the best knowledge we have to try to solve some of these challenges right now," Mayor Hancock said at a press conference Thursday with the city's police and fire chiefs, sheriff, public safety manager, and city attorney.
Hancock says the city can't arrest its way out of the current crime wave. He called the causes complex. From easy access to illegal guns to cheap fentanyl. The solutions, he says, will involve all levels of government and everyone in the Denver community.
"It's going to take all of us at every level to bring the necessary resources to bear. We can't solve these issues with law enforcement alone," said Hancock.
The Mayor laid out a comprehensive strategy to address this rise in crime. Part of the plan includes targeting additional hot spots where police partner with neighborhood leaders, increasing community outreach teams, hiring more officers, and opening a new center where police can take lower-level repeat offenders with mental illness and drug addiction instead of jail.
"Somewhere they can be assessed where we can have a mental health clinician really look at what's going on here, so it didn't end up in booking in jail where they are just out hours later," says Armando Saldate, Denver's Interim Public Safety Manager.
He says, without treatment, those offenders often escalate. Other offenders, he says, belong behind bars and are being released.
Last fall, CBS4 reported on how Denver County judges were releasing thousands of defendants in violent felonies on zero bond. Leading to bond reform legislation.
The Mayor says the city is tracking that, as well as how its courts are assessing risk, "We cannot allow people who represent a public safety risk be back on our streets. Now I'm not going to allow this to continue to happen on my watch. We're going to remain focused on addressing these problems until they are solved."
The Denver City Council approved Hancock's budget request for nearly $25 million in new public safety spending this year on everything from youth violence prevention to security grants for businesses and an expansion of the Star co-responder program.