Homicides in Denver (CO): Nearly half of all recent arrests tied to person under supervision

A review by The Gazette found that of the 92 homicides with an arrest in Denver from January 2020 through November 20, 2021, at least 42 of the alleged assailants were either on parole, community corrections, probation or pretrial supervision or had absconded from such supervision. Pretrial supervision is different from both parole and probation in that those on it have not been convicted of a crime.
The analysis excludes juvenile suspects, cases declined by prosecutors—both categories for which police would not identify suspects—and cases for which police have not yet made arrests.
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At the same time, a new law enacted three years ago, SB2019-143, restricted the ability for parole officers to revoke parolees back to prison. That law, sponsored by Democrats Sen. Pete Lee, Sen. Julie Gonzales and Rep. Leslie Herod, placed a broad swath of what are termed technical violations as no longer eligible for revocation back to prison and specified that revocation should be reserved primarily for parolees that commit new crimes.
Violating the terms of parole supervision by skipping drug tests, engaging in drug use and a host of other violations, no longer could result in revocations, according to the new law.
However, technical parole violations involving possessing a deadly weapon, failing to comply with requirements of sex offender treatment, absconding or willful failure to appear, illegal contact with a victim and willful tampering or removing an electronic monitoring device were deemed as permissible reasons to revoke parole for people assessed to be less than high risk.
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Another Denver probation officer “who struggles with matching the sanction to impact the identified behavior that is targeted for improvement” eventually resigned. As he left, he told his superiors that “he did not have a passion for the job.”
Problems continued into 2021. In that year, another probation officer had not kept pace with expected revocations, which had increased “to include writing revocations previously placed on COVID hold,” according to one staffing report. The inability to meet that pace “is largely due to errors within revocation referrals submitted by officers,” the staffing report states.
A review of Colorado’s most recent set of standards for adult probation shows few guidelines for probation officers to determine how to respond to violations of probation terms. One section says officers have to respond to all violations “in some way” and keep documentation but doesn’t elaborate. McCallum said Denver probation officers rely on a behavior modification program to supervise those on probation. Adherence to the program “is under constant review by supervisors and administrative personnel,” he said.