Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

[5:31] you

[8:49] [Music]

[11:53] [Music]

[12:15] [Music] [Music] [Music]

[13:26] [Music]

[14:05] [Music] [Music] [Music]

[18:33] [Music] [Music]

[19:27] [Music] [Music]

[20:08] [Music] [Music]

[21:04] [Music] [Music]

[23:17] [Music] [Music]

[24:17] [Music] [Music]

[25:13] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

[27:38] [Music] [Music]

[28:15] [Music] everybody welcome to the Boulder City Council's special meeting not to be confused with yesterday's special meeting Lynette will you call the roll councilmember Applebaum here rocket Burton here Joan's here Marcel your shoe maker over here Yates Jung here we have a quorum thank you before we get started we have one announcement and that is we have an

[29:00] opening on our human relations commission so we are beginning recruiting for someone to fill that seat the seat goes through March 31st 2019 and starting tomorrow we're gonna be recruiting and the application deadline 00 p.m. anybody that previously applied for the Human Relations Committee Commission earlier in the year will be considered unless they have noted otherwise I'll note that the Human Relations Commission generally meets the third Monday of every month at 6 p.m. and we just encourage folks to get involved and so we're gonna board and Commission is a great way to do that so if you're interested please apply and with that oh and you can apply I'll go get an application on the website at Boulder Colorado gov slash boards - Commission's so with that we have one topic tonight I will turn it over to our

[30:00] city attorney Thank You Suzanne tonight you here to consider potential regulation of sexually violent predators in Boulder in your packets I've provided some background materials on what you could consider there are six jurisdictions in the state of Colorado that restricted their sexually violent predators can live generally they do it by some sort of distance regulation from things where children are generally gather schools parks recs enters pools daycare centers so in your packet and on your Dyess we have some maps that sort of show what those circles look like just as a quick overview if you were to impose a thousand-foot regulation from all of those things I just mentioned it would eliminate ninety nine over ninety nine percent of all the dwelling units in the city of Boulder so that would effectively ban sexually violent predators in Boulder one angle would did this they they imposed a 2,000 foot limit and that in fact banned

[31:00] effectively ban sexually violent predators in Boulder in Englewood and then they reduced it recently to a thousand feet Bob did you have a question yeah I started interruption so early but um are these regulations in these cities are these places where the sexually violent predators cannot live or cannot be cannot reside their residential restrictions so they can be in a school yard or they can be in a park yard as long as they don't sleep there at night is that the distinction that's made that's correct as long as they don't reside there okay for those races well I'm starting with that - Lisa I'm so sounds like they can they can't reside within a certain distance of these facilities but they can be there when they're not sleeping or I mean like 18 hours a day they can be there but they and there are restrictions on people on probation or parole that control where they can be as well and I have a group of experts here to sort of talk to you about some of the things and answer those questions much better than I thank you see ACS meet is sort of giving an overview of the ordinance and then provide kind of a background on

[32:00] regulation of sex offenders in the state of Colorado and some of the history to just provide some context and then I'm going to introduce the folks we're here to provide you with more detailed information than I can thanks time thanks Bob so sex offender registration basically began and during the Clinton administration after a young woman was murdered and raped by someone who was in the neighborhood and didn't know about so in Colorado generally there requires that sex offenders after release from prison are required to register with local authorities these registration requirements continue after periods of supervision so oftentimes someone is released from prison and has some period under which they're under supervision depending on the nature of the crime in Colorado the the restrictions go 5 10 20 or even for life so some of the things we've talked about tonight are when someone is under supervision a probation or parole officer can tell them and control their

[33:00] movements to some extent but once they're released from those conditions it's just a reporting requirement and so you have two different kinds of people reporting people who are also currently under some level supervision because of a prior conviction and people who are free to go wherever they want sexually violent predators are a subclass of sex offenders and I'll talk about them in a little detail in a minute but they are required to register for life but they can petition to have the registration requirement removed and as I said registration can exceed the period of post-release supervision so that's important to remember when you think about what happens and Tom just for clarity sure all of these requirements that you're stating are all state law yes ma'am I think they're all state law a sexually violent predator is an adult and can be a child who are convicted of any of sexual assault unlawful sexual contact conduct contact or sexual assault of a child by a by one in a

[34:02] position of trust when the most important parts is the victim has to be a stranger or someone that the offender got to knew for the know for the purpose of victimizing that person so it's a very specific subclass of offense most sexual offenses are committed by people who the victim knows these are these are stranger offenses and most importantly in some Soma troubling to me is under state law to be designated as sexually violent predator there has to be based on an assessment tool and determination that the person is likely to Rhea fend for troubled by these that some expert has decided the board has decided that the person is likely ready again this is not my area we have folks who can answer more detailed questions about this so in Boulder we currently have 122 sex offenders registered the little the list if you look online goes on 441 pages 44 of those are registered with no fixed address state law specifically requires

[35:02] a police chief to except the registration with no fixed with no fixed address yes ma'am and maybe you wouldn't just wait til the question oh I'm always open so you know I in looking at the addresses and stuff like that or where the whereabouts and maybe this is a testable question but I was curious that some of them you know are parked in their cars and parking lot and some people are in the hammock and I guess it's important that the police know their whereabouts but don't some of those actions somewhat violate our camping so that's that's what the my next point okay you're not you're not allowed to register with no fixed location and that's what the state law says if it includes a residence or location that would violate state law or local ordinance your question about camping is

[36:01] a good one our camping ordinance is very specific and the registrations don't generally provide sufficient information for it to be a violation of our camping ordinance our camping ordinance requires that someone remain in a place at night and that they conduct activities of daily living cooking cleaning shelter and so we have to prove those elements if someone says I'm sleeping in a park that doesn't necessarily violate our camping ordinance per se because the camping ordinance requires something in additionals of sleeping it requires shelter or other activities of daily living which is is is why it mean as you recall these if you've been doing this for a while the camping ordinance was very narrowly drawn to really address camping not just someone sleeping someplace overnight so in my review of those none of them actually on their face violate the camping ordinance now there could be some there was one who used to be registered at an abandoned building now arguably that's trespass because it's not his property at someone

[37:00] else's property and we could theoretically charge that but again you'd have to have to prove test past you have to have knowledge that it's a trespass usually there has to be a sign or something or some knowledge and so just that registration alone probably also doesn't qualify that I'd have trouble thinking of any kind of reg raishin that would fit the language within the state ordinance state statute that's a per se violation of law thank you so of our 44 registered 122 of sex offenders for our sexually violent predators three of those are registered with no fixed address and are registered at the homeless shelter they are each registered in a different program or at least on their registration that provides a different program once in the summer bed program once in the parole program and once in the first step program now I didn't wasn't able to do a detailed analysis but I asked the police department if a significant number of our set of our registered sex offenders list the homeless shelter as their residence so I asked the police

[38:02] department if there was any data that showed that sexual offenses were higher in the area around the shelter and they said no in fact the highest level of sex offenders is where you'd expect downtown in district 3 that the the district that incorporates the shelter has no higher level of sex offenses than another part of the city which you'll hear also correlates with the data you'll get from some of the experts about whether or not folks are more likely to commit a crime around where they're sleeping and speaking of experts I've asked a group of folks at the request of the CAC to come to speak to you briefly I've asked them he's talking about five minutes and then to be available to answer questions we have Michelle gang who's from the Colorado Division of Justice sex offender management she has experience in managing sex offenders and in going after child sex abuse Catherina booth who's here on behalf of district attorney Stan Garnett she's the first Assistant District Attorney she's also former head of the sex crime unit Greg Brown who is the chief

[39:01] probation officer for Boulder County Probation a Greg tester who I think you've met before and Greg harms who's hiding in the back over there did not come forward but and so they're each can talk a little bit about their view of this subject and provide you with a chance to answer question so Michelle did you want to go first you have Michelle has a PowerPoint which I will get up there for her anything thank you for inviting the Department of Public Safety to come and speak on this important issue of residency restriction we appreciate it I wanted to start out by giving you a little bit of history in 2003 in 2004 the state general assembly joint judiciary committee talked and discussed about passing statewide residency restriction laws and they asked the

[40:00] Department of Public Safety to do a research study prior to actually putting something into law to see if it made sense for the state of Colorado that those residency restrictions made sense and would create a safe term community the Department of Public Safety set out and completed that study and they found two important things they found one that residency restrictions did not have an impact on recidivism rates and I'll talk more about that in a moment and preventing sex offenders from living near their families and support systems actually impeded effective community supervision by parole and probation and impeded an offender's ability to be successful because they lost resources like transportation from family members because when they start out on parole they can't drive or some financial benefits of living in a stable home and having food every night so there were some serious consequences to those residency restrictions when the study was completed so the generate General Assembly made a wise decision and decided to not enact such restrictions within the state of Colorado so I wanted

[41:05] to share some quick share some well-established research regarding recidivism for you folks just so you have some information about what the experts are saying statewide and then across the nation as well and so we'll start out with national statistics statistics excuse me and one study found here that in treatment and supervision first of all so that you know we're charged in treatment supervision with assisting offenders in establishing pro-social lifestyles that are incompatible with reoffending so that's what pearl does that what's what probation does that's what treatment does that's what law enforcement does when they go out and check on these guys we found the research across the research studies all support that with stable housing employment and social support these guys are much less likely to commit a new offense sex offenders are that who successfully complete treatment of course less likely to recidivate treatment works in Colorado

[42:02] our rece recidivism rates are extremely low so guys we prosecuted for another sex crime that's those rates are very low type masters in Colorado who we offend did not live if you did not live closer to schools parks or daycare centers than those who did not really to those locations had no impact on recidivism rates and again those do in our communities are those that have support from positive support system from positive role models from positive friends and that those who had those in place had lower numbers of probation violations parole violations and recidivism and there was a study done in Broward County Florida dr. Joel Levinson interviewed 109 convicted sex offenders after residency restrictions went place in what in effect in Broward County

[43:02] Florida and what she found was that according to the offenders the majority were forced to move out of their homes life became very unstable they lost jobs they lost access to jobs because they no longer had transportation such as bust many faced homelessness and three-quarters of them so 70 was 74% stated that residency restrictions are not going to prevent me from reoffending if I want a refund I can do it residency restrictions are not going to prevent that from happening and I thought that was very significant to hear to read that in that study with offenders saying that residue restrictions aren't going to keep people safe they're not going to prevent them re-- from reoffending on that some pretty strong evidence there was another study done in Minnesota this included 224 offenders out of the Minnesota Department of Corrections and the interview with them interviews and in case file studies talked about where offenders are so debated and if the residency restrictions in Minnesota actually had effect on recidivism and what they found of all those 224 offenses none of them

[44:02] would have been prevented by residency restrictions most sex offenses happen in offenders home or in the victim's home and that's key and I'm about to get to more research on that most sex offenses happen in a place where we feel safe and are therefore vulnerable and we're in the presence of someone we trust and that's important so how can I ask you a question on this sir to interrupt you but um I thought that Tom described were talking about sexually violent predators which I think are defined as people who typically don't know they're their victims and so I think you're talking about statistics where there isn't if there's a behavior between people who know each other right I mean are we mixing apples and oranges here um I don't think so because I think your assumptions and accurate which assumption that that's actually about predators don't know their victims I thought that's how you defined it home know the definitions there's three definitions that have to be determined in a sexually violent predator assessment one is if they're a stranger to the victim it's yes no to is did they

[45:01] promote a relationship in order to be able to offend and did they establish a relationship in order to offend and the permit established means that they've known their victims it could be for a lengthy period of time or a shorter period of time okay do you know the mix between those two categories I do not have those statistics with me tonight Thanks sure so to talk about collateral consequences just briefly when people lose housing increases a lot of instability for folks and increased as a risk of homelessness which increases an inaccurate registry and for law enforcement the key to registry is being able to track these guys and to be able to determine where they are and I will talk in a minute about communities who have imposed by the restrictions and the increase in violations of registry laws and of course as I already talked about the loss of employment increases instability and if they're away from support systems

[46:00] where they can't have that support system in that contact that increases risk for RIA fence as well in addition we watch we see when people when we have these restrictions that of a sudden people sex offenders sexual violent predators are moved to typically locations in the town where there's a lot of poverty or the low-income areas or disenfranchised communities and so that raises a lot of concerns about how the affluent can move offenders who RSVP or sexually offenders and move them into less affluent less powerful communities who have less of a voice because they don't know how to organize what what is in accurate registry I mean I can imagine what it is that you did sure that they just homeless so we don't know where they are but they're actually spending the night at their parents house even though they're not supposed to that kind of thing and and why can't they stay with their parents well if there's residency restrictions in place and their parents live within an area where they can't reside I get it they lie about because you'd rather sleep in

[47:01] a warm bed than out on the street right a little bit more information about statistics 93% of child sex abuse victims knew their abuser 93% of children know who abuses them they get access to the children through building trust with the children and grooming their families so that their families also support and trust the offender most sexual offenses are committed in the offender's home or the victim's home and the younger the age is a child victim the younger the child is the more likely they are to be victimized by someone they know I think this is just gonna repeat what I said before so I'm just gonna move on and then I wanted to point out one other thing the national laws that have been put in place are laws that reflect what usually does not happen in a sex assault case so here's what I want to share with you nationwide of the 60 to 70 thousand arrests for

[48:00] sexual assault each year one hundred and fifteen of them constitute abduction by strangers that's less than 1% and while it's tragic and horrific and terrible that that happens it's less than 1% so we make laws that affect the entire nation based on less than 1% of the crimes out there family dynamics I would make children more vulnerable to sexual assault and proximity to sexual offenders this was a report came out of California it's a pretty powerful impactful study and the bottom line was we need to have good supervision we have to be careful about who we let in our homes and when we have homes where we let a lot of traffic come in such as where there's substance abuse or whatever the case might be those homes are at higher risk for offense and residency restrictions aren't going to solve that matter either 87 percent of people arrested for sexual offense were never previously convicted of a crime most people commit a sexual offense never have been arrested before and they'll never be arrested again but that's a unique statistic when you look at other offenders who tend to they get

[49:00] arrested for a burglary and they move on and commit more offenses in 2008 so I know this is a dated dated information but of these areas that put in restrictions and several of them had Castle Rock particular and I blew Commerce City had residency restrictions just for us bp's all of those jurisdictions saw an increase in people who went underground and stopped registering so they lost track of offenders lose track of sex offenders that can be concerning so law enforcement and all those jurisdictions lost track of sex offenders because they refused to they stopped registering Michelle can you elaborate on that so um so it was kind of general statement so how do we know that they went underground not in other words did we know that there were people who had previously registered who stopped registering but we're still in the city and and how does that compare to cities that didn't have residency restrictions so in 2008 in those areas with residency restrictions they we looked at the number of registries first of all in 2008 we had law that said you had to

[50:00] register in the jurisdiction where you reside and then you had to do you register so you had to let it a jurisdiction know when you arrived and you had alleged jurisdiction no when you were moving out that license changed but that's how law enforcement knew where people were and then they hadn't notify so if I came here to Boulder and I'm a sex offender and I registered with you and then I was gonna move to Longmont in 2008 I would have to come to you and say I'm moving to Longmont this is the address I'm moving to and you would take me off your registry and I would move to Longmont and I would have five days to register and then you could check with Longmont to make sure that I registered so we had kind of a pretty good system of keeping track of guys or gals for that matter so back then what they looked at was those who registered and then didn't do register but we couldn't find them within CBI we couldn't find him within the state of where they went so we didn't know where they were does that make sense yeah but is was the rate of the couldn't find it people higher in these cities statistically than they were in other cities we didn't compare I don't think

[51:02] we compared other cities because what we were asking these jurisdictions was we have residency restrictions in place now right did people comply with registry or did they none they said we all they all had an increase in non-compliance compared to historical yes Melissa increase or decreased or no change in non-compliance in other cities I don't know so we don't know conclusively that the the non-compliance was directly correlated to the register to the restrictions is that correct no okay one of the results of zoning restrictions it might be that people just move somewhere else and how you know as opposed to not registering here they might just leave right is that is there a way to know if that's what happened in these cases um I

[52:00] could look at the data again I again in these cases they they looked for the guys so if they had Tom Smith and he's not registering anymore they went was they went to CBI and said do you have this guy registered somewhere and they did not have him registered somewhere okay they said yeah you're welcome could you pull up your three requirements for being labeled a sexually violent predator that's that wasn't my son no I'm good okay well I there was she listed unknown and then created a relationship in order to sexually offend and cultivated a relationship I did mention that and I think that um mr. Brown can speak to this more than I can because I don't complete those evaluations but first sexually violent predator there's a number of portions to that sexually violent predator assessment one of them is if they how they if they establish

[53:00] that they would if they were a stranger if they promoted a relationship for sexual assault purposes or if they established a relationship for college sexual assault purposes any one of those checked can is a concern okay yeah and the memo it says convicted of sexual assault sexual assault on a child or sexual assault on chat but one in the position of trust as one to whose victim was a stranger and three who based on risk assessment screening is likely to Rhea fend it second one here that has this either stranger or promoted or relationship so yeah I want me to hear a little bit about that because that that's meaningful to me why don't we let you and then questions at the end unless there's a clarifying things you and I'm talking to these guys okay so thank you for that explanation that I understand how it establishes that sex offenders in

[54:02] general are are usually known to victims right so those are great points in the statistics that you have do you have any breakdowns about statistics for the sexually violent predators versus the sex offender population at large I don't you know there's so few sexually violent predators but we do not have we do not have those statistics yeah because I'm a little concerned about though everybody just left I think I could get those for you oranges question here of the general sex offender population versus the specific SPPs that we're talking about tonight um yes I am one of the issues is every state defined sections that predator differently and that's kind of an outdated designation in any case though nationally this is just this going to be hard with in the Colorado within the state of Colorado folks were submitting to the Division of Criminal Justice every sexually violent predator assessment that was completed so we would be able to pull those stats we could pull those stats from what we have but I know that people aren't consistently submitting those so those

[55:00] stats won't be they may not be valid or but they would give you an idea the interesting would you would you like me to follow up on that potentially I mean maybe I can see how things the discussion goes okay it may be valuable okay so I was curious about repeat sexual offenders and at what point do they change maybe their classification you know and then there's like first degree and there's third degree could you go into that a little bit I think our district attorney could probably do a better job of that because there's just there's um and for in terms of registration purposes we have the sexually violent predator and then we have all the other offenders she can talk about the crimes and degrees and convictions and those kinds of things I'm not a lawyer thank goodness but we we did propose to the legislature that

[56:00] we do registration based on risk instead of because law enforcement came to us and was and we had a committee going and they really wanted to know who who in our community is really the highest risk to reoffend so we can keep a better eye on them and there's guys that don't meet the SBP criteria but my experience as a probation officer would tell you that those some of those guys were very dangerous we had to keep a very close eye on them so I don't want you to have the false belief that only the SV P's are the dangerous ones out there as a probation officer how often do you see a button client you know I will let Greg answer that I have been out of the field for a couple of years so I don't want to give you the wrong information no you're good thank you so I'm I'm curious at a state policy level who's looking at this and trying to improve the situation is there you know if if we had concerns about how the policies are

[57:01] being made in Colorado who do we go talk to and what's being advanced by them yes absolutely you would talk to my boss Christopher LaMotta for Taos key and give him a call and say hey we're concerned about this and come on in and then we figure out what to do what office is out it's under the Department of Public Safety and it's the Division of Criminal Justice and we are the sex offender management unit I guess let me just follow up on that I guess one of the most disturbing aspects of this is the notion that somebody is likely to read recommit a violent crime like that's concerning and I guess right or at least that's how we are told to understand this category and the question is as a state then are we do we have good policies in place to just release these folks without a good plan to make sure that doesn't happen and it

[58:00] doesn't feel like that's in place so and I've been to community a few times so I think some of those questions Chris would we'd be a good start but then we'd have to pull and parole and learn more about how parole planning happens from a facility into the community and then probation could talk about sentencing they have very their terms and conditions and supervision is very strict within the community but I'll let Greg okay talk more about that right but any other questions for Michelle no thank you for for being here we may have some more later okay thanks you're welcome really appreciate it Greg do you wanna good evening my name is Katerina Boothe I'm the First Assistant District Attorney for the 20th Judicial District Boulder County I'm here this evening representing Stan Garnett I do have a

[59:01] unique position however and speaking to you tonight I was until just January of this year the chief of the sex assault unit for the last felony sex assault for the last about eight years and then also had two other years of experience working that caseload so I do feel well equipped to speak to you about sex offender practices specifically our prosecution decision-making and our concerns about safely managing those offenders in the community there was a number of things that were just thrown out that I think I could speak to you I was originally thinking about what I would say but maybe I could just start to answer some of your questions and that may be the direct most direct route I will agree with miss King that the SVP designation and as that's described there is that alternative in there or and the or when you look at the SVP assessment tool there's four different criteria or sections I should say within the section of defining the relationship it does have those alternatives are they a stranger or are they promoting the

[60:01] relationship or establishing the relationship such that it provides them that opportunity to commit their sex offense so it is a misnomer to think that our s VPS are stranger sex offenses so that that is the first thing that I would like to clarify and in fact I have prosecuted probably hundreds of sex offenders at this point and it is a rarity to get an SVP designation and I have to admittedly say that sometimes it's not exactly how you might believe a particular person and what their risk factors are on paper how they'll score on the SVP now I want to comment on that because I'm sure my ears my words will be used against me in some other future meeting the sex offender management board does a really great job at looking at how we are looking at SV P's and that specific tool the SV the som B board so the sex offender management board is a group

[61:00] of stakeholders from all the various kind of disciplines that would come together in that practice of prosecuting defending judging supervising sex offenders in our community the SVP tool is one thing that I think they're currently looking at revising and making sure that it's more evidence-based and aligned with research what I can tell you as a practitioner as a prosecutor the SVP tool that particular element the defining that relationship does have a subjectivity about it when you're asking judges or sex offender evaluators or probation officers to define if that relationship was for the reason of promoting or establishing and so that's why we have some degree of potential error or non error in that particular tool the other way I've seen that tool misused is defendants made exercise their constitutional right to not answer or participate in parts of that

[62:00] examination and specifically the fourth section talks about that risk for recidivism how we do that risk for recidivism is oftentimes through different mental health assessments one very specific and important tool that we look at is the PCL our or the psychopathy checklist revised that was established by dr. hare and he and and the research has demonstrated that over and over and over not only with sex offenders with other criminals when you have high psychopathy it correlates to high recidivism rates again across the board for different criminals but it has been established multiple times for sex offenders so if I'm a defense attorney I'm a caution my client or advise my client to exercise their rights and if they can't do a fully informed for example pcl are that psychopathy checklist then I have seen offenders that I thought maybe should be an SVP it was a stranger it was a stranger on

[63:00] campus who did not get labeled one way or the other on the SVP because he chose to exercise his constitutional rights and not participate in that section they're supposed to be fall backs for that but it didn't work yeah I mean there's one risk which is getting false positive evaluations of SPPs and there's another risk which is you don't catch everybody up in your analysis it sounds to me like people aren't answering the psychopathy questions then they're more likely to get away not designated SVP but people who are answering them do show that psychopathic tendency will get caught up in that and be labeled an SVP does that sound that carrot I think you can go both ways actually but yes I think you certainly can be under estimating and not capturing all those that RSVPs I do think and I have seen that SVP designation carries a pretty heavy hammer for sex offenders and so because of that that's a hotly litigated

[64:00] designation that we see come back that we're asking our courts to make particular findings about SVP offenders and sometimes they're not in the best position to have the most amount of information around that and so that they they may under assess or they may over assess depending on the information that they have before them I think you can go both ways yes sir Thanks um you said that you've prosecuted several hundred of these and I understand only a small percentage of SV P's within the the group that are at designated SPPs just based on your experience what's the proportion of those that are strangers to the victim versus those that built this relationship of trust so I was quickly looking at the list I know the four that are currently SV PS I know one was a stranger one I prosecuted myself that wasn't established or promoted relationship and the other two I'd have

[65:00] to look into one more time I didn't prosecute them myself just off top your head over over here years and years of experience what would you say roughly is it one-third two-thirds fifty-fifty ninety ten just give us a general idea I still think it's more probably disproportionately that they are promoting or establishing their relationship and then they have those extra risk assessments so psychopathy or otherwise because our overall statistics of sex offenders it's so rarely the stranger and that's true both of adult and child I know Michelle gave you the child statistics but that's true for adult sex offenders as well so it's still disproportionately they are the establishing and promoting especially of course is in the child context right so the scenario is that I have started to date this particular person let's say I'm a male sex offender I'm dating this female in order to have access to our children right I'm establishing or promoting that relationship in that way so I can get to that child so that I can offend against that child would it be a fair statement again just using the universe of SPPs that a majority may be a significant

[66:01] majority of them are either either strangers to their victim or they're predators who have attacked children would that be a general statement if those are the two categories would that be a majority of the SPPs that I have seen yes strangers or that have offended against children thank you along those same lines I guess I would jumping to a couple other things about releasing folks and state policies as well as recidivism and how we're looking at that as you know mr. Garnett established a made a position statement for the board and I believe it was at least referred to in some publications today as well and in general the concerns around an ordinance is what will that ordinance provide in the way of actually supervising and enforcing our ability to manage a SVP in the community meaning if you provide an ordinance that says you can't be unless you're like trying to get them out of the city entirely right

[67:00] but other than that if you create an ordinance such that the penalties and the teeth that we have may not be such that the the state dialogue right now and what is available to parole officers and violating parolees sex offenders RSVPs while they're on parole or otherwise what are we going to do in the long run what how is that going to help us actually manage them and keep them safer in the community if let's say it's a couple days in jail or some fines or whatever and then they're right back out to exactly where we are and so that's one of the the practical concerns of how does the ordinance actually increase our safety and managing those those community those sex offenders in our community I think where I line with mr. Garnett of course is that I think our focus should be at state legislation and so the question was where can we manage at a state level and at a state level where our focus should be and where our concerns are the general narrative these days and the that you hear and myself as a prosecutor that I hear is that we're having more and more sex offenders being

[68:00] released from prison and especially our indeterminant sex offenders so some of those of course are going to have that SVP tells Ignatian so that may not excuse me what's an indeterminant sorry so the the change in the sex offender sentencing laws happened primarily to go from what we call determinate to indeterminate in 1998 indeterminate is why you hear or sometimes you read in the paper when people say it's 12 years to life that to life is an indeterminate by way of quick example if I commit a burglary I commit a theft drug offense or something the judge will sentence me somewhere between say for a class 4 felony it's between 2 to 6 years that the judge will sentence me to 2 or 4 or 6 or whatever that determinate number is if I'm a sex offender committing a class 4 felony the court would sentence me to 2 to 6 to life to life being that we have empowered a lot of discretion into our parole board the Department of

[69:01] Corrections and otherwise to decide when that person should be released in our community so that is the narrative we need to be looking at is at a state level are the parole board equipped with the right amount of time amount of resources the right amount of information in order to properly review the sex offenders who are being released into our community including us VPS and are they do they have are they armed with all the right information in order to make that decision and so that's that's part of the dialogue the other part is can I one limitation they're not give there the other way that we're coming back into our community from do see is through our Community Corrections programs so you're going to have them either funnel through Community Corrections and placement that way or they're you're going to have a direct release to probation and being out on probation or parole so there's alternative ways that they can be supervised in our community and where we need to really focus are we getting the right people out and if the right people are out are our resources with the parole supervision

[70:00] Department such that they can properly manage them and make sure they keep track of them and have the right tools around managing them to help reduce recidivism rates so I think that's the general premise behind ordinances and how much they can or cannot actually help us keep the community safe which is what our focus is we have a couple questions yes so you talked about your office or at least you and attorney Garnett you don't want or you you don't think it's good to have these order at local ordinances in place so I have a question about and that you should focus on the state legislature so my question is at the state legislature could you advocate for maybe some transition program for people who were imprisoned

[71:00] for sexual offense and then are coming out my understanding and might not be correct is that in places in some states like California that they have a when they're these individuals are released from prison they have to go through some kind of a transition program or something so that they're basically transitioning back into public rather than prison one day public space the next day without any help or guidance or whatever would there be a way that we could maybe work with our state legislature or do one do you know of something like that and two could you focus not you but we focus at the state legislature on prolonged kind of transitions for release so yes of

[72:00] course it has a huge fiscal note attached to it right and that's usually been the prohibitive factor so what we see is despite assurances that people won't be pulling our indeterminate sex offenders so meaning those that have been convicted and have gone to prison on an indeterminate that to life designation is getting out that they wouldn't parole homeless we are seeing them pearl homeless the alternative the best analogous thing we have to what you're suggesting in California is our Community Corrections program so every jurisdiction has their Community Corrections or it looks you know your halfway houses as it's commonly referred to so they can parole through and transition is exactly what they call it their transition cases they're transitioning before their parole eligibility date into our Community Corrections program or they can do that as a condition of their parole so then they can get some potential additional supervision restrictions and treatment while they're in that transition but

[73:01] we're seeing a lot just transition straight out to parole one of the the s VPS that is noted that that was the way that they ended up or at least two that I know of have come out directly from prison directly out into the community without going through the Community Corrections program that often has to do with how long their sentences are at the upfront and what that amount is for when they can transition out as well so our SVP s different in terms of their requirement to wear GPS bracelets are they required to wear GPS bracelets and is that different from other sexual offenders do sexual offenders have to wear these type of bracelets so any sex offender in fact any felon potentially on there as a condition of their parole can be required to wear a GPS unit I do

[74:02] know that some of these offenders on this list are and some are not so it is up to the parole division the supervision the parole department that's supervising the offender's to make that distinction and in order but they do have that tool available to them if against something that's actually again quite cost costly both for the devices and for the ability to actually supervise them while they're on that device to have somebody monitoring it so is there a central location where these people are monitored so somebody who is monitoring these people that would know that's up to their probation officer there is one larser okay Aaron and then Jim thanks for being here - she ate your testimony there's an implication what you said before that perhaps the indeterminant people are getting indeterminate sentences are coming out maybe early and frequently did I misunderstand that no you did not must understand that okay so I'm curious

[75:01] about that because like we heard in a recent sex assault conviction folder you know that there was a judge who was concerned that gosh you'd go into the indeterminate sentence bringing sentencing program and never come out again because they're under-resourced and they don't get to people so there's a kind of a contradiction there could you speak to that a little bit so a couple things I think that's been the narrative I've been in the office well if you start from when I first started in the office it was about 1995 to 96 I was there in 1998 when the sex offender laws changed and I've watched how that has practiced over the last 18 years there was a time period where no one was getting out that's common sensical ii accurate because you had to get the offense past 1998 you had to get him to prosecution you had to get him sentenced and then they had to serve a certain amount of their time before they were ever even going to come up for parole so the narratives and that drum started back then where no one's ever getting

[76:00] out well that was true for about the first six eight nine years in the last three years we've seen a pretty dramatic spike in those offenders that are being released on the indeterminate sentences my counterpart the a public defender a private defense attorney would disagree with me and would argue to the court and it's it's very commonplace every time that I'm in court to say judge you can't sentence them to indeterminate because they'll never get out this is a young man you know we can manage them in the community we can provide the right resources and if you send them there they'll never get out I would tell you that I believe that that tide has shifted and I see that the the tide has shifted there's been a lot of articles over the last couple years I think it was already two years ago a pretty popularized one of the Denver Post that said the unintended consequences of indeterminate sentencing and that we have this pretty substantial backlog of sex offenders serving indeterminate and just lingering in the Department of Corrections not getting out so the som B board has worked really hard at examining why is that and what

[77:02] can they do the Department of Corrections obviously has had multiple pressures around how they might manage that a backlog that was referred to in these studies and so I have seen in my practical you know day in day out of seeing sex offenders come through we're seeing them parole more often we're seeing them transition through Community Corrections more often and that's consistent with the spike of the numbers of sex offenders that are coming out into the community and I think that's the trend that's going to continue of course there is a deficiency of sex offender evaluators and treatment providers in the Department of Corrections system for some obvious reasons lots of times our prison facilities are not in locations that are very desirable to live very very small rural communities or that there's just there's just not that many providers who want to work with that kind of clientele so you know our suggestions are looking

[78:01] at trying to provide more urban based facilities so that those sex offenders can get that treatment while being incarcerated before being paroled and there's got to be some other ways that we can manage that better than just purling them homeless or otherwise thank you very much yeah a few questions thank you for being here can you talk a little more about Community Corrections programs where does the funding come for from those where's the one in Boulder Boulder County can you just give us a little local flavor for that and how many people work there and so on so we're I'm gonna keep punting a little bit but gray can really speak to that because he actually is partly in charge of working on and collaborating with Community Corrections we have two different primary locations one in Boulder and one in Longmont that they transition back through our general approach in Boulder County this is not true of other counties but we do have a very strong sex offender probation department in our probation so our

[79:00] general approach and prosecution often is to use Department of Corrections for the punitive aspect and impose or request a basically a do see sentence for the punitive part of recognizing the seriousness of these offenses and as they transition back into the community we asked for consecutive probation supervision as opposed to parole supervision so we don't tend to use our Community Corrections as often as other jurisdictions at least on the up front and that's because you can have more turnover in your Community Corrections staff the case managers have a less ability to supervise them are not as trained as well as our probation officers are in this jurisdiction so we tend to utilize what are our best ways to manage them and that's through probation after do see we don't really kind of rely on do see to rehabilitate and to transition them back out to the community but we are seeing more and more come through that transition route

[80:00] to Community Corrections and then they're under parole supervision as opposed to probation supervision got it so let's make sure I understand so halfway houses are associated with probation they can be wait on that too but it seems to me in this day and age of GPS tracking we would be able to be creative about you know the goal I think is to keep people who are at high risk to reoffending the most vulnerable populations intention and so I don't know if a housing restriction is a blunt tool to do that sounds like at least some people think it's a blunt tool how about [Music] as those GPS records are collected what can be done with them legally like can a probation officer find that someone sexually violent predator with the GPS

[81:00] has gone into a place they're not allowed to go and do something with that information they can they can set exclusion zones and Greg can speak more specifically about that and that's what they do with GPS is you don't set where they can go you set where they are excluded they're from and then you can see when it goes off if they've gone into that excluded zone so that can be around victim address to the school addresses you know parks whatever and so that's how that's monitored of course what we need is a way that those devices stay charged so that they can stay active so that they can be monitored that has come up and I know an other SVP notification meetings that's come up where that's that's one of the great benefits of having people go to the homeless shelter which I know people do not like and I understand that but that gives that a place in a forum so that those devices can be being charged we can monitor where they're at better I have had and I know of an SVP in this community who stayed in their truck or their car slash RV camper and you don't

[82:02] have that same ability with that GPS device like you do if they're at the homeless shelter got you so what's the next person who comes up if you had to estimate what fraction of sexually violent predators have GPSS because you said have the whole world of sex offenders there's some that do and some that don't but if s vp's do they all get GPS I don't know I'm sorry I don't know that answer so there's the parole board and then there's the division of parole that's supervising so your your your parole supervision so there's a long my office that supervises in this particular area that would have that information about if they're transitioning the s VP's that are transitioning out onto parole how many of them are they hooking up to GPS got it okay thank you get into the whole GPS thing and parole

[83:00] and so I think well we will and second but I'll try to live my question to a legal one for either you or Tom yes Kenneth city impose additional conditions of royal KITT for example let's say the Parole Board determined that a person doesn't have to have a bracelet I would say the parole office determined that the person could go anywhere he wanted to can a city or and above that say dear parole office you know over and above your constraints we want to put additional constraints we don't want this person to go this place we want this person to wear an ankle brace that can we do that that's a legal question if we can do anything Bob but I I would be concerned that probation and parole or managed to stay white concern and that there would be a preemption or stronger preemption of our being I'm not aware of any city that's tried that I don't know that's ever been litigated but that would be the argument that says the preemption argument is we've made a determination this person can go to schools and we're saying we don't want them to go to schools in the state's

[84:00] gonna say we're gonna let this person go to schools is that the position sure that wouldn't be the argument but I think the argument would be that the state has a comprehensive scheme of regulating offenders in particular on probation or parole and that cities can't impose different restrictions in the state imposes those restrictions or cumulative cumulative or greater that would be the argument again it hasn't been litigated so I can't give you a defining a definitive answer Thanks a very simple question what is the difference between parole and probation it's significant so so your local probation would be oftentimes when we're prosecuting an offender they're gonna go a multitude of directions but in lieu of going to prison you're gonna go through probation for sex offenders there's what's called sex offender intensive supervised probation what we call SOI SP all these acronyms all the time right so

[85:00] probation and then there's enhanced probation there's sex offender intensive super super vision probation but that means they are they're completely automatically sentenced directly into the community you then have Community Corrections which is also it's a diversion from prison you're not going to prison yet you can go directly to Community Corrections which is the halfway house this gets really complicated so it's not simple answer for sex offenders on indeterminate that can actually be a condition of their probation so we could sentence somebody to SOA SP indeterminate sentencing and have Community Corrections being another placeholder for them no other law no other crime is like that you can also go to come to Community Corrections the way I just told you you were in prison and you're gonna transition out through Community Corrections before coming out on to parole parole only comes when you've gone to prison so probation SOA SP Community Corrections then prison and if you go to prison you're going to come

[86:00] out on to parole unless again you've transitioned through Community Corrections but Community Corrections would be a placeholder then for parole that makes sense so it's totally different bodies they are both state agencies but their levels of expertise or caseload or abilities could vary widely from jurisdiction to jurisdiction on what you have in your probation department versus what you have available for parole so parole only happens after an individual has been to prison correct thank you maybe I should have been that simple sorry that was helpful so do all sexually violent predators come through the correction system is that pretty typical that to get the sexually violent predator label that you're gonna have to have a severe enough felony that you're going to get out of prison generally

[87:03] speaking yes okay those last few questions the folks that are out in the community now are almost all in parole not probation right they've all been convicted of a felony they've served their time in prison and they've been paroled as opposed to some sort of probationary diversion is that right yes okay so we could just talk about parole and just forget about probation for our business right kind of okay there are some that we still do probation on the other side because we think we can get better supervision through probation but generally speaking for the four that you have here there pearl okay may be good enough for now thank okay so thank you very much I appreciate it next I guess maybe I'm Greg Brown from probation I think probably a lot has been said questions that you have I can talk a little bit more about the halfway

[88:01] houses although Katerina did a nice job they're funded through a fund a state fund called Senate bill four is called prison diversion that money funnels through the county Community Corrections division and there's a citizen board citizen and professional board that review all cases either coming from prison or that the course considering is diversion to make decisions on whether they would be safe in the community under what conditions I will tell you that almost every sex offender that's coming out of do see they look at that very seriously because they worried about homelessness and obviously doing that transition as you were talking about and doing it you know in the most thoughtful way possible I mean just plunking them at the homeless shelter is not great the s VPS that have gotten probation they have all gotten two years work released out of the county jail so that's the way they start their sentence so there's a long period of monitoring them and watching them and then transitioning them out of the out of the work release program and I would say that mr. booths right the most of the s VP's do go to prison initially and when

[89:00] they're at these transition houses do are they allowed to I would think to have a job and they're required to and a halfway houses yes and parole pretty regularly my experience with SB PS coming out of prison as they are using GPS pretty regularly the way the parole has that set up is that they have their own dispatch center so it is a 24/7 center gps is good technology it's not great technology and it tends to make people do you like it will act as if it's going to stop something from happening what it does get used for us to know that someone was in that location something bad happened there and it can narrow down who might have been responsible for that but it's not could it be real time so let's say it is real time it's how you respond to that the accuracy of it and then what resources you can dispatch to that so I mean one of the things that's fairly fragmented is that connection between Corrections and law enforcement and say 911 you call 911 you know you have a

[90:01] three or four minute response time in Boulder something like that if those resources are connected then you have that kind of response it's pretty rare that those resources are connected parole pretty much does this on their own we have done some special there's been some special discussions recently around doing something more enhanced than that with the SD piece coming out nothing formalized and you all are asked what do we do at the local or state level I think that there's a lot of resources and a lot of interest in doing this in the most thoughtful way possible in Boulder so I think creating a group or tasking a group to look at this and bring something back to you with options might be a way to go because there is technology out there you just have to bring the resources together to make sure when we say it's real-time and we're monitoring it 24/7 that we're actually doing that and not a parole officer coming here from 20 or 30 minutes away and trying to figure out what's going on so so let's say you had an individual that was a repeated offender on and attack of children and

[91:00] so you wouldn't want that individual anywhere close to it they care or to a school correct so is some of that enhanced technology that you might be considering would start buzzing or something like that if that individual approaches where a daycare or a school is the technology is such that you can create inclusion and exclusion zones now I will tell you we when we do you do use GPS we use a lot of resources checking and chasing down you know they came too close to a zone or a loose battery or a battery recharge or something called drift unfortunately the GPS technology your phone has better GPS technology than the units that we have available to us right now your phones triangulate through cell towers and through satellites at least two satellites we oftentimes only have one satellite doing that which is it's getting better all the time but it's amazing that your iPhone actually when you're driving and using Google Maps it's actually better often times in the GPS we have for a variety of reasons

[92:00] it's on the ankle indoors that doesn't work you've got to use cell towers instead I mean there's a lot of different nuances to it that caused it not to be as accurate and it's not like CSI and we all want to believe it's like CSI it's not that way thank you you're welcome okay you're next but can I just jump in it is the technology you talking about is this a problem that resources can solve or just the technology is not that advanced it's getting better I mean I think it's the human element and connecting resources for instance the parole officer driving from you know Westminister that's covering that's 30 minutes away they're not gonna GPS is not going to stop somebody from doing something they are deliberately going to do it will not stop a murderer will not stop a robbery it will tell you that they were there and for some people it's a deterrent they know that somebody's watching the key is is that you have to be watching and you have to be checking on that and so bringing the resources together with corrections and law enforcement and talking about what a community can do in my view is probably a good public policy

[93:00] and the other thing that hasn't been said tonight is 75 percent of all sex offenders are granted probation off the bat 93 percent around this country get out of prison someday so they're not going away forever they're all coming back it's how do they come back how do they land back into a community and how do you do that in the most safe thoughtful way I say more about this idea that we should set a group Jens were they with Corrections probation parole law enforcement they get together and they share the information on these very high-risk people where you know if I leave at five o'clock today from my office it passes over to law enforcement and their dispatch then they get the alerts guys that you know xx and Canyon and that's an exclusion zone they can dispatch a car there contact him and have a discussion and figure out is he supposed to be here and why is he here as opposed to Westminister parole sir driving 30 minutes up here to try to figure out where this guy's at so there

[94:00] are there are ways to partner it may be more resources for local police dispatch and all of that but there are ways to use the technology and human capability which is really important we over rely on technology use the resources and the things we do well in a thoughtful way so I want to get back to this resources question you know buying for state-of-the-art GPS trackers I don't think he's outside of something that Boulder could budget for but presumably those GPS trackers are currently purchased through the was it the prison diversion fun so Paul usually there are large companies that lease them it's much because the technology changes so fast they're usually least at a daily price and then a contracts made around that price and then as the units get better smaller more efficient better batteries they get upgraded okay and so the funding is from the state and presumably we heard that there's a

[95:02] diversion fund is probably underfunded relative to what the communities that are served by these organizations would like to see would you agree with that I don't know paroles budget I think that they have pretty good resources but to put people into treatment and to do GPS and I think that they're using GPS on all the SV P's as long as they have them under their supervision there's a whole nother category s DPS that aren't under any supervision at this point in time because the laws have been in place so long but I mean that would be a discussion to have with them I mean could there be a city Parole partnership where you say you know here's five of these units anytime one of these guys comes out put them on you know gas the parole board to make it a condition you know so we can know where they're at I mean that can be asked you know if it's a resource issue then there's a potential solution there and I think you got to get everybody in the room though to find out what the limitations are and what can a municipality do to influence role on the probation side you have a judge that's retained by the people that makes every single one of these

[96:00] decisions so that judge is accountable obviously to the people as well and to figure out we try to figure out who can we manage in the community and who needs to go to prison so I'd like to learn more about halfway houses how many are there to want a boulder when a boulder went along my like one on Canyon and one on Main Street in Longmont hey we're on Canyon 23rd 23rd in Canyon that's interesting and how many people reside there I'm guessing 65 offenders either diversion that a judge is allowed to go there and not go to prison or people coming back from prison got it 65 and is there a reason why the sexually violent prisoners aren't house there when they come out I think I don't know the answer that that would be a parole question if they don't have what they would consider to be a stable place to go then they're gonna look at that they don't want them to parole homeless obviously so if they have a residence to go to if they have family members here somebody who let them live there and you know they may

[97:00] look at that as a more viable option and not used that bad for someone who actually has a place to go okay but no I just want to go to the Christopher lawyer case if I can to make sure I understand the chain of events so he was you know he committed a crime against the child and then he committed a crime against a stranger and he went to prison for those he happens to be from Boulder and he has family in Boulder and returned and then that fell apart for whatever reason so would it be an option for instead of shelter beds for these SPPs to be prioritised to put into a halfway house and is there supervision at that yeah yes that would under my review of what I know about the case that would have been an option for parole to consider got it and so seems like maybe we need to work better with parole is one of the messages I'm getting is that our community and parole need to understand these mechanisms a little better now that the police may already do that but it sounds like we

[98:01] had this elevated now to the council level and we need to really get clear on what kind of relationships can we set up between parole the people who manage the halfway house is that under pearls management's a contract that's actually bid for through Boulder County Community Corrections so it's a it's a bid that comes up every five years it's a performance-based contract there's a huge RFP process it's a multi-million dollar contract so I mean there's a lot that goes into that okay and there is one more piece that I wanted to understand based on what you described for the way that an SVP will pass through the system so you said that they go to two-year work-release program right and is that through the County Jail that's correct prior to that they weren't car serrated somewhere else they could have been so I don't know that this is SVP but there's um katarina spoke kind of that some of these hybrid sentences that her office does where they go to prison for a period of time

[99:00] then they come back to probation so you could go to prison on a determinate sentence get probation for life and as a condition of that go to work release for two years out of the County Jail so we get offenders back that way to SDPs and my 29 years in the department and since all this that I remember actually got probation and work release and did not go to prison so that was the plan for them I see our policy when they're an SVP and probations on the table as we asked for two years work release as a way to stabilize contain figure out what we have and then move forward from there we figure it's one of the safest settings we can do in the community and would it be your professional judgment that the SPP use that we have in our community would get better treatment if they were in the halfway house than if they were in the shelter as far as the supervision goes you know so the halfway house does provide supervision and I can't speak to the size of parole caseloads I will tell you my officers are capped at 25 offenders so that's how they spend 40 hours a week of their lives is on those

[100:00] 25 offenders we use the halfway house and they supplement some of the things that we do but mostly it's educational vocational monitoring things like drug and alcohol stuff curfews and things like that they are in the field as my officers are verifying that there are at places like that the flipside of is is that you have a shelter that has really amazing programming that really is connected with the community and can and in the long term may do a better job of integrating this person in a safe way and we partner really well with the shelter I mean we work very closely with them so it depends on the risk factors that that person poses if it's more of a containment issue and we don't trust them perhaps the halfway house versus how are we going to do this in a successful way that this person gets integrated into the community in a safe way does that make sense absolutely I mean only this touches on the concern that we'll come back to later but maybe you can answer some of this I'm sorry to take up a bunch of questioning this would be my last question is when I hear about sexually violent predators in the population at

[101:01] the shelter it raises questions and concerns about the safety of other people who are in the shelter do you have anything to say about that I don't know of any incidences that have happened by with s VPS in the shelter one of the misnomers about the SVP is it excludes misdemeanors some of our highest risk people engage in misdemeanor sexual assaults and assaults but they avoid because one of the mistakes with the SBP classification is that it starts off being an offense based there is no relationship between the offense and the risk person poses in the community what they did does not speak to what we know about actuarial risk so if it's a misdemeanor they never even go through this process so that's a big problem with the assessment the other problem with the assessment is there's pieces of it that are subjective and so it depends on the judge or the parole board making the finding about how that relationship started and it largely ignores some of the things that really are very scientific and evidence-based we treat an SVP the same as we treat any offender coming out on

[102:01] probation we watch them very closely in the beginning we use polygraph we use lots of monitoring and containment until we get a track record of them being accountable and honest to us independent of you know what the assessments say because we treat them all pretty high risk in the beginning you there's a cue but can you just that sentence that you said about how a bunch of them commit misdemeanor crimes seems at odds can you explain that again so this is just in general criminal justice and criminology people who commit misdemeanors are sometimes the highest risk to recidivate out there so someone who commits to for instance the highest recidivism rate for any sex offender population our exposures and peepers highest hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times you know a person who has an inner found meal that a molest a child one of the lower risk populations now they may have started that relationship and may have been found that the judge decided that they started that relationship to get access to that

[103:01] child which may put them in the SVP category but those are the kind of nuances that we try to look out in the judge is trying to sort out at sentencing and hopefully that the parole board's trying to figure out down the road does that make sense that helps Mary and thank you for coming out tonight my question has to do with just if one we're going to put together a set of partners a team to come up with a good plan for what to do with sexually violent predators in our community who would be at the table law enforcement a judge housing people so how are we going to do this employment people you know probation should be at the table because

[104:00] you never know if we're going to be involved or not vocational people you're you know all of those people should be at the table because each of them bring different expertise to the table and if the job is to set to safely land this person in the community and give them the best chance to create a lifestyle that's incompatible with offending you need a very broad comprehensive approach to it thank you discouraged at least most of your colleagues from passing exclusion zones and we'll talk about those later on so I want to talk a little about your experience or the experience of your colleagues you've been in the business for a long time so presumably you have colleagues around the state yes who have dealt with the this these that have exclusion zones what has been your experience or their experience with respect to those cities is it the worst better in neutral so locally I know that it's created problems because they do go underground I actually do some consulting on this topic because Colorado actually I know there's concerns Colorado is actually considered to be one of the forerunners and this

[105:00] management practice I mean we chose indeterminate sentencing versus civil commitment for instance we have one of the most advanced assessment processes the you know out there we have an evaluation and a report that we write for the judge and everybody to look at it's a very in-depth look at this person and their risk factors so we do that very well California came up as an example by way of example the city of San Francisco created an exclusion zone and the exclusion zone basically made it impossible for a sec sinner to reside anywhere illegally in the entire city with one exception there was a dump that they could reside in but then the EPA banned that condemned the dump and they couldn't sleep there any longer so San Francisco's had to create a series of day centers or these guys just go out at night they sleep wherever because they can't find a legal place to sleep and then they come to the day centers which again are within the exclusion zone but there during the daytime to give them something to do to keep track of them so some of these policies create more problems the other thing that I would say about residents restrictions is you

[106:00] want to be careful the people are charged with managing these offenders and watching them how they spend their time so if you do too much GPS on too many people guess what they do all they do is watch the screen and respond to violations if you create residency restrictions where all my officers do is go out and continue to look at residences that might be 500 feet or a thousand feet away and get on Google Earth and try to figure that out then that's what they're doing for the day they're not following people around that might be dangerous so we might be concerned about we're trying to lay in people back in the community so there's consequences to every decision that was a great segue to my second question um this really kind of tees up for what Stan was talking about we're talking a little bit about exclusion zones what if we created an inclusion zone which is you only make live yes at the halfway house in Boulder you could live that's the only place you can live in Boulder and and that's where we want you to be and this is kind of a mixed bag of a mostly professional but maybe tom has an opinion about that whether it's that would be enforceable how do you feel about that such thing as inclusion zones and you know a parole

[107:00] can limit probation through a judge's order can limit a person's liberties where you reside and who you associated with there's a constitutional right that's debated regularly around how much we can do when they're in the system pretty much it's about public safety and the court can impinge on that considerably as can the parole board so we can tell them where to live and do that are they on forever and we can do that no so the the goal is you do that for a period of time while you get services in place and hopefully reduce their risk and then you gradually let them run their own lives but in theory yes you can do that I don't mean he'd do it all the time we limit people where they can go I mean when they're in work release we say you can go here you can go there you know if you're caught here you're in trouble you know you're allowed to go to work we keep try to keep them away from victims because when you leave an offender in the same community as a victim you want that victim to be able go on with their life but also this person needs that needs a fair chance to try to be successful under probation or parole so I mean it's difficult but you can do it technologically Thanks I've

[108:06] got two simple questions what percentage of the SPC's actually get jobs is the first one the second one I missed it the halfway house do they stay open during the day so are the people they're allowed to stay during the day so anyone who's on probation and I and on parole unless they are unable to work are technically required to be working so they go out and they get jobs we have 140 sex offenders on probation on any given day the vast majority have jobs some are undisciplined you know and they're on Social Security I mean their that's the gamut but generally the idea is is that you're gainfully employed you're helping pay for this transition back into the community and it keeps you busy for 30 40 hours a week and that's a good thing you know for a thousand reasons the halfway house is open during the day

[109:01] they're required to have a job there they actually pay a portion of their rate there every day so they have to pay that every day there's security staff there when they leave the halfway house they do point-to-point check-ins so they leave the halfway house they call from you know their employers and say I'm at 00 p.m. then they can verify that during the day when they're at the halfway house they're there they're allowed to go to treatment allowed to do other activities that were they were ordered to do by the parole board or by the judge okay they're going to be there during the day I see okay follow up Tom statistics it's said that we have 44 here with know it well they aren't the FTPS but sex offenders with no address yes how in your experience to those people have jobs many of them so we have a population that are homeless and have part-time jobs they do day labor they do anything they can to make ends meet so I mean the ones that we have on

[110:00] supervision we try to have we require them to have jobs and the vast majority do and do you think they have not reported their address are they really sleeping on the streets we believe the ones that we have that we do know that they truly are homeless and reporting that way because we try to verify it and we work really closely with BPD about is this legit or is this guy you know because we don't want them to have a residence that we don't know about that's a bad situation so I can't speak for parole but we have a pretty good idea of where people are living and we can verify I mean you can tell when someone's almost ill I mean if they say they're homeless and they're showering every day I mean there's things you can look for okay thank you well just one follow a couple of people have mentioned you just talked about kind of convening a group together has has that happen that any other County actually like I said I do some work around the country and actually it's one of the things that comes out as people get concerned as you all have and say look this is more complicated than it looks like just creating an ordinance what can we do

[111:01] let's understand the resources that we can bring to bear on this maybe you all have a role in that and figure out how do we do the best we can with what we have because they are gonna come out and I will tell you if they get sentenced out of Boulder County and they don't have any other place to go they're probably gonna get put back in Boulder County by parole and the parole board so can we do that in a more thoughtful way and can we do it in a better way yes and a group of people can do that and they are I mean there are jurisdictions that are working very closely are trying to do this and that's always possible and not creating ordinances that feel good tonight but don't really do anything to do to further public safety since since both the county manages much of this as they should is the county tried to convene people not just in the city of Boulder but Longmont obviously in the other communities you know I don't know I mean I don't know how much the county side of it they don't do a lot in the criminal justice area other than supervising bond you know for adults generally until they're convicted and then the system takes over we work very

[112:02] closely with parole because we get these hybrid sentences I mean we want to I mean we work with the shelter I mean we look for how do we do this in the most awful way we have a great partnership with the shelter we work very closely with them you know any entity that can help us do a better job with this population and give them a you know a chance to be safe and successful in the community we're going to do okay thanks did you excuse me did you mention that there are communities that are doing what you were suggesting well can you bring in Colorado so there's a there's a called the Center for sex offender management and they actually have a checklist that you can look at how are we as a community and assist of managing sex offenders and then they have suggestions about convening groups and creating task force's and things like that to look at it they actually do some work around doing that and actually help communities do that see some see som org tons of

[113:00] information there but that's that that's their public policy is to help your sections do a better job and they'll do you know they'll do an assessment a community assessment what do you have in place and then what do we know what does the research tell us about what you can do better okay Sam did you just a few more GPS questions because I don't think I track the answers as well as I could have while you have your people paying attention to GPS location if something goes off they may hear some person on probation right at this point that's correct no I'm sorry pearl I'm going to talk about people who are on parole so happens for prison like they're on parole they have limitations on where they can go and they violate those limitations to somebody from your office go they have a dispatch center so they alert from the company that monitors it

[114:00] they do a little bit of investigation trying to figure out what's going on they alert the dispatch center the dispatch center has someone on 24/7 that responds gets the information from the tracking company and then figures out is this someone's you know breaching a zone are they in the zone is that a technical problem and then they figure out how to respond to that and what's the practice of working with law enforcement on that I mean so you made it sound like these parole officers are only on duty a certain amount of time during each day is that correct so they're supervising officer maybe on duty but with parole they do have a dispatch center and they do have 24/7 sure from the dispatch center right so they would dispatch someone here or pull off so that lives in Boulder County would pick it up or something I mean the comparison I tried to make for people because people ask for GPS a lot in a lot of different cases stalking cases DVD cases the comparison is is don't compare it in most jurisdictions to 911 it's not that

[115:00] kind of response could it be yes I mean if things are done correctly but it's not in most places could we if we chose to pick people who had felonies of a high enough grade who have these GPS is on could we choose to have dispatch inform our officers as well as the parole officers so the parole would control the contract at this point in time or if it were through my office we would control the contract but we decide who gets notified victims which officer in my department gets notified we control that piece so they would be able the technology exists and notify to do real-time notification okay and would you have an objection to notifying the police if there were some not at all my philosophy we only have a handful of people on GPS at any given time because it's all we can legitimately do and say we're gonna do the best we can so we

[116:00] have a handful on but and that we do the best we can to do the 24/7 coverage but we have on occasion partnered with BPD or Longmont PD to say we've got this guy can you you know we call them and say can you dispatch them into this location so that does happen it's not routine it's not in policy it's a route you know we do it when we have really concerning people thank you okay thank you so much thanks Tom who's next Greg okay I could evening counsel Greg testa see him to answer your question our to further talk about what Greg just said that does happen from time to time where probation and parole do call us and say can you follow up we're getting an alert that we're concerned about would you send an officer to figure out what happens so you know a lot of times the parole or probation officer will simply

[117:01] just call the offender and say I'm getting you know I'm getting an alert or an alarm that says you're an exclusionary zone what are you doing so there's there's a lot of different ways that they can look at that and and trying to address or intervene I just wanted to say a few comments I've talked to counsel before about STDs and sex offenders and I've talked to some you individually and I just wanted to provide some additional statistics from what Tom had presented so out of the four SPPs that are currently registered in the city of Boulder three are at the shelter and the fourth one is at a fixed address so from a law enforcement perspective we're very happy that all four of those individuals are have a roof over their head and have an address attached to them and they're not living on the street so for city of Boulder numbers Greg had

[118:00] mentioned they have a hundred and forty I think he said probate or excuse me yeah probationary sex offenders that they track but for city of Boulder numbers seven of our sex offenders out of the 122 or on parole and twenty-eight are on probation out of the 122 eighty seven have no restrictions in other words they're not on parole they're not on probation they're only requirement is that they have to register based on Colorado state law but otherwise they have no restrictions that can come and go and do whatever they'd like to do we have a ninety-eight percent compliance rate currently with our sex offenders including SPPs in terms of them registering and coming in when they're supposed to currently out of 122 registered sex offenders we have active warrants for two of them for failing to

[119:00] register we don't know where they're at and I think tested what are you do in that kind of case I mean do you just contact family no friends how do you how do you so those cases are manages like any other investigation they have five days to register if they haven't registered we move quickly write an affidavit take it before a judge get a warrant signed and then find Vesta gate and figure out where they're at and have them arrested and picked up how do you know do you are you informed by the parole board or the probation they have to either they they come in on their required timeframe to register or if they change address and we know that they've changed address and they haven't registered and those are conditions that would allow us to move forward and get apply for warrants so cheap chesta mm-hmm Katerina I believe

[120:02] said that that when that happens they call CBI is that what does CPI stand right CBI's Colorado Bureau of Investigation okay sorry go ahead so the process there is we may not know so we know who's registered in the city of Boulder right because we keep our own registration on our own records but we don't know who's registered in and wild County or Greeley or Pueblo or Colorado Springs but the call Bureau of Investigation manages that larger database so that's a resource to go to to figure out if we're looking for person X to find out whether they have re registered in another location and so if they if they haven't registered in another location then that is what's referred to as an inaccurate registry is that right it's it's violation a failing

[121:02] to register and so for us it would be that they fail to register in the city of Boulder within their time frame then we would move to get a warrant if they if we found out that they that they moved to Colorado Springs and registered then that's fine as long as they move to Carlos Springs and they registered within the 5 day time frame now they're in the jurisdiction of Colorado Springs so there was also a claim that if you require or if you have community exclusion zones folks won't register and they'll go underground so does that then mean that is that the same as going underground basically failing to register and not finding them you could consider being kind of an under of the law in other words you have you have we don't know where you're at you fled and we have no idea where you're at the term is loosely used but

[122:04] we also would consider that if somebody is living on the street and they're not that I have a roof over their head there's not a fixed address then we really don't know where they're at until we do until we check up on them you know for obvious reasons and what's been stated many times tonight there is consistency amongst law enforcement that we believe it's preferred to have sex offenders with a roof over their head and an address for obvious reasons there's some structure there we know where they're at there's more likely that we can follow up we can find them rather than having somebody on the street idle time for somebody as we all know is not a good thing and opportunities to commit crimes not necessarily sex offenses can come and go and so just for common-sense reasons

[123:02] having somebody in that type of a housing situation provides more structure Thank You Aaron thanks for being here to testa the interested to hear you respond to Greg Browns points or ideas about more coordination between the probation parole officers and and the city police force said something you all would be open to do you feel like it's a practical implementable kind of thing I'm interested in Gregg's ideas and I think that it certainly can further a conversation and bring about probably more more consistency and efficiency in the system I don't think that we limit it to just law enforcement as I think he suggested I think we can broaden it to bring in maybe some other perspectives that are not law enforcement I think there's value in doing that and I'm interested in in learning more about

[124:00] that as he was talking about that I was thinking so you know if we have somebody who is a parolee okay who's gotten out of prison they're on parole the state or the parole parole officer has to be open to input as to how the management of that person goes because if they're not in that circumstance it's a moot point we can all provide suggestions and ideas but if they're not open to that then then we've gotten nowhere if it was gonna be my next question because we don't have anyone from parole you know who does parole here tonight you know whether you think I mean from working with them in the past they might be open for more of a collaborative relationship where maybe we're supporting some of the work that they're doing but maybe they're also willing to take input about exclusion areas say for an SVP but I certainly think that my I used to have previous

[125:02] assignments lots lots more interaction and partnership with them I think that I think that they would be open to that to at least being a part of this and listening to suggestions certainly with Christopher lawyer the parole officer was and was very concerned about and very interested in the community's concerns and wanting to accommodate as best as possible and that's good to know but then of course there's only a certain amount of time that an SVP would be on parole and then after that do we have any of the four who currently resident who are unsupervised who've passed that phase I believe I believe they're all supervised and on parole or different toys so who is that [ __ ] that's she

[126:15] works for the police department okay I'm sorry sorry you couldn't have our Police Department a public information officer okay thank you do you mind just repeat it you summing that up for they're at the record Mike yes so the city of Boulder currently has four sexually violent predators we know for sure that Christopher lawyer is being supervised he's on pool I'm unsure about the other three and it's our understanding on checking that Christopher lawyer is the only SVP that currently has the GPS okay thank you that's helpful okay we've just been in or up to you did you finish what you wanted to I do thank you okay I think we're good for now although

[127:01] we may have more questions mr. Zen did you want to hear from Gregg harms you asked that we ask him to invite him to talk yeah sure that'd be great clean break would you mind coming for I thought you should hear from the third grade tonight so I was just asked quickly to respond to the question of safety of him with SVP staying at the shelter and just wanted to say that this this shelter is a really safe place and we don't really concern ourselves with who's going to be there we set up policies and procedures and practices and training because we don't know who's gonna come through the door every night so we assumed that everybody could be potentially a problem so we put policies and procedures in place so that people don't become a problem so when an SVP is at the shelter it's not really any different than any other day

[128:00] at the shelter that's our take on the safety issue okay we have some questions in break thanks for coming I think I think there's three sexually violent predators who are at the shelter right now and I think we heard earlier that they're in actually three different programs of the shelter can you explain each of those programs and what the exit strategy is for each of those I can although it's probably all going to change here in about four weeks so the the new the new homeless plan is going to dictate using the shelter in different ways right now we have what we call a transition program we have our first step program which is essentially a wait list for the transition program and then we have our summer bed program and so the summer bed program has the lowest hurdles you just have to be able to show up for an intake interview and have to be committed to being clean and sober the the transition program and the

[129:01] first step program have income requirements on top of that so it's a little higher hurdle and once you get into the transition program then you are signed a case manager and you have those resources as well so you can be in any one of those three programs right now at the shelter so as I understand we have SPPs and each of these three programs right now are their time limits with respect to each of these programs out how long they can stay at the shelter yes the time limit for the summer bit program is September 30th the end of our summer season the transition program and the first step program right now have nine-month limitations again all of this is going to probably change come October 1st with the new homeless plan I mean just had to change for a second so the SPP that's in the first step program he's got to get out of there by September 30th unless he qualifies from one of these other programs and anybody who's in our summer bed program either has to qualify from one of our other programs actually what's gonna happen is

[130:02] everybody's gonna start going through the coordinated entry process and so there's going to be new criteria for who gets to stay at the shelter so the the applecart is gonna get tossed completely up in the air coming October 1 so maybe these are on trend questions because you're in transition but can you give us some some historical perspective I know you've added the shelter for a long long time is is 3 a sexually violent predators residents of the shelter historically high kind of average kind of low like you know if you had to do the average over the last ten years you know how many SPPs you have at any given time in the shelter on average three is unusual unusually high unusually high yeah usually we don't have any often we have one and sometimes two I can't recall ever having three at the shelter but we've been we've been housing s vp's well since the shelter opened so I've been through three or four community meetings around SVP

[131:01] notifications going back to the late 90s so we've been doing it for a long time but 3 3 is unusual okay thanks Craig Jim that's him these three they're they're new looking for jobs we don't we don't monitor their their behavior during the day okay or do they have to leave they have to leave they have to leave so that is a difference then between the halfway house and the shelter I really can't comment on how the halfway house operates okay at the shelter you know SPPs are treated just like everybody else they have to be in by 7:00 p.m. they have to be out by 8 o'clock in the morning they have to abide by all the rules they have to do their chore just just like any any other

[132:00] resident okay thank you so Greg thanks for being here I think you answered a question about the programs for two of the three you answered about the first step in transition in the summer bed what is the parole bed can you help us understand what that is a little bit so we have set aside some beds for people coming out of incarceration so either probation or parole beds so it's it's essentially a reentry program where we set aside a bed for people coming out of incarceration were paid a small fee to hold that bed open for somebody who may be coming out of do-si or the local jail if we don't have anybody to fill that spot we fill that bed with somebody else but it's it's a reentry program as Greg Brown was talking about of you know the evidence

[133:00] is clear that releasing people to the streets is not the best solution for for good results so we worked with both the local jail and do-si to try to make sure that if people are being released back to Boulder they are not being released to the streets and what's the duration of time for someone who gets into a parole bed I mean I do you hold them going to summer for instance looks like the answer is yes from from mr. lawyer but what happens during the sheltering season we run those reentry programs year-round and people people can stay in those re-entry beds I think the average stay is probably 30 days if I were to guess I don't have it numbers off the top of my head but how many other it varies I think probably now we have two or three it's gone up to seven or eight probably at some point it really just

[134:00] depends how many people are being released to our community and how many how many requests we get from you know either the treatment corridor do see for those particular beds sometimes it's none I think the max I've seen is eight or nine this is probably an indelicate question but because we have a shelter and we have parole beds are we more likely to get parolees or from oh boy I think you'd have to ask the parole board that but the folks who we are serving are already in our community I mean these people released back into Boulder County so that there's not a cause and effect it's people that are coming back to us because they are from here I don't think the parole board uses the shelter as a criteria I mean I think it's about where people committed their crimes about where people have resources like family members and that those are the determinants for where they get released but these guys could probably

[135:01] answer that better than I I just curious I assume that some people's knife any other questions for me thank you very much for being here that's very helpful so that's all I have okay so maybe we should let the public speaking how many folks who have signed up we have six people six people thank you for your patience I hope you found that useful as well each person will have three minutes if you could get to start with your name and address that would be great and we will project the list all right hello Catherine good evening I am Ally Catherine Wilde I live at 300 pearl number eight that's at the west end of town that is public housing and I come from a neighborhood of poor people

[136:01] who some might say we do not organize well so I have public housing there are different types of public housing there section 8 there section 8 vouchers project-based section 8 whatever so I have project-based section 8 and it happens to be that I live next door to a guy who raped somebody in our building so I thought I talk about what it is and how it is to live next door to somebody who I believe has raped now the person who was raped was interviewed by the police and I'm sorry to say and you might consider this prejudicial also that some people have more credibility than others when speaking about their experience and so the woman who I believe strongly believe was raped is one of those less credible witnesses so it's not just a product of people not being able to organize well they can't

[137:02] even represent themselves well and I do believe I live next door to Vegas and I'm telling you it's a difficult situation I don't like it but again he's my neighbor and you think that the interconnectedness will allow a person to fortify their life but I've lived there three years and I can tell you that my neighbor has progressively gotten worse one of the most surprising things that I you know I came here with strong words like oh I'm gonna go say this but of course when I hear people talk I feel better about being educated and one of the things that I've learned from Greg I guess he's not here anymore he said one of the difficulties that happened to the highest risk people that are in the community and you know maybe your memory is better than mine are people who do misdemeanors

[138:00] and I think that's exceptional because that's been my experience I'm stocked by this guy and you know I can't even claim that because it's denied so much I went to the judge and the judge says well it doesn't pass the legal standard of stalking and so we're gonna refuse this you can't have a order of protection when I call the police the police tell me you know what this guy has a right to get high and drunk and smoke and you know in public housing that's not supposed to be allowed but you know is can you go to mediation what type of problem we can't for my end of things my problem isn't addressed well and it's not solved and people don't take concerns seriously enough to have it even be considered a misdemeanor so I'm sorry I'm gonna get three minutes because you know what I think I'm one of the few who get to speak as a rape

[139:03] survivor who lived next door to a rapist who also wants to facilitate community engagement through education thank you for your time hang on a second please I just wanted you to three minutes here but you can write just as long an email as you choose to compose and we'll read it so I'm just inviting you a few searches and want to add some more detail to that story we'd be happy to hear from you the story the progress that I was trying to think of is how to ask good questions because there's a lot of capability here and questions serve people who come together and want to put their best forward and I don't have good questions enough yet okay what I'm Justin right thank you for you okay thanks thank you I'm Heidi Davis and after Heidi will have producer

[140:01] hello I'm Heidi I don't want to tell you where I live cuz I don't want anyone to come in over um but I live next to the homeless shelter so I think what I gathered tonight is I don't think anyone wants to say put sexually violent predators on the streets I don't want that I don't think anyone in the community would would want that my issue is that they are being housed at the homeless shelter and sorry Greg but I don't think it's the right spot for them I think there's not the supervision I don't understand why they're not at the halfway house and I'm sure they have electricity I'm sure they can charge the monitors there so I don't see what the argument for having them at the homeless shelter is I feel like there's enough homeless people in the community that need beds and the homeless shelter from what I've heard

[141:00] from Greg wouldn't we spoke on the phone in the winter there's no you don't need to be clean and sober there's not weapons check it's kind of the who show up and get a bed kind of deal and I just think that since the homeless shelter is in a community there's so many children up there and I know we've been speaking about the rights of the SV PS but what about the rights of the children and the women and the people who live up there and want to feel safe I know statistically you say you know they don't necessarily reoffending the area they're living that doesn't mean much to the person that gets offended or you know one is too many in my opinion I think you know it just as is common sense that the we would offer housing to these s VPS in and shall are in a

[142:01] halfway house or somewhere where they are monitored they get the resources to come back into society and don't think that's the homeless shelter I just don't I don't think sending them 00 in the morning with no accountability or you know I mean honestly they're coming into our neighborhoods they're pitching not necessarily all the SVP svt PS but they're you know we're paying the homeless pitching tents in our little park we have a lot of drug paraphernalia all over the place I mean there's the overflow so when they are kicked out of the homeless shelter that's where they're coming and I just don't think it's a safe environment I don't think community and sexually violent predators should be next door to each other it's the temptation I mean if I'm trying to lose weight I don't move into an ice cream store so I just think it's just really common sense to offer the proper

[143:00] kind of monitoring housing for these individuals and I'm not saying put them on the street or under the bridges I'm nobody I'm not saying that okay thank you for your time Thank You Heidi boom Patricia and then Michael my name is Patricia DeAngelis Ratner I live in North Boulder I'm on the committee for a safe North Boulder that's submitted I help with submitting the petition um thank you for looking into this issue I've learned a lot - my - and I gotta tell you I'm more afraid than I was three months ago when we started this a lot of us had no idea that mr. harms has now invited you know to other SVP s to live in that homeless shelter and you know shame on you I gotta tell you you didn't know there's a halfway house in the community who is regulating what mr. harms does you have the control over the conditional use permit I mean I

[144:01] understand maybe you don't want to put the ordinance together there's a lot of controversy on the ordinance but who has authority over mr. horns and what they're doing at the shelter is it you there because clearly he's making decisions for the whole community you know there are a majority of residents in North Boulder that are scared stiff that do not want this designated sexually violent predator person living among young women in children and over and over again what did I hear there's so few of them well there's so few of them if there's so few of them how is it that Boulder and the homeless shelter has three of them it's just unconscionable that you had those meetings when he invited in the first sexually violent predator on his own because the number of us talked to the board members from the shelter after the last council meeting and then they

[145:01] admitted to us that mr. Han's made the decision on his own he didn't contact or have any discussions with the board members so I want to know is you have the ultimate authority over that conditional use permit you have the right to tell mr. Han's today to take all three of the sexually violent predators and put them in a place where they can be supervised it's appalling that this gentleman and the other two men or women have been let out of prison and they basically have free roam in the city of Boulder at least when we talked to the parole officer in the halfway house it sounds like there's pretty good strict supervision of these individuals they have to have jobs they have to account for where they are in the 00 in the morning wander all day and come back at 7:00 at night and mr. hunter stood up here and said we don't treat a sexually violent predator any differently than we do a homeless person that is just wrong

[146:01] you know it's wrong and you know those people should not be placed in North Boulder particularly with such a young population of young children and young families you're giving permitting to the armory site so go ahead and put in affordable housing and you want young people to move in but at the same time you're gonna put them in danger please move these guys into the halfway house as soon as you can thank you I need to remind you not to clap or boo you want to agree with somebody to do that but we want to keep it so that everybody can feel comfortable with whatever opinion they want to express Michael it's Michael William here okay about Sean Enfield is that Sean okay

[147:10] [Music] [Music] good evening I it's uh it's good to be here happy to see everyone I am been in Boulder for over three years now moved from Asheville North Carolina where I was homeless and experienced some of their programs there like a Hope which was the day shelter which unfortunately Boulder does not have I was asked to come here by Elizabeth who's in the boulder county court system and she's

[148:01] put together a task force for homelessness and I didn't realize that tonight was mostly about sexual predators but I could address a few of those comments number one it's kind of interesting these people helped choose an anonymous type of situation that they can't actually have anonymity that they know their names and that these people are tracked and followed similar to the Boulder homeless population so here's a bridge house boho and the boulder shelter these people are tracked monitored they know when they check in this information is gathered people like Greg I also have reason to believe he didn't enter a lot of the questions that the city has about the homeless endeavor I've been exploring the Denver situation which is through the Denver rescue mission the st. Francis day Center the Denver partnership and quite a few other organizations they have the crash Droid Salvation Army which is an emergency overflow shelter there are places where

[149:00] these people can meet gather create love share they can be seen as people they are not seen as equal in Boulder these people fly signs to try and alert people to the problem of not seeing human beings I've seen people for their clothes what they wear what they do with their time these people are visible and Boulder but now they've become invisible you know why because they've had to leave I have a 14-day ban at the Boulder shelter I'm going there to eat breakfast to volunteer my time to take showers I had a five minute wait charge and three or four warnings for being five minutes late for taking a shower in the morning they banned me for 14 days I was upset I

[150:00] kicked a door which happens to these people all the time they get upset they get triggered there's trauma like we all have and they take it out in the wrong ways and then they're banned so now I go to court for for what a public urination charge no let me tell you in a city that has this much money this many resources that we can't afford I'm willing to start a Kickstarter project for a compostable solar toilet all right I'm gonna start more platforms and I will come back and speak about more issues you can feel free to contact me at SK Edenfield at icloud.com I'm working with Special Task Force from Denver and Boulder partnerships and I'm open to answer questions after this thank you very much thank you appreciate

[151:02] you coming when is next thank you 38 dewy I understand Stan Garnett was saying we should keep sexual this said there's a you know a sexually violent predator recidivist high recidivism rate people at the homeless shelter and that during the day as long as we have more police available you know and this is once again a situation of why should Boulder have extra police for like three people why should it seems like a waste of resources to have have to put if something if someone is a recidivist situation and they're violent

[152:02] and they're out during the days and they're with the GPS system who cares about a GPS system and that was brought up earlier it doesn't matter they're gonna have committed their crime and you know you know and not be picked up the police can't get there in time and so that's not that doesn't make me feel any better I'm curious about how curable this disorder really is and the only and I've heard about that does any of this kind of work as Marshall Rosenberg and I don't know exactly what you know he's saying that origins of problems with people with this problem is that they lack of love in their life which it just seems to me completely perverse that you would express yourself you know by raping someone when when you when you

[153:02] you know you're in need of love but if there's some way of somehow figuring that out I'd be curious about it and I was also curious about lawyers mom who's working to solve the reason behind the problem of sexually violent vegetation and I haven't heard anything from Stan Garnett or from any of the community around about a way of solving the actual problem and I find that fascinating but also say all roads lead to impact fees because these things are costly even if you're gonna figure out core problems and have to spend money for that and

[154:00] this is a very wealthy community and they should rise to the occasion Thank You Lynn Marianne 42 Lycans Avenue so right up in the heart of North Boulder near the homeless shelter thank you for taking the time to look further into this issue it is really important and if you've been in the North Boulder area it is a heavy young family area I've just spent the last eight years walking my two children to their elementary school bus stop up there the bus has two buses that go through the Dakota Ridge neighborhood for elementary school and those buses are packed this

[155:00] is a young community what I learned today made me more nervous about the ESPY piece I had no idea that they weren't monitored only one out of three is monitored and you know the high school most of those kids are catching the bus the skip to go to school every day at the same time that the homeless shelter is letting out also as we've heard I don't know if you heard the story online about one of the SPPs being sighted at the North Boulder rec center in the hot tub with kids I didn't know if this was real or not but hearing today that there's no ankle monitor I guess they can be in the pool with kids at the North Boulder rec center so it's not just in the local community or where their house but you know where they are everyday throughout the day and being unmonitored and it sounds like this

[156:02] halfway house with at least better supervision is a better place to be and I did really liked what I heard with one of your City Council members saying that we are looking we want to protect the most vulnerable in this community and that is our children and in these neighborhoods thank you thank you okay that's it yeah so with that we will close the public hearing and we will turn to counsel the thanks again for coming and participating somebody great bond how do you have some things to say that I guess let me ask a procedural question of either you were Tom is it our goal this evening to if it's the will of the council to do something fast

[157:00] an ordinance or develop an ordinance is our goal tonight to give Tom some direction along those lines and have them bring an ordinance back if that's what most of us wanted have done or something else or something else okay well I don't think doing nothing is an option here like some of the speakers I'm more concerned now than I was two hours ago it doesn't feel to me like it's very well coordinated I'm a lot of questions tonight that didn't get answered one things I heard tonight that was disturbing is that that sounds like a majority of these SPPs have either attacked strangers or children and I think those were maneger said you know those are the most vulnerable community children and women who've been attacked by by strangers and so I think it will be would be relatively easy for us to craft a legally enforceable ordinance that excludes my preference would be to

[158:01] exclude presents but maybe that's not permitted but at a minimum exclude residents near places where children and other people in a vulnerable community congregate schools parks as just mentioned recreation centers and if we make the distance limit or it sounds like there still be some space for folks to still live my first choice would be actually to create an inclusion zone and say sexually violent predators in our community must live in the halfway house um that would be that would be my first choice excuse me if Tom tells us that that's not legally permissible that would be subject to a state attack then I would fall back to exclusion zones around sensitive areas but that would be my personal preference can I ask a question though about that if we do we have any information about more about

[159:01] the halfway house no I mean okay nobody here I mean just like we don't even we're making yes no no you're one of our speakers come on you don't have the authority over the Community Corrections and the halfway house that is state controlled and state-funded such that I mean you do have some County funding for through the boulder county commissioners in the sense of when they're being used as our halfway house as a condition of our Jail it's our work release program but for example these SVP some of the ones you're talking about they've come out of do see you have no authority and I know people want to have people to you just say go place them out Community Corrections you can't you can't force the parole board to put them over there and for example mr. lawyer chose not to come transitioning back through Community Corrections and going to the halfway house because he had family

[160:00] members that he had and ever and he was paroled to that family member you can't tell the parole board to put him over at the Community Corrections despite it might be the right thing or what everybody wants in the room you just don't have that kind of authority it seems to seems that sometimes money talks because Greg harms is paid money to house sexually violent predators and so if perhaps we could offer money to the state or whoever or the county whoever is running the halfway house to provide housing for especially violent predators that's right the halfway house is a privately run facility and like mr. Brown said they have to do their contracts I think they actually just went through their contract last year if I'm remembering right but whether or not they would contract out to have certain beds set aside as I mean they do it already and they're paying when they come through transition but as a condition of parole would be an additional maybe area to explore certainly worth discussing I have one other thing to say you know yield the microphone I also did not hear tonight

[161:00] any credible evidence that indicates that creating exclusion zones causes harm we talked a little bit about that Tom I think you've done a great job of ruinous advice about where the probably the boundary is from a legal standpoint I don't want to cross that line but within those legal boundaries I didn't hear anything tonight that said at least those cities that have created exclusionary zones have worse problems then then then then than we do and so it's something that I would like to try Sam was next and then Jim so just to amplify one point that Bob made I guess I want to thank everyone for coming first it has been extremely educational there's a lot that I do not understand about this when we started and now I get it better but I still agree with Bob that we need to do something and we need to take this problem quite seriously just so that we all up our competency and what's going on here as I read

[162:01] through what the convictions were for the for sexually violent predators that are registered here in Boulder all of them either attacked a child or a stranger so we're not talking about the possibility that one of these did something different than that and that is of great concern another point that I want to make right away is much of the conversation we heard is about recidivism rates and we heard a really important point that very high recidivism rates occur for misdemeanor convictions and I believe that I mean you're not going to be in jail for as long or have it taken this seriously if you're exposing yourself to somebody however there's also severity of the crime to consider as well and so even if it's a low recidivism rate but people are raping or otherwise violently attacking other people because they've been classified as a psychopath that also is a very serious issue that we need to be concerned about so I guess I

[163:05] kind of would love if we could have an inclusion zone around the halfway house but the problem is that people pass through halfway houses but the sexually violent predator label stays with them for a long time as does the requirement to register so I don't I mean I would love to convene a task force of some kind in which we try and make sure that everyone coming out of the Department of Corrections must go through the halfway house as a because they will get structure at first there's less likely to be on the streets later etc etc so you know Christopher lawyer had family support that didn't last for long enough I would love to see him have to go through the halfway house program and now because I think that would give him a better chance of success and protect our community better so I guess I would like to propose a few things that I would like to see one is exclusion zones so we've heard that we can create those I was a bit alarmed to hear that only

[164:00] one of the four sexually violent predators has a GPS tracker I would like to work with parole to understand if we could do something about that I would feel more comfortable if all four of these people had GPS trackers I would love to create exclusion zones that are not residential exclusion zones necessarily or solely residential I would like to create zones where these people should not go particularly around places with our children given that three of them have a child conviction at least according to what we have here so I'm interested in exclusion zones and working with community corrections and/or parole to get their buy-in for that so it's not that we just go create an ordinance we get their consultation before we do that because I don't think we're going to have a high chance of success so we just go write some ordinance that we like but it's not something that they feel obligated to think about I think I said this already

[165:00] more use of the halfway house for sexually violent predators when they get out and then I would like us to also think in this group about who we dispatch right I think having somebody have a violation and the parole officer calls and says what's going on and they don't get a satisfactory answer I would be fine with using our police to respond to that if they get a satisfactory answer fine that I mean alert our police and I'm not trying to create more workload but I don't know another thing I'd like to learn is how often does that happen you know how often does it happen that a parole officer actually gets up from wherever they are and travels to wherever somebody is violating because if it's infrequent and we're only talking about four people with GPS trackers I would be very interested in understanding that and then potentially having our officers dispatched when the parole officers had some concern and then I think it couldn't be a better thing to do than to convene and we can act as a convener a task force to

[166:01] recommend best practices and we also say what it is that we're after for protecting our citizens better and for reassuring everyone that they're safe in the community I mean it is not just about preventing the offenses which is very important but it's also about making sure that people feel heard and and see action taken that says that we we share these concerns so I think that's the end of what I had to say but I do appreciate everyone making sure that we are paying attention to this so we have Jen than me than Aaron than Mary I definitely agree that we've learned a lot tonight I really hesitate to make a whole lot of decisions tonight because I really feel like it's got a sift in a little bit more and we really need to think about it you know I heard Bob very very specific evidence that if you create exclusion zones for residential that it increases recidivist sort of I

[167:02] can't say that weren't we yeah vism I meant was Stan and Katarina and you know they have done the studies on it and that is not something that has helped to anywhere and then it also impedes progress in terms of people getting jobs etc so I think there's plenty of data for that plenty of it see if I've got a question for you because one thing that one thing that struck me was the level of these misdemeanors that then seem to point to future offenses and I had a woman tell me the other day that she was in Beach Park and up on top of the play Jim was a man kind of sleeping or hanging out in the top of that clearly children's equipment and she called the police and the police said there's nothing we can do about

[168:01] this it is public space which got me wondering there are definitely places like you know children playgrounds and schools and and things like that that where kids are and we don't want not that it's always men but you know most of the men we don't want single men hanging around this places so do we have any ordinances that restrict people any people not just not just s vp's or sexual violators do we have any witnesses that protect those areas where children go the answer is unless there's court-ordered restrictions no a single male can can hang out in a playground unless they're violating a law or a city ordinance they have the constitutional right to do that that's not saying it might not be concerning there's lots of behavior

[169:01] that's concerning but until they until they break a law there's no action we can take we can go we can talk to somebody we might be able to if their information do some follow-up behind-the-scenes but just hanging out there in and of itself unless it's a violation of law or an ordinance there's nothing we can either have you've heard of any cities that have put ordinances in place to basically protect playgrounds from workers we do have parks rules that address behavior but no nothing I'm not aware of anybody who's done that in New York City has done that so in what way Bob there's a long New York that on unaccompanied adults cannot hang out in children's playground well I've heard the same thing about museums some places say like a Children's Museum unaccompanied adults can't hang out in

[170:00] the Children's Museum just I just anecdotally I've seen those signs on playgrounds in New York City that say that unaccompanied adults cannot be on this playground so I guess I'm going down that path because I really wonder if maybe that is something that would help us with our I mean our objective is to protect our people there's no there's no one on this council that isn't highly highly motivated as the first priority to protect the people especially the kids in our community so what is the best way to do that and I guess just kind of one more comment and that is that there's no one here from 23rd and Canyon or 16th and Canyon or 23rd and Canyon and there are 60 some sexual predators living there no no 65 violators than them not sexually every well leader parolees all sorts of revives okay parolees no it's okay not sexual but still there's probably no one around that area that knows that and we're not hearing from them tonight so I

[171:02] really hate to move the problem from one place to another just because we think maybe that's the solution and anyway we can't do it so I don't know clearly we need to put some things in place to protect our community and I think it is it has to do with the homeless shelter for sure we know that there's been some violence up there in that in the last week that is extremely concerning so I think there's some actions that we need to put in place to protect residents up there in general not just from those three people and I would really hate to see us go down the path of an ordinance that has been proven time and time again to not work and it does not have the support of the Colorado people doesn't have the support of our County DA's office and I just think it's it's not the right way we

[172:00] need to come together as a community and figure out what is the best way to protect our community rather than just writing an ordinance the ordinance that we think won't do any damage so I'm gonna jump into the queue here and then Aaron and then Mary one thing that and again I add my thanks for folks to come out here this was a very useful session one thing I did hear from folks was that better coordination amongst probation parole law enforcement Housing and vocational services could actually be really helpful and I think that's one thing and I think multiple people agreed that that would be useful and that's something that could lead to better outcomes I guess I would like us to head that direction we may want to do other things but that one seems to be something we should do and do soon and

[173:00] you know this Center for sex offender management website let's go look at that if there's best practices of other communities that figured out how to transition people in a way that is is successful such that our community is safer I think that's what we want to do so I would be very interested in directing talented to put some thought into how we might do that and I'm willing to direct resources as well towards such an effort given that I heard that from multiple experts that that would actually be very helpful don't that's my initial thought is let's do that and maybe that group would have some additional feedback for for us about we need more GPS technology do we need some other resources in place that would actually make a difference because I do let's not just do something to make us feel better let's do something actually is gonna work that's my thought Aaron okay thank you Sam for that I

[174:02] agree with that the need for that better coordination and and I agree that with what people said that we need to do something and it's unclear to me what the best something is but getting people together to work on best practices in coordination I think would be a great initiative but I also think we need to do something about the concentration of the sexually violent predators at the homeless shelter um you know I hear an enormous amount of concern from the people who live in that area and and I understand it it's a it's a neighborhood with with a lot of families and it's bearing a really disproportionate burden of this problem because of the presence of the shelter so that of the 4sv peas in Boulder right now three of them are at the shelter and I think it's an unfair and kind of - to put that on that neighborhood particularly I mean given the nature of where the majority in general and all of them in in Boulder have assaulted strangers their children

[175:01] and are judged likely to reoffended ooh something about that and I don't know if we're going down the path of an ordinance that would enable that but if we do not I'd like to see that worked into the management agreement with the shelter that's coming up in the next couple of months to exclude SPPs from from the facility ask a question about that if we were gonna do that well maybe along with that if we are going to try to make sure folks on end up on the street but are somewhere in a controlled environment it seems to me we would want to also convene a discussion with the parole board about the halfway house yes absolutely okay yeah because I guess I wouldn't say we do I'm making an additional point that other people haven't made but it I agree would not should not be done in isolation because we want to find other you know valid more supervised options you know for for folks in that situation

[176:03] Mary Matt and then Bob again so I think that one of the things that we learned tonight is that we learned enough to know that we don't know enough to be able to do the best thing tonight so I am with the folks that have said we should convene some sort of a working group or of the folks that Greg Brown itemized and said we should convene these people and to that group I think it would be wise to also add a victim or victims to have their voices heard in that group as well whether we do an ordinance or not I think the best direction would come from a group that collaborated and talked about better coordination and give us better information and I'm not so sure about

[177:02] having the shelter exclude s VPS because one of the things that just I think it was Catherina that put up the the one slide that said in accurate registries equals danger and that's the last thing that we want to do to just feel just because we feel less fear it doesn't mean we are more safe so I would be hesitant to do that I do agree with Erin that there is a disproportionate concentration up in North Boulder so if we can work it out through this working group and in the state and figure out how we might be able to work together to direct more towards the the halfway house I know we can't do that but if there's a way that we might be able to

[178:00] get to that place I would like to explore it and then just one more thing in a completely separate matter that has nothing to do with what the topic of tonight's discussion but to address a point that was brought up by Allie the regarding that folks who can't organize as well that resonated with me as well and that's one of those things that I just want to point out to all of us that it's those million little things that make us feel a non-inclusive community is to make that kind of assumption that because somebody is low-income they can't organize well so thank you for bringing it up Ellie and I appreciate that and and with you Suzanne about at least what the next steps forward are and and with Jan in the sense that I

[179:03] mean last time I did not want to pursue an ordinance and yes I think I've learned a lot too but in fact it convinces me that an ordinance is not the right way to proceed especially with inclusion and exclusion I mean everything we continue to hear is that makes things worse more than it makes things better it may make some people happy potentially but it doesn't make the situation any better for anybody involved in this and we also have as a city a certain limited role we can play understandably I'm actually somewhat surprised the courts a lot of cities to do some of this and I suspect that they won't forever because these people need to go somewhere whether we like it or not I mean if I thought that we were as a city being unfairly treated in the sense of and one of the questions kind of got to this we were you know being

[180:03] handed to many of these sexual offenders whether they're sexual offenders RSVPs you know I think that would be a slightly different case but in fact these people have a relationship with the city of Boulder their crimes were committed here they lived here their families here or something I'm not sure what you think should happen to these folks other than they vanish but that's probably not going to happen from the state level so we're gonna have to deal with it at some point and it is seems to me it's much better to deal with in the way that we understand what these folks are I'm also on that I don't get and we've heard actually evidence to the contrary again the about the connection between where somebody might reside for the night and away they go during the day and where they might or might not commit another crime those seem to be rather unrelated one to another and as

[181:02] somebody said I think Jan you know moving them to central Boulder is we'll just hear from people in central Boulder and astonishingly there are actually kids who live in central Boulder there is a pretty big part that's just a couple of blocks away from that site so you can't make this go away there's no magic wand here you have to deal with it and I think looking at some additional coordination as an excellent idea I would be concerned that I may be the rest of you aren't there but I mean I think the city should absolutely play a role in in some coordinating discussions but I'd sure be concerned about suggesting that significant city resources should be put into this it's not exactly our place and the problems such as they are perceived and perhaps are real are I think much more due to

[182:00] the way folks were handled and other types of coordination false along the way and we you know we actually heard that from people who said and and and Stan as well da Garnett about you know go to the state legislature they're really controlling most of the things we care about and we kind of get that little piece at the end where we have pretty limited ability to make any significant difference so that's where I'm at and I and I would not support an ordinance now or I mean certainly we don't know enough and I think it would be much more likely to be to yield negative results than positive results but I do think some sort of Coordinating Committee to look at this a little bit more is an excellent idea and not not to put a plan on the Shelf I mean to really seriously figure out what the pieces of the puzzle are that a city

[183:00] can and maybe should do something about as well as what types of approaches should we take at the state and county level that could actually make significantly bigger differences in the long run than whatever we might be able to do as a city can catch that ask Boleyn question is mad I know that Christopher lawyer has ties to the community is it do we know is that true for the other three SV peas I I don't know I asked the question at one point I think in general and the answer was yeah most of them the kind of crimes were committed here or in doing something like that I'm sure it's not a hundred percent but do you mind if I just said yeah no I'll know cheap test her that about the existing for SV piece but yes there's the last time yeah I don't have that information okay that's fine I don't I don't know that answer Catarina is telling me that

[184:01] two of the four she's sure we're committed here but I don't know that answer thank you here why don't you clock I'm Shannon Alba I'm the spokesperson with the police department and so I don't remember the specific names with crimes that I know two of the offenders that are designated SVP s they original sex offence was committed in another state they came to Colorado and they reoffended in Colorado actually in Boulder Boulder County I'm not sure the specifics there's a fourth and I'm not positive off the top of my head if he actually committed a crime in this area it might have been in another state thank you okay well all I would say to that because I mean it is a good question we did ask it last time as I think that's something that is worth pursuing in this kind of collaborative effort of and again of course it's the parole board that places

[185:01] people somewhere not cities and not counties either for that matter but I think better understanding that and understanding what criteria they use and how that's done I can use this term fairly is absolutely worthwhile understanding better and it's something we clearly do not understand very well right this minute so I can see the headline in tomorrow's Daily Camera I'll write it for you Alex Boulder appoints task force so that's the best we can do so this is this has been in front of us for three months all of these organizations that we say that we want to get together could have gotten together without our assistance legislators or our job is not to facilitate communications between the state parole board state probation folks the police department the district attorney's office the halfway house and all the other agencies they could have been talking for years they could have been talking for the last three months

[186:00] and yet here we are up here saying you folks need to get together and talk and we'll help you do that that feels very hollow and unsatisfactory to me and I would like to encourage those organizations to do what they apparently should have been doing for a long long time by indicating to them that we're on the verge of passing an ordinance because I know you don't want us to do that so I'd like to threaten something that you don't want us to do to get you off your butts to do something you need to do and so it's very frustrating to me that we're once again going to simply appoint a task force and have lots and lots of confab here and get folks to do what they should have been doing a long long time so that's I'm very very frustrated about that second the statements been made that that an ordinance would not be helpful I haven't heard any evidence that would be hurtful and it would be a waste of time or be I think the rather offensive statement that Greg Brown made is that it would be a feel-good measure our job is not only

[187:01] to make this community safe this to make this community feel safe and I think an ordinance that limited where these sexually violent predators could go would send a signal to our community that we want to protect them to the best extent we can Sam and then I'm jumping back in so I'm right where Bob is on where my instinct is I'm not quite where Bob is on that I think we should take an action tonight because I'm not quite sure exactly what that should look like because it should either be and we have to involve these other organizations with the planning of whatever it is we do I think because we have perhaps limited authority here so we're gonna require their cooperation so geez definitely language less strong than Bob did and more cooperative in the sense that I agree with Bob that I think ultimately what we want to do is limit

[188:00] where sexually violent predators can go in our community and I'm gonna read from that website a fax set of facts from the website that says providing specialized supervision and this is in light of preventing riaf and reoffending and says these conditions of supervision depend on an offender's risk level and risk factors they often include no contact with victim no limited contact with minors limited or no internet access and their use of alcohol or drugs restrictions on where they can live and work restricted movement within the community and within and across state lines and reporting to probation and parole officers is required so some of the things that Bob is talking about and I am thinking about are on this list here its movement restriction right now for all boards or the ones that can do that or probation officers but I think if we can do something that layers on top of that rather than you know less than that or requiring less than that I think that might survive

[189:00] a legal challenge further let me read the very next section which is called using surveillance in some instances electronic technologies such as electronic monitoring or GPS devices help monitor sex offenders while under supervision because these technologies are quite expensive and some studies suggest they are most effective with higher risk offenders these surveillance technic techniques may be best used with only the highest risk or violent sex offenders I think that specifically described some of the things that I'm interested in and come straight off the website that we were recommended to check out so at any rate I do concur with a lot of that I have one more comment which is that I live just up the street from 23rd and Canyon I run and bike past that and walk past that location all the time I have never noticed this halfway house and so I think one of the reasons that the people in my neighborhood might not be as against this is they already house this facility and many of them probably

[190:02] have no idea and that is a testament to how well the facility is probably run that it probably shows and reads as an apartment building it does and I went there on my drive about with the police okay so just to be clear I don't think anybody and this is not not the headline for tomorrow is that we're convening people to talk about stuff so I do want to build on something at least I heard from everybody is the idea of having our Coordinating Committee is so that well a couple things I think one is at least for these four individuals to make sure that that the supervision and coordination is in place so if there's a violation that it is more efficient somebody doesn't have to drive drive from Westminster to figure it out so I think that that's something that

[191:00] maybe can happen kind of immediately and will provide better reassurance and and clarity about the supervision that's taking place so that's what I mean by coordinating so just to be clear I think also and I guess this goes towards the record chin is I think we could use some more information about these four individuals why only ones on GPS why maybe not all four under supervision and maybe there's nothing we can do about it but I think we should ask all the questions to see if we could could influence that so those are two things that I think are pretty concrete I am interested also I'll just throw that out there in getting the state to own this issue because it's not just our community and if so anyhow I'd like to sit down with our delegation and

[192:00] understand better if their state policies that need to be fixed so the parole board is it's painful more attention to the labels they're giving people and whether you know how the process of placing and what's appropriate do they have the right resources to me that's a worthwhile thing for us to do I know that's not as immediate but it still towards a longer-term solution okay so I thank you I appreciate all the feedback and there's some really good ideas there and I know you all were here at eleven o'clock last night so you must be tired so let me sort of suggest something Jane and I talked briefly I would suggest that we put together Jane and I work to put together a work plan that we would put an IP within the next month that is a method to explore all the things you've except you suggested not taking anything off the table can't work with experts in the community much like we did with the marijuana advisory panel get people who know the subject a lot better than I do get them to the table and see what we can come back to suggest to Council have meet with them and as I

[193:00] said keep everything on the table everything from an ordinance to coordination and come back and report to Council with recommendations for further action and progress with the some of the things you suggested which can be done in the short term and Tom can I ask that you specifically work closely with the parole board folks because to see to what extent they're amenable to coordination and an enhancement maybe of what they do I don't know how willing they would be but if we say well gosh if we contribute some resources in a certain way would you be willing to do a little more than you normally do I'm happy to do that thank you is that good or no no I guess I do want to thank folks again for coming and contributing to our thought process here and we'll continue to move forward as a community in addressing this and appreciate our experts coming in and writing us and to

[194:02] be continued so thank you all [Music]