6 MARCH 28-APRIL 3, 2024 westword.com WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | was fi fteen. All four are facing fi rst-degree murder and aggravated robbery charges. In Denver, a teenager named Remi Cor- dova — who is accused of killing a woman in February 2021 when he was just fourteen — found out in December that he’d be tried as an adult. “He shot a woman who was driv- ing, a young mother,” McCann says. “There was an incident with the car, and he got out of the car with a long rifl e, a long gun, and allegedly shot and killed her.” Eighteen-year-old Neshon Johnson was reportedly driving Cordova around when they got in a minor accident on Colfax Avenue with a car driven by 32-year-old Pamela Cabriales. According to prosecutors, both Johnson and Cordova were gang members, and Cordova retaliated by shooting Cabriales. “I am literally shocked and frightened by some of the things I’m seeing in terms of what kids are doing,” says DA Brian Mason of the 17th Judicial District, which covers Adams and Broomfi eld counties. “Every single one of these crimes is senseless. Every single one of them. And that’s why they’re so frightening. There’s no way to predict when someone is going to shoot a gun over a ri- diculous confl ict. Kids are literally killing kids, and they are fi ghting over the same things that kids have fought over for time immemorial. But they are now bringing guns to the fi ght. I have fi led a homicide case that was about a purse; I have fi led a homicide case that was com- mitted over a girl; I have fi led a homicide case over a pair of jeans.” According to Mason, younger and younger kids are committing more violent crimes than ever before. “There needs to be a wake-up call to our entire community,” he says. In McCann’s opinion, youth violence — particularly with guns — is the most serious issue facing not just Denver, but Colorado as a whole right now. While fentanyl “is the other big one,” she says that violent juvenile crime is something that she’s grown more and more concerned about over the years. “We have seen a pretty dramatic increase in juveniles with handguns in particular over the last few years,” she says. Denver’s Handgun Intervention Program was rolled out in 2021 to offer second chances to minors convicted of fi rst-time, non-violent fi rearm offenses. Anyone under the age of eighteen who doesn’t have any priors and qualifi es is eligible to take part in a six-week educational class and six months of probation, leading to their convictions being expunged. “What we hear from the kids in this pro- gram is that he or she feels they have to carry a gun to feel safe,” McCann says. “They feel like they have to carry a gun because every- body else has a gun. So it’s an issue that we all need to be concerned about and focused on.” DA John Kellner represents the 18th Judicial District — which covers Arapahoe, Douglas, Elbert and Lincoln counties — and he, too, is calling on people to take notice of this deadly increase. “Youth violence is at crisis levels,” he tells Westword. “It’s been trending that direc- tion for several years and went on steroids throughout the COVID era. And what I see nowadays is more kids, more juveniles with guns that they’ve bought illegally, oftentimes through social media, or that they trade for. They’re much more willing and ready to pull the trigger than youths in the past, and they are carrying guns to basically accomplish their crimes more effectively.” What the data says Since 2010, the juvenile murder rate in Colorado has skyrocketed by 210 percent, according to the Common Sense Institute, a non-partisan research institute that released a study this month focusing on youth crime in the Centennial State. Youth crimes against persons are up by 16.6 percent, violent crimes by 7 percent, robberies by 12 percent, and aggravated assaults by 17 percent. Meanwhile, the number of juveniles be- ing detained and held accountable has de- creased by 70 percent owing to statewide bed caps and a combination of new laws that have led to limited use of detention services and increased diversion programs, alternative sentences and more lenient parole. “For my jurisdiction, which has almost 700,000 people, we only have seventeen beds that by law we can use for kids who commit violent crimes,” Mason says. Colorado’s Division of Youth Services was forced to reduce its pre-trial detention capacity from 327 to 215 in 2021, following the passage of SB21-071, also known as the “Limit the Detention of Juveniles Act.” The bill was sponsored by Senator Janet Buckner, Representative Lindsey Daugherty and Rep- resentative Andrew Boesenecker, Democrats who represent Arapahoe, Larimer, Adams and Jefferson counties. “They have arbitrarily capped the num- ber of beds for each jurisdiction,” Mason says. “And so my staff, on a weekly and sometimes daily basis, has to decide which least-violent juvenile to let out of one of those beds in order to create a space for the juvenile who committed a murder the night before.” The CSI study, titled “The Cost of Juve- nile Crime and Its Economic Impact on Colo- rado,” looked at Colorado crime statistics from 2010 to 2023. Researchers found that since 2010, the total cost of juvenile crime in the state was $3.31 billion. The cost of juvenile crime in 2023 alone was equivalent to $566 per Coloradan. The concentration of juvenile crime in Colorado is highest in Adams, Fremont, Jef- ferson, Mesa and Boulder counties. Adams, El Paso, Jefferson and Denver counties ac- count for 58 percent of all juvenile crimes, though they only have 44 percent of the state’s population. But evidence of youth violence and the toll it’s having on society can be found all over. “We haven’t been doing enough” Beverly Kingston, director of the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence at the University of Colorado Boulder, calls the in- creasing juvenile crime numbers “heartbreaking”; she believes people could be doing more to help. “The violence is concerning, no question,” she says. “But it’s also frustrating when we know we haven’t been doing enough. We could be doing so much more to prevent violence.” For instance, we could be implementing “prevention infrastructure,” which revolves around the idea that youth violence and the reported risk factors can be treated and ad- dressed like infrastructure or health problems. “Just like we have roads and bridges, we need to have an infrastructure to prevent violence,” Kingston explains. “What we mean by that is, it’s basically a network of supportive, dependable relationships and focused resources that are aligned toward preventing violence and promoting healthy youth development. What we want to see is that this infrastructure is going to address the root causes of violence. So that means we’re going to address those risk and protective factors. We want to decrease the risk and increase the protection. ... Just like for heart disease or for cancer, there are risk factors for violence. And it’s very similar in some ways. We can think of violence as sort of a disease.” According to Kingston, prevention in- frastructure includes both intervention and prevention tactics. This can be implemented through free programs like Aurora’s focused- deterrence SAVE (Standing Against Violence Every Day) initiative or the national Nurse- Family Partnership program, which helps educate low-income women who are having their fi rst child. Each is geared toward stopping youth violence in its tracks at different stages of a person’s life, before it’s ultimately too late. “These kids that are all involved in these shootings, they all needed some sort of in- tervention or prevention,” Kingston notes. “For some, they’re past prevention at this point. They had fi rearms, and the fact that they ended it in homicide tells me that there’s something extreme going on in the lives of these kids that needed intervention. And when I’m thinking about prevention, it’s something you want to do throughout the life course. Some of the best programs that have the strongest effects for preventing future violence start before kids are born, like Nurse- Family Partnership, which works with fi rst- time mothers when they’re pregnant, and it works with that mom until the kiddo is two, and ultimately prevents future violence. It’s getting that family on track initially, and then you want to continue with programs through- out the life course. You want to have the next one when kids are in preschool, teaching them social and emotional learning skills.” According to Kingston, research shows that many kids in preschool get kicked out for behavior problems and go on to commit violent acts once they’re older. “We want to make sure those kids don’t just get kicked out of preschool, but that they get the support that they need to get back on track,” she says. “But it can’t just be through preschool. It has to be throughout elementary school, middle school and high school. And so this is what I’m talking about. We need to build an infrastructure that is getting kids these supports, getting their families the supports.” Aurora Police Department Captain Mike Hanifi n, co-director of the SAVE program launched by the city last August, tells West- word that focus deterrence and reaching out to at-risk youths before they wind up behind bars, rather than after, can be vital when it comes to bringing down the youth violence numbers. “We are focusing our efforts, our partners — law enforcement, social services, the com- munity — we’re all focusing on the very small percentage of young continued on page 8 Armed and Dangerous continued from page 5 District attorne.s Brian Mason (left) and Beth McCann are both disturbed by the amount of youth violence they’re seeing today. DENVER DA’S OFFICE EVAN SEMÓN
