Fed up with festering crime and a worse-than-do-nothing Legislature, local elected leaders in Colorado’s newly created 23rd Judicial District drew a much-needed line in the sand this week. In doing so, they set a laudable standard and an example for the rest of the state.

As reported by The Gazette, the officials declared to the media and public that criminals who cross the line in Douglas, Elbert and Lincoln counties will face real consequences. That stands in stark contrast to the coddling they all too often receive in other jurisdictions, particularly in the Denver metro area.

And it represents a day-and-night difference from the “justice reform” agenda of our soft-on-crime state Legislature, which for years has been slashing sentences for serious crimes and turning dangerous criminals loose on our streets.

“If you come down here with the intent to victimize us or to steal from us, your expectation should be incarceration,” said the 23rd’s District Attorney-elect George Brauchler. “And that is the approach that this District Attorney’s Office is going to take to crime.”

Brauchler was among the elected leaders and law enforcement authorities, including all three counties’ sheriffs, who gathered at Wednesday’s news conference to make clear they were picking up the ball where the state had dropped it. A number of them, like Brauchler, are veterans of the crime fight who have had enough of the state’s squishy approach to lawbreaking and lawbreakers.

Douglas County Sheriff Darren Weekly underscored the point.

“If you are a criminal or somebody who has bad intentions, do not come to the 23rd Judicial District, because the people you see behind me, we will go out of our way to track you down and to hold you accountable,” Weekly said.

Brauchler, who writes a weekly column for The Gazette and Colorado Politics, previously served as the 18th Judicial District attorney and famously prosecuted the mass murderer in the 2015’s Aurora theater shooting. “When it gets to be January the 14th,” Brauchler said, referring to the date he is sworn in and Colorado’s newest judicial district opens for business, “there isn’t going to be a time where the courts are going to say it’s OK, take a month to figure things out. We are starting right away.”

The 23rd Judicial District was carved out of the old 18th by the Legislature in part because places such as Douglas County have been growing so rapidly, and the 18th had been the state’s most populous. Now, the 18th only will consist of metro Denver’s Arapahoe County, which includes third-largest city Aurora.

But Brauchler and others on hand for this week’s public statement see an

There’s a very real sense that law enforcement has had its hands tied in such locales by elected officials who have politicized policing.

underlying wisdom to the creation of the 23rd. Notably, its citizens demand law and order and expect their elected leaders to provide it.

That commitment to the crime fight has been wavering, at best, in Denver and some other Front Range communities. There’s a sense that law enforcement has had its hands tied in such locales by elected officials who have politicized policing and recast perpetrators as victims. Their local leaders have become little more than cheerleaders for the decriminalization crowd at the state Capitol.

It is reassuring to know local officials like those in the 23rd, by contrast, have the backs of the law-abiding public. We applaud them. Yet, it’s also troubling that it falls to them to take that stand — almost defiantly — because the state government has forsaken them.

In any event, we can rest assured the streets will be safer in the 23rd Judicial District. Here’s hoping the citizens, and leaders, of other judicial districts are inspired by the 23rd and take action.

THE GAZETTE EDITORIAL BOARD

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