Arapahoe County Sheriff Tyler Brown addressed concerns about fentanyl, auto thefts and the mental health of young people during his virtual “Talk with Tyler” question-and-answer event held Oct. 27.
“I think that it’s imperative that we allow ourselves to be open to these conversations, not shy away from the tough questions and really make a connection,” Brown said. “We will continue these and I’m excited to do so.”
Fentanyl
When asked what is something the community should be cognizant of, Brown said it’s substance use disorder issues — specifically, fentanyl.
Arapahoe County Coroner Kelly Lear previously told Colorado Community Media there was a 50% increase in the number of fentanyl-related deaths between 2020 and 2021 in Arapahoe County.
“One of the things that we’ve done, and we continue to do, is to deploy our special investigations unit to go out and really hit these criminal enterprises at their level and take poison off of the street that is really harming our communities,” Brown said.
Brown said the special investigations unit has “taken over 75,000 tabs of illegal fentanyl off the street” as well as “dozens of guns.”
He encouraged parents to monitor their children, especially their online activity.
“If you see something, you know, it never hurts to call us to have us come and address some of those concerns that you have or answer any questions that you might have,” he said.
On the legislative side, Brown said he was one of the sheriffs who asked the state legislature to make possession of any amount of fentanyl a felony.
“We tried diligently. We were able to negotiate with the speaker to drop that down to one gram. Anything over one gram possession is a felony now in the state of Colorado,” he said.
If elected again this November, Brown plans to continue legislative efforts.
“We are already in the works for the 2023 legislative session, and bills that we are looking at proposing, and different ways that we think that we’re going to be able to combat some of these rises in crime and get some power and a little bit more authority back into law enforcement’s hands,” Brown said.
Something he hopes to bring forward is “theft by receiving,” allowing police to charge individuals with receiving stolen property. He said the statue was repealed several years ago, but he wants to bring it back.
“I think that that is imperative when it comes to us being able to enforce the law and get to the bottom of drug trade,” he said. “What we’ve seen is a lot of stolen property is involved in other criminal activity, like illicit drug use, and we need to be able to combat that on a higher level.”
Auto thefts
Last year in the areas that Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office patrols, there were 789 motor vehicle thefts, Brown said.
To date, Brown said there has been a 7% increase in motor vehicle thefts, noting there has also been a 29% increase in the number of vehicles the sheriff’s office has recovered.
“So yes, it is an increase,” Brown said. “But talking with our law enforcement partners, specifically the district attorney, if you look at per capita and you break it down by 100,000 citizens, we’ve seen some of the smallest increases in crime in general here in Arapahoe County.”
To help reduce auto thefts, Brown recommended residents make sure they don’t leave any valuables in their car, as well as lock their cars even when the car is parked on their own driveway.
Someone asked Brown to explain the sheriff’s office pursuit policy — a topic of discussion for some residents given Douglas County has a wider-reaching pursuit policy compared to Littleton police.
“Pursuing motor vehicles is a dangerous business,” Brown said. “We are restrictive in our policies because of the danger element that it poses to the innocent bystanders.”
Brown said the sheriff’s office has strict guidelines of specific crimes deputies can pursue for.
According to Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office policy manual, vehicle pursuits are allowed when: a felony crime against a person, including aggravated robbery, has been committed and the deputy believes the person they are pursuing is the suspect; deputies believe a risk of death or serious bodily injury to a victim occurred prior to the pursuit; or the suspect is a known dangerous offender.
The manual states pursuits are not allowed for misdemeanor violations, when vehicles elude for unknown reasons, for felony property crimes with the exception of an aggravated robbery, and for traffic violations with the exception of suspected severe driving under the influence.
Recently, deputies pursued an individual who attempted to ram a patrol vehicle, and they were able to get the person into custody after he crashed through a fence, Brown said.
“But when we’re looking at smaller, lower level offenses that have been deemed lower-level by state statute, we don’t want to put the community at risk of serious bodily injury,” he said. “That’s something that I take very seriously.”
Youth mental health
One resident asked what the sheriff’s office is doing to address ongoing mental health issues for youth and teenagers, saying there are cases where children are being arrested instead of being provided a clinical provider.
“We’re doing the deep dive on the data when it comes to arresting students,” Brown said. “As of a couple months ago when I looked at the data specifically for arrests, we had only put two students in handcuffs.”
Both of those incidents were domestic violence situations in which the sheriff’s office was mandated to make those arrests, Brown said.
The sheriff’s office has a co-responder program that pairs mental health clinicians with deputies on calls for service that involve a person with a mental illness, behavioral health crisis and/or emotionally charged situation. If they are needed, these clinicians can provide services in school settings as well, Brown said.
A program Brown hopes to expand is the sheriff’s office therapy dog program.
“We’re hoping to expand this program to all the school districts that we provide school resource officers for,” Brown said, explaining the program has been implemented so far in Littleton Public Schools and Cherry Creek School District.
“Having therapy dogs in the schools has broken down barriers and has broken down that stigma between the law enforcement officer and the student,” he said.
Brown said the dogs help students become engaged and comfort students who are distressed.
“We’re excited about what it looks like to kind of reimagine what an SRO (school resource officer) is in a school,” he said. “Being a professional law enforcement officer inside of a school building, but then also providing those therapy resources that we know that students are in need of.”
Keywords
Arapahoe County,
Fentanyl,
Car thefts,
Mental health,
Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office,
Tyler Brown
