Colorado County Jail Refuses to Accept Cities’ Prisoners
Colorado County Jail Refuses to Accept Cities’ Prisoners
By Matt Clarke
A spat over how many prisoners the county jail in Adams County, Colorado will accept went public when five chiefs of police for cities in Adams County called a press conference to criticize the sheriff. They said he was endangering the public.
Adams County Sheriff Douglas Darr replied that he is just trying to keep his understaffed jail safe.
"My employees have worked over 42,000 hours of overtime," according to Adams County jail manager Kurt Ester. "I'm working these folks to death just trying to keep them as safe as possible."
Although people who are convicted of misdemeanors are supposed to serve their sentences in a county jail, Darr is allowing only 30 convicted prisoners from all of the Adams County cities in addition to the suspects awaiting trial his jail holds. It is a question of how many prisoners the jail can safely hold, according to Darr.
The police chiefs disagree. They say locking up convicted criminals keeps the public safe and refusing to do so endangers the public.
"We are right now at the point where this is a public safety crisis," according to Aurora City Police Chief Dan Oats.
Oats points out that seven of his convicts were just turned away, including one for motor vehicle theft. Instead of releasing them, the City of Aurora decided to rent cell space from Denver County at the rate of $52 per day.
"Those seven prisoners reside today at the Denver County jail with Aurora taxpayers paying for them to be lodged there," said Oates.
Darr said the seven were convicted of petty, non-violent misdemeanors and Aurora should pay for another jail to take them or release them, but his jail will not be accepting them.
"I don't know if the sheriff really appreciates the effort by the municipalities and what we've done," said Thornton City Police Chief Randy Nelson who said the chiefs have already reduced the number of prisoners sent to the jail by half, focusing on only the most serious offenders.
Darr agrees.
"It's true that I don't believe they've made the effort to do as much as they could," said Darr.
The cities later filed a lawsuit against Adams County, seeking to force the county to house city prisoners at the jail.
Source: 9News
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