Judges, lawyers discuss youth, weapons and school safety | Courts

Adams County Judge Michal Lord-Blegen was an Aurora school administrator when two teenagers killed 13 people and himself at Columbine High School in 1999. The massacre was due to the prism of her later work as a director and lawyer.

“We have a lot of kids with guns,” Lord-Blegen said earlier this month. “But these kids aren’t shooting up schools. Either they don’t go to school or school is actually one of the places where they feel safe.”

Lord-Blegen was one of the speakers at a Colorado Bar Association-sponsored discussion on October 16 about children’s much-discussed access to firearms 25 years after the Columbine shooting. Prosecutors and defense attorneys discussed how minors gun cases are handled, as well as the various safety strategies schools have turned to.

“I believe that SROs actually make a huge contribution to school safety because their job is to build relationships with students,” said Lauren Asher, a prosecutor with the 17th Judicial District Attorney’s Office, referring to school resource officers. “I think it’s a myth to say, ‘If we don’t have an SRO, the police won’t contact our students.’ It’s just not true.”

As a truancy judge, “when I ask kids if they have a trusted adult, they often mention SRO,” Lord-Blegen added.

Are school resource officers increasing safety or promoting unnecessary criminalization of children’s behavior has been the subject of many studies. Denver Public Schools Board of Education voted to remove police officers in the 2020-2021 school year, but returned them in 2023 after the shooting at East High School.

Erin Pier, a former school psychologist and executive director of the Transformative Justice Project in Colorado, described a case study in which the same student was disciplined twice for punching a hole in a wall at her school.

The first time, the principal took the student to the SRO, who gave him a ticket for destroying property. The student was subsequently suspended. The second time, the following school year, a student entered Pier’s office after damaging a wall. The principal came in and thanked the student who had merely hit the wall, not another student, and that he had sought help from an adult. The director also suggested that they develop a plan to repair the damage.

Pier said the student cried, left the office and hugged the student, who he was initially angry with. He also apologized to his teacher and helped fix the hole.

“Same kid. Same problem,” Pier said. “But the response to this behavior was very different for different leadership styles.”

Attorney Asher reiterated his concern that administrators should not reflexively call the SRO because it is “easy.”

“At the district attorney’s office, we receive letters from SROs because they have to send them to us,” she said. “We will analyze it and say, ‘I don’t want this case. This should be a school matter. It needs to be addressed in the school building – potentially restorative justice. It doesn’t have to be a state matter. fee.'”

“I want to draw our attention to the fact that the minors, the kids we’re talking about,” Lord-Blegen added, “are not typically the type of kids who are involved in mass school shootings at Columbine. We’re talking about one type of school safety now, something we all encounter every day, but it’s really different than things like Columbine.

To this end, Lord-Blegen stated that it would be “very rare” for her to detain a child if the only charge was possession of a handgun. She indicated that a second arrest would be necessary for deprivation of liberty, otherwise in case of increasing danger.

Panelists noted that students’ learning difficulties or difficulties in coping with the Covid-19 pandemic have led to disruption and even violence – in some cases without a clear path to intervention.

“I don’t want to say it’s too late for a 17-year-old,” Asher said, “but if I already know their name through contacts with law enforcement, we should have been there seven years ago.”

Potential adult firearms charges

The discussion also touched on the issue of ways to prosecute adults for children using or possessing firearms. There was a couple from Michigan recently found guilty and sentenced to prison for their role in facilitating the murder of four students by their teenage son in 2021 last month The prosecutor’s office in Georgia brought similar charges against the man for allegedly enabling his son to kill two students and two teachers through his own actions.

“In Colorado and most states, the parent-child relationship itself does not automatically create liability for the parents,” said Renée Franchi, a personal injury lawyer and former prosecutor. “The real pillar of responsibility in such cases is the parents’ knowledge of the potential harm and their ability to control the child and his actions.”

She added that if a parent provides a firearm to a child and later learns about the possibility of violence, he or she is obliged to take the weapon away.

“Generally speaking, at the national level, courts really put a lot of emphasis on whether the child’s actions were foreseeable to the parents,” Franchi added.

First Assistant Attorney General Robert S. Shapiro reviewed Colorado’s various firearms statutes, which include, but are not limited to, illegal supply of firearms to minors, safe storage of firearms, and failure to report lost or stolen firearms. For an adult to be held accountable, his or her actions must have been conscious or reckless.

“This is not a Second Amendment issue. “It is adults who are violating their duty to keep the public safe,” Shapiro said. “Our job is to make sure law enforcement is adequately familiar with these laws… so they can ask the right questions when developing evidence.”

Specialized handgun field in Denver

Finally, Denver Juvenile Court panelists spoke about the “Handgun Intervention Court,” an idea that began in 2018 to address the root causes of why children acquire guns. The number of juvenile handgun possession charges in Denver nearly doubled between 2005 and 2022, from 63 to 118, with the increase mostly occurring after 2015.

The specialist court, which will start working for the 11th time next month, will be intended for people accused of possessing handguns but who have no criminal history.

Juvenile defendants who are accepted into diversion receive a six-month deferred adjudication conditional on their participation in the seven-week program.

“Basically, this means that the person is pleading guilty to the charge. The guilty plea is not actually placed on the person’s record, so it is deferred for a period of six months,” Judge Courtney Denson said, noting that the child will be on probation during that period.

As a former defenseman, “it’s a pretty good deal,” Denson continued. “We count not only on the involvement and commitment of young people, but also on parents.”

In response to a question about recidivism among program participants, the panelists replied that work on the analysis was ongoing.