Editorial: Crime in Pueblo

A town at its breaking point.

Crime in Pueblo. You know the thing in Pueblo that is causing all the murders. In fact, crime, yes crime, is the number one indicator of just how frightened Puebloans get about the image of Pueblo. And crime is the only thing keeping KKTV on-the-air.

But what is overlooked about Pueblo’s crime rate is the cause. Just about every debate on crime in Pueblo focuses on the cause of and solution to crime are the number of police officers on the street.

And before I go into why this problem is bigger than the number of cops, I want you hold onto the thought of so-called hippy college graduates in Boulder.

In 2016, Pueblo’s District Attorney Jeff Chostner will attempt to get a half-cent tax approved that will go to fund more police officers because this year alone, the top three law enforcement officials in the city have said the police department has reached its breaking point due to understaffing and levels of crime.

Chief of Police Luis Velez has said the force no longer can “stay on top” of the calls for service.

Just how far gone is the Pueblo police department?

Last year, the communication center received 122,031 calls for service, which included police, fire and other calls. It’s high but in 2006, Puebloans made 128,853 calls for service and 111,157 police-only calls.

The department’s caseload is even less than when Chief Velez was sworn in. Since 2010 the department has seen a caseload hovering around 25,000 a year, down from 2008, when the department reported 29,224 cases.

What exactly is broken in Pueblo? Law enforcement says understaffing of the police force.

And here is where you begin to see Chostner’s reasoning, as he told me. “I think we would be able to track the offenders, and have quicker response times. We could investigate potential suspects and evidence because the force has the manpower. This would allow for more in-depth investigations.”

To achieve this, the goal is to return to 207 officers up from the 175 on the force now.

Where does that 207 number come from? According to the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the national average for officers for a city like Pueblo with 100,000 to 249,000 residents is 1.9 officers for every 1,000 residents. Or take Pueblo’s 2014 census number of 108,423, multiply that by 1.9 and you get 206 officers.

For Pueblo to reach its goal of 207 officers, the city would need to hire an additional 30 officers at a cost of about $3 million a year. Sounds easy, right? Apart from the current issues such as new police trainees aren’t sticking with the program and a civil service requirement that throttles the number of applicants for police training — forgetting all that — the city simply cannot afford 30 more officers.

If a new public safety tax passes, the new tax would generate on average $7.5 million a year, and the city would have enough to fill the gap and hire 30 more officers by year three. This is Chostner’s plan.

He’s also the first to say, putting more cops on the street wouldn’t solve all crime and may not have prevented some of the high-profile murders such as Devin Clark’s tragic death, but it would give the chief of police the tools to fight crime.

City Council is fighting back saying they don’t perceive another tax would solve Pueblo’s current crime issue.

And you can see where they are coming from. When Chostner presented his plan before council, the major issue was whether this tax was really needed and what happens when it sunsets.

Missing from council’s reasoning was telling the public something else was that happening to the police force, not with — but to.

In 2016, the city will increase the police budget by $1.5 million, the first significant increase since 2013, when police hiring froze. Even if the city allocated all that money to hiring new officers they would still be 20 officers short of what they had in 2010. Yes, that’s right. In 2010, they had 200 officers on the force and a smaller police budget from $25.9m in 2010 to $27.7 expected in 2016.

So how does a police force, with a smaller budget and with relatively the same demand for service have more officers?

And here’s where nothing adds up for council and Pueblo as a whole.

Crime, that Type-I violent crime defined murder, forcible rape, and burglary, the type DA Jeff Chostner cites as breaking Pueblo, was decreasing according to how the Pueblo Chieftain wrote up their editorial board meeting with law enforcement officials in January 2016.

Even though Chief Velez told city council, Pueblo has nearly double the national average in violent property crimes and crime was down from last year. In 2015, there was 7,759 Type-I crimes and that was down from 8,050 the previous year. In categories such as rape, burglary and assaults, Pueblo has similar numbers to cities double its size in Colorado.

If a violent Pueblo seems new to you, it’s not. In 2010 the Denver Post reported that Pueblo had the highest crime rate per capita in Colorado. So Pueblo has known this problem from the media since 2010 and by looking at FBI crime statistics.

What’s so special about 2010? Nothing really, except, and you remember, Pueblo had 200 officers on its force.

Now, granted, city council will say, they had to balance the budget because of the recession — tough decisions had to be made, budgets were frozen. But every other town in Colorado faced the recession. Other towns and cities made hard decisions, so yes, council gets a pass for experiencing the same recession everyone else suffered through.

And yes, the costs for police pensions and health care increased. But the police force which constitutes about 50% of the annual city’s budget has maintained the same levels of expenditure inside the force; 93% goes to personnel and 7% to operational costs. But the reason Pueblo has a budgetary problem and both a perceived and a real violence problem isn’t just because of rises in pensions.

What the city, and others don’t get a pass for are — granola, hippy, pot-smoking, liberals, elitist college graduates from Boulder. I may have added some adjectives here. Let me explain.

Why do granola-smelling-hippy-organic-free-range-college graduates matter? Because that’s the image Colorado has of Boulder but there’s more when you look at the spreadsheets.

And even though the Denver Post journalist, Jesse Paul, writing why Pueblo has so many murders, compared Pueblo’s crime stats to Boulder, Pueblo is nothing like Boulder except in one category, population. The difference between the two cities is Pueblo has 108,423 residents and Boulder has 3,311 less at 105,112 in 2014.

Since 1990, Boulder’s population has grown nearly 20% and Pueblo has grown 9.5%. By the end of this decade Boulder will likely surpass Pueblo in population.

The perception of the hippy-liberals grads who smoke weed and take from the government against Pueblo’s salt-of-the-earth, strength of manufacturing is a completely false argument.

The three biggest sources of revenue for any city is sales, use and property taxes. And the city of Boulder is one big cash cow.

The people of Boulder actually contribute a lot of money to their local economy.

Boulder, in 2015, received $149 million in sales and use taxes bringing the total revenue for the city to $319m.

You may believe they are just returning to pre-recession levels. Since 2007, Boulder’s total city revenue, all the sales taxes, property and everything else has grown by 50% or around $106 million.

Pueblo’s total estimated revenue in 2015 was $77.7m showing just a 20% growth since 2006. I’ve thrown in 2006 numbers to make it look less depressing — to Pueblo.

What does any of this have to do with police budgets and Pueblo government?

Boulder, with their tech jobs, and bike lanes, fund their police department at $33.6m — nearly $6m more than Pueblo. Boulder P.D. has 179 officers in the their latest budget report. That’s 4 officers more than Pueblo has currently. And Boulder officer-to-resident ratio is less than Pueblo and the national average.

And Boulder has less crime. In 2014, Boulder only had 46,351 calls for service and only 3,077 Type-I crimes.

What I’m not telling you is whether or not you should vote for Jeff Chostner’s public safety tax. Or, move to Boulder. What I am saying is that crime in Pueblo isn’t merely a police issue.

Pueblo’s economy isn’t on the precipice of a recovery; Pueblo’s economy lives on the knife edge of its own breaking point.

I know what you are thinking, “but, Boulder is a university town. Pueblo isn’t a university town.” :( I don’t know if sad faces are AP Style but you get a frowny face for that one.

The words you are really looking for is “college graduate town”. Pueblo has a university but according to the 2010 Census, only 19% of Puebloans have a bachelor’s degree or higher. Boulder’s rate is 72%.

And this costs Pueblo money. According to a 2014 Pew Research Center Study, the income gap between those who have a college degree and those without one is $17,500 and widening.

Boulder with all its “government leaching liberals drinking free espressos at hippy tech jobs” earn on average $58,062 in a household and the average Boulder home is valued at $499,200.

You don’t need a study to show that college educated people just make more and buy bigger homes. To a city that’s revenue in the form of sales taxes and property taxes. Revenue the City of Pueblo would desperately love to have.

The difference in per capita income — the total income of a region divided by total population of that same region — for Pueblo, in 2010, was $20,450 and Boulder’s was $37,406. Math, don’t fail me now; that’s a difference of, you guessed it, close to the Pew Research number of $16,956. Winner, winner Pueblo is eating chicken not steak for dinner.

The other thing a college degree does is lower crime rates. Simply, type into Google, “crime rate and college degrees.” In study after study, communities that have low educational attainment also have the highest rates of crime.

In other words, Pueblo is barely growing and that lack of growth isn’t just breaking Pueblo’s police department, it’s breaking a city. And a broken city generates crime to be dealt by — you guessed it — an underfunded police force.

Originally printed in the April 2016 Print Edition.