Left Face
Join Adam Gillard and Dick Wilkinson while they talk politics and community engagement in Pikes Peak region.
Left Face
Innovative Approaches to Criminal Justice Reform w/ Jeremy Dowell
Join us for an eye-opening conversation with Pablo Capistrano, Veteran Outreach Committee Chair for the El Paso County Democratic Party, and Jeremy Dowell, a passionate District Attorney candidate. Pablo recounts the unexpected yet heartwarming experiences at the Pikes Peak Regional Air Show, where his team connected with a broad spectrum of veterans and military community members. This episode sheds light on the progressive voices within the military, offering a refreshing narrative of unity and hope compared to the often polarizing political climate.
From factory floors to courtrooms, Jeremy Dowell's journey is nothing short of inspiring. He takes us through his transition from working in a semiconductor factory to becoming a guardian ad litem, motivated by his love for history and the lessons of the civil rights movement. Jeremy's story, marked by overcoming personal challenges like ADHD, underscores the transformative power of education and relentless pursuit of one's passions. This chapter is a compelling reminder of why activism and continued efforts to protect our hard-earned rights remain crucial.
We also tackle some of the most pressing issues in criminal justice today. Jeremy and Pablo discuss the importance of data-driven strategies, collaboration with community stakeholders, and the need for systemic reforms. From advocating for problem-solving courts and restorative justice to exploring the benefits of legalizing recreational cannabis sales, this episode is a call to action for smarter, more inclusive policies. By focusing on education, rehabilitation, and community support, we can move towards a justice system that prioritizes reducing recidivism and fostering genuine societal reintegration.
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Hello everybody, thanks for joining me. My name is Adam Gillard, your host for the All Things Military Veteran Podcast. Joining me today is Pablo Capistrano. He is the Democratic El Paso County Democratic Party's Veteran Outreach Committee Chair, and then Jeremy Dowell, who is running for the DA here in our fine city. Pablo, thanks for joining me. Jeremy, thanks for joining me, Thanks for having me, thanks for having us. So, pablo, you had a huge lift this last weekend and I was kind of jealous that I didn't get to help you out with it, the air show that we had. I've been getting a lot of great feedback from not just our volunteers but people who have reached out to the group since then just through our website, and I know you've got a list of names that I've got to put in to get on our distro too. So great job on that. First of all, thank you so much.
Speaker 2:Oh, thank you. No, it was fantastic. Tell us about the weekend, like, how did it go for you? Well, so we were at the Pikes Peak Regional Air Show August 17th and 18th. It was a savagely hot couple days, especially Saturday, but despite that we had a great experience, right it's.
Speaker 2:You know, rightly or wrongly, Colorado Springs has a reputation for being a little more conservative than average Colorado. So there was some trepidation on the parts of the volunteers and the candidates to kind of put themselves out there, but they did. Candidates to kind of put themselves out there, but they did. And I'm happy to say, you know, 99% of our interactions were fantastic. We had people, we had veterans, we had dependents, we had family members, friends and family of veterans and members of the military community from all points of the political spectrum. Right, we had conservatives, we had undecideds and independents.
Speaker 2:We had, you know, people who just weren't interested in politics, as well as the secret closet liberal that lives in Colorado Springs. They all came out to talk to us. They came to talk to us, they were interested in who we were, what we were doing and there was some level of surprise that there was such a thing as a progressive veteran, right. So a couple of things we were doing there. First of all, we were letting folks know that one that exists, that there are veterans, there are members of the military community and the veteran community who support Conway Harris and Tim Wallace for president and vice president, who support, you know, our local excellent candidates, like Jeremy, who's running for DA, like Naomi Lopez and Dr Dietrich Duncan, who are running for CC, supporting River Gasson who is running for US House of Representatives, and Mike Pearson who's running for Colorado House, and that those folks, those Democratic candidates, support the veteran community and advocate for veterans issues.
Speaker 2:That was the one thing we were putting out there and the other thing was, you know, we wanted to kind of cut through the whole red versus blue, liberal versus conservative You're either on this side or you're on that side and we were, you know, kind of emphasizing what we've always said, what we've said to each other. Right, it doesn't so much matter what you believe, it doesn't matter what your ideology is or how you want to solve problems. What matters to us, what matters to most people, right, is that, whatever it is you believe, whatever your belief system, is that it inspires you to do good, it inspires you to the common good of society. It inspires you to help veterans. It inspires you to help marginalized communities. It inspires you to help your neighbors right, and I think that's something we saw. If you've been watching the Democratic National Convention, that's been the consistent message from Democrats. It's like look, we're for two things we're for freedom and we're for helping out fellow Americans, and I just don't know how you can be against that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think the DNC this week has really highlighted the difference between the messages that both campaigns are trying to push out. The fear and the division that the Republicans have pushed out for so long has really been being called out now by this DNC being so unifying, and a lot of the Republicans that have you know, jumped ship have gone to the DNC and like they've been welcomed in you've also got some jokers out there, imitating sure but.
Speaker 2:But here's the thing, right, if you notice, I watched both.
Speaker 2:I watched the Republican National Convention and I watched the Democratic National Convention and you can tell there are some folks at the Republican National Convention who really believe what's being put out there. And that's fine. You're entitled to believe whatever you want, as long as you're not hurting others. But there are some folks at that convention who were very clearly delivering a message. There was a script. I used to be an information operations guy in Iraq. It felt like information operations. There was a theme, there were messages, there were sub-messages. This is like a PSYOP campaign.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's on their news articles.
Speaker 2:If you look at the Democratic National Convention, it doesn't feel like that right. I'm not saying that the Democrats don't have a message strategy Obviously they do. I'm not saying they don't have an information and public affairs campaign Obviously.
Speaker 1:but what you're seeing is like real, authentic joy and optimism and excitement and enthusiasm, and that's something you just can't fake exactly, yeah, everything can be scripted, but at the end of the day, like the joy and the happiness, yeah, that shines, it's the realness and we saw a lot of that at the airshow too, when we talked to folks right, they were very optimistic about having another choice besides two octogenarians, besides politicians from the 20th century.
Speaker 2:Slash a reality game show, host a failed businessman. But you know also it was just kind of a celebration of we can talk about political things without this being a political event, you know.
Speaker 1:Right yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a good thing too.
Speaker 1:Well, it sounds like you guys had a great time out there. Pablo, uh, thanks again for you know, doing all the heavy lifting on that. I know you and your wife were out there pretty much all weekend. Uh, kendall Kelly helped us out a lot with the t-shirts, things like that. So thank you to all of you. All the volunteers really appreciate everything you did for us. I mean, I know the candidates appreciate it too. Um, and that brings us to another candidate that we got here, uh, jeremy Dowell. Uh, jeremy, thanks for joining us. Uh, tell me a little bit about yourself.
Speaker 3:So I've lived in Colorado Springs since 2018, and I've been doing what I'm doing now, which is guardian ad litem work for kids that have been charged with crimes and I'll explain more about that in a second but I've been doing that since I moved here in 2018. But I grew up in Canyon City, so not too far from here, and that was its own experience. I was born and raised here in Colorado Springs and then moved way down to Arizona for a little while and went to college.
Speaker 1:What made you want to do law?
Speaker 3:Honestly, it was studying history In my undergraduate life. I worked worked full time at a factory, in a semiconductor factory in the Phoenix area while I was going to. So I worked nights and then, yeah, it wasn't so bad. I guess I mean it was it paid?
Speaker 1:it paid, okay. A factory in Phoenix's heat. Yeah, it was air conditioned it was inside.
Speaker 3:But you know, I worked nights, it was 12 hour shifts and then I would go to go to my class in the daytime, when I didn't oversleep in my car in the parking lot which happened more than more than a few times.
Speaker 3:But as I, um, as I started taking my education seriously, um, which you know I wasn't ever like as a kid, I wasn't a good student. I, I was interested in things, I was curious about things, but, um, you know, just being a good student is, I was interested in things, I was curious about things, but, um, you know, just being a good student is a whole other thing. And um, uh, I have ADHD. I didn't didn't know that until I was late in life. Um, but anyway, so I, as I started taking my education more seriously in my twenties, I uh found that I was super interested in politics, political science and history.
Speaker 3:And the more you study American history and world history, you know of which it's not even. You can only scratch the surface really of both things. You have to really specialize and you can kind of get a sense of broad themes and things along those lines. But I was driven to the law as I was studying that, because through the law is how really huge changes have happened in American history. You know when, when we have moved forward as a society, it's been through activism enshrined in the law, right, and so, um, I don't know, that just gave me a huge respect for the power of the law to to move Was there one uh, one movement that really like spoke to you and like drew you in.
Speaker 3:I mean, you know it's it's probably sounds a little cliche, but you know the civil rights movement of the sixties and and the way that you know resulted in the voting rights act and you know formal desegregation of the South and you know the Supreme court decisions at the time that, like pushed. You know formal desegregation of the South and you know the Supreme Court decisions at the time that, like pushed, you know, brought down the walls of segregation in the South.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I don't think that sounds cliche at all because it's something that needs to be talked about more and more and more, you know, like the fact that we're rolling backwards the rights that were gained back during that era Right.
Speaker 1:It's pathetic. Honestly, you know we need to do a lot better from the top down and get these things to stop. So, like you know picking up on, you know the civil rights era because you know I'm from the Detroit area and so you know that was a big year for Detroit in like 68 and things like that, where you know there's a lot of riots going on, so we got some of that history growing up, but I'm well past that era.
Speaker 4:We've learned about it in school.
Speaker 1:some so, yeah, that's one of the influential eras that we're still fighting 50 years later. What are some of the big things that you want to do with our area in order to help move some things forward, codify some laws and actually keep us progressing forward?
Speaker 3:Well. So it's kind of interesting because I was hearing you talk about how people are hesitant in Colorado Springs. They have this idea that not only the community but the military in general is really right-wing and that's kind of the success of Republican messaging over the last probably 40 years, if not longer. That's probably from the Vietnam era moving forward, the post Vietnam era moving forward. But I've always felt like the military is more complicated than that. You know, it's not just a right wing operation and you have to be a right winger to thrive there or enjoy it or want to do it or, you know, to be proud of the service that you had. And I think that makes the military, this small thing right. It reduces it down, and we've heard that theme coming up in the Democratic National Convention about how the Republican vision, if you can call it that, for America is small, it's petty, it's like it's centered around Trump now. But I mean, even if it wasn't centered around him, it would be this sort of billionaire class.
Speaker 3:And I think that the DA's office here in El Paso County has a similarly small interpretation of what the DA can be.
Speaker 3:The district attorney is an elected leader that runs the district attorney's office right and there's an enormous amount of power that flows through the district attorney's office. They make all of the decisions, police do investigations, they send those reports over to the district attorney's office and the district attorney decides what they're going to charge or not charge and how they're going to approach it, and they have an enormous amount of discretion in how they approach just that one part of the job, huge discretion. And so if you think of it in this really small way, like our job is to make the best case with the evidence that the police give to us and, you know, be as hard charging and throw the book at as many people as we can, then you're not going to accomplish what you could accomplish if you had a broader vision for what the office is supposed to do. And that vision the mission of a district attorney's office I don't care who's in charge of it should be and is to do justice, and justice is broader than just throwing the book at people.
Speaker 2:Right, I totally appreciate that analogy you've made between the general public's impression of what the military community is, and I see that actually a lot with law enforcement as well. I can imagine the district attorney's office is very much. Whether it's this district attorney or any district attorney around the country is kind of in the same pigeonhole. And, to your point, the other side does like to make this reductionist argument. It's all or nothing, right? Yeah, you uh are for the troops. If you quote unquote, support the troops, that means you support unlimited, uh, military defense spending without any oversight and you support going to war at the drop of a hat for any purpose, without thinking it through. That's obviously not the way military professionals think about it, right?
Speaker 2:Just as in the law enforcement community, you know there's more than one approach to tough on crime, which seems to be an attack that you're taking, right, you know, to borrow another phrase, it's better to be smart on crime, because we're looking at desired end states. The desired end state is a reduction in crime in general, a reduction in violent crime in particular, right, and if that is, you know, through, you know programs that reduce recidivism, if it's through better transition for folks coming out of the system so that they can integrate into society better. I'm all for that. You know the answer is not more cops and more nightsticks. Maybe the answer is more police officer, maybe it is targeted law enforcement or community policing. But it just seems like the other side doesn't have that strategy. They don't have more than one tool in the toolbox, except for the hammer. What are the tools that you have in your toolbox that you want to bring to bear on the problem I mean for one is an understanding that it's a collaborative thing like you can't.
Speaker 3:You cannot expect that the district attorney I don't care if they're the smartest person who ever lived would have every answer to every problem, right? They? The human experience is exactly that. It's an experience, and so what other people have had totally different. And so you need to bring in as many people. You know community activists are an important thing. I don't think this district attorney cares what community activists think at all, unless it's the really right wing community activists, because they he will work with people who are out there in the community.
Speaker 3:That either you know the elected leader, Sure, you know whether it's the county commissioners, or you know the elected sheriff, or. Or you know city council people. You know the elected folks, you know city council people. You know the elected folks, sure, but also the community activists, and bring them in and, like you know, get them involved in the process of collaboratively addressing the root causes of crime. Because, like, what I like to say is, if there's a, if there's a crime that's been committed, then there's a victim, and if it's a violent crime, then that person's going to have to deal with that. The victim is going to have to deal with that for their entire life and the trauma that's associated with that. So, ideally, we're going to reduce violent crime, we're going to reduce all crimes, so there are fewer victims.
Speaker 3:What's the most effective way to do that is to find out what's driving it, and the district attorney's office is really well positioned to dig into that data, Because they're the ones that get all of the evidence that comes to them from the police departments.
Speaker 3:They can kind of have the big picture view of things. And so you marshal that data, that evidence, to say where are things falling apart in our community, right? And then how can we, as the district attorney's office, better address that through through programs that go out and educate or, you know, educate the political elected, because people can't afford their rent. And you know there's this. You know a large number of crimes where people are stressed out right before the crime occurs and you know the stressful situations in their lives are pushing them toward substance. You know abuse and these sorts of things. The district attorney's office would know that and could marshal the community resources and the resources of the office to try to intervene early and if they're, if they're coming up to a situation where there's just not funding or there needs to be a program that doesn't exist, lobby for it go to the legislature.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, yeah, you're never gonna get anything if you don't ask, ask for right and you know they'll listen to it like the district attorney, right, like that.
Speaker 3:That's. That's a powerful position to have a uh, you know that's a powerful voice if used effectively, right. And what our current da does is he goes to the county commission and, you know, at least oncea year to give his report, and it's mostly really right-wing County Commissioners that have been elected there and they just talk and complain about Denver. You know we we're having this violent crime surge, which I don't even think the data supports that really, but because Denver Denver's, you know, just turning the criminals loose and you know, and cuffing the cops and whatever else nonsense they would say.
Speaker 2:I think we saw that in action earlier in the year when there was that whole sanctuary city debate whether or not to declare Colorado Springs a non-sanctuary city.
Speaker 1:We had four people ask for help and that whole thing made it national.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I remember I was in City Hall at the time waiting for my turn to speak. It seemed like they were slow rolling the entire process, that everybody was there almost unanimously in favor of not declaring us you know, not declaring us a place that is not welcoming to migrants. Right, everybody was firmly on the side of compassion, quite frankly, and yet it seemed like it fell on deaf ears. Right, and more to the point, it feels like that policies are being made and I'm sure the current district attorney is doing that policies are being made based on rhetoric and political talking points and not actual data.
Speaker 3:Well, unfortunately, that's the situation that Republicans embrace, right, I mean as a party up and down all over the place.
Speaker 1:That's their point of view, like it's about those talking points and theatrics, and I'm so sick of political theatrics Totally agree, totally agree, and you know your mindset going into this is more of the uh, preventative mindset, whereas the other side just wants to have that heroic mindset of like handling it right then, right now, versus if you, you know, just by prosecuting, like you give me the people that prosecute, I'll prosecute, we'll do everything we can, just we'll do our job. On this side, but they're not thinking of that preventative piece and and it goes, you know, along with uh, you know what we're talking about with the immigration too. Um, we're always, you know, trying to push this narrative of division and hate versus the acceptance that a lot of our community shows and goes up into the city council and talks to them and, again, like, we know what we're talking to when we talk to that, that that council, it's a brick wall up there. So so, adam, that's a good point right.
Speaker 2:It seems like um in in a lot of other uh district attorney offices or attorneys general offices um the uh measure of performance is conviction rates right.
Speaker 2:It's, it's like hey, it's throughput. How many, how many people can we put in jail? You know? How many convictions can we get based on cases? Um, how do we break out of that cycle? How do we incentivize it that's not serving the desired end state of a reduction in crime? How do we incentivize other things that would, uh, uh, get us to our desired end state? Because I don't think we can convict our way to a crime-free world.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, if we could, we would have done it by now.
Speaker 3:Because, we incarcerate more people in America than any other country on the planet. By raw numbers and percentages, that's more than China, with you know what, three times our population Sure, and a dictatorship at that. That's more than China with you know what, three times our population Sure, and a dictatorship at that. That's more than Russia with a dictatorship. And so we, in raw numbers and percentages, you know, per capita, incarcerate more people in America than anywhere else in the world and we spend just like with our health care system. Right, we spend more money and get poorer results for doing that. Yeah, less quality.
Speaker 3:The most expensive thing you can do is lock somebody up. In terms of crime reduction, it's the most expensive thing you can do, and that's just in dollars. It also tears families and communities apart that were already struggling. The good news is that there has been massive efforts that probably are not known broadly by the public to deal with these issues. One of those efforts is problem solving courts, and here in this district and in the veteran community in particular may be aware of the Veterans Trauma.
Speaker 1:Court. Yeah, Actually, before you get into that, Dick Wilkinson just joined us. Our cohost here. Dick, thanks for Hi. Everybody Glad to join, Um, but it's a great timing because aren't you a part? Don't you work with that closely?
Speaker 4:I do. I'll be there this afternoon at the veterans trauma court. I'm a mentor there, uh, and work, have charges and are going through the problem-solving court process, right, yep.
Speaker 3:Yeah, see, that's so cool. Because now, problem-solving courts. My background is before I came to Colorado Springs I was working out in La Junta in the 16th Judicial District, which is three of those rural counties as a problem-solving court coordinator, helping them run their court and tweak their court, and you know we'd get state trainings and stuff like that in the judicial department for how to more effectively run a problem solving court. Different um, best practices, things like that.
Speaker 3:Problem solving courts are data driven. They're results oriented right. The whole point of them is to a crime has been committed, how, what caused it. You know, almost always it's substance abuse or mental health or both that are driving crime. So how do we address that Right? How do we hold the person that committed the crime accountable, while also putting them on a better path so that we can break out of this cycle. Putting them on a better path so that we can break out of this cycle. All the money you spend on a problem solving court is a fraction of the money you spend to incarcerate someone, even with, you know, looping in treatment professionals, with more frequent UAs, with all of the court time, hiring people to run the courts, all of the things that they do, the money they spend to incentivize people, you know, to reward them for positive behaviors and everything that goes into it is a fraction of the price of incarceration.
Speaker 3:And this DA at the county commission meeting actually said you know he used the phrase that has stuck with me as he was saying it he's like the veterans that are involved in the trauma court committed their crime because, he said, because of the trauma, the ptsd, that they're dealing with, and I thought well, that's it, that's an interestingly enlightened point of view for somebody who wants to throw the book at. Everybody else right and and I think it's 50 of the incarcerated population in our country is dealing with a substance abuse issue.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:And 30 or so percent are dealing with severe mental health disorder of some kind.
Speaker 1:Even PTSD. It's like 10% of the population has PTSD, but only like 5% is like men from combat. So that means a shit ton of other people have PTSD out there, from sexual assaults, car accidents, everything you know muggings, assaults, yeah.
Speaker 2:It's easy to get behind veterans right, wear an easy bumper sticker. You don't meet a lot of folks on the street who are like, oh, I totally hate veterans. But I think it does speak volumes that you know. Here you have A test case, you have a pilot program where non-cunitive measures where you know for lack of a better term restorative justice measures are actually yielding results. Why don't we spread this out to the general population?
Speaker 3:That's exactly my point of view, right? I think so. There's three major areas that I think that a DA's office can focus on and they all support each other can focus on and they all support each other. One is this, the first thing that we talked about which is you know, use the data to marshal resources to stop crime before it happens like. Get out there in the community, be partner in the success of these communities. Right, don't just be this, this unaccountable they're seemingly unaccountable entity that you know know, slams a hammer down on you If you step out of line. Be out there, be part of the solutions. Educate people as to what they're seeing at the DA's office. You know, be be in the schools, um, try to teach kids a different way.
Speaker 3:There's a El Paso County has the like highest caseload of juvenile cases. Uh, in part because this DA's office files charges on kids that are having mental health outbursts. Wow, I mean, that's that's my entire line of work, right? And I have client after client after client who had a blow up and it involved their parents and there was property destruction or their parents got hurt and the parents had nobody else to call. But the police, police arrive, they file a police report. Maybe sometimes they arrest the kid. That's decreased a little bit because of the reforms, because we were sending kids to juvie and locking them up for months on time. Oh my God, pre-trial they hadn't even been convicted of anything.
Speaker 3:And once that kid's in the system, I imagine outcomes get drastically worse, it's a lot harder to get them back out of that Sure.
Speaker 4:Well, I mean and on the veterans side, that's something that is stated openly Once you get involved in the justice system, it can be difficult to get out of it Right. And even if you are complying with everything, you're now being scrutinized in a way where you weren't before and behaviors that weren't penalized in the past now carry some kind of consequence. That's the intention, right, but again it leads you into this process where it's hard for you to get out of the system. I think to Pablo's question earlier about how do we shift from number of convictions being the measuring the yardstick for a DA or their administration measuring the yardstick for a DA or their or their administration? Um, how? How can we as a community shift towards reduction in recidivism, which is what we're talking about right now, and honor that at the level of? You know value that is same as convictions, right? Um, what's the kind of? Is there a DA focus? To change the language, to say, reducing recidivism is something you can.
Speaker 3:You can shine on well, there isn't, but there should be. Yeah, right, I mean, I think even among reform oriented da's, um I see things even differently than than they do. Um I I really believe that, um, the, the focus on the conviction rate, is a political calculation.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, it's political messaging.
Speaker 3:And they're talking to their base supporters and they're like you elected me and this is how many people I locked up.
Speaker 1:It's a bullet point. Yeah, they need a number, a quantifiable number, because if you don't have that number and you're just doing your job and keeping people off the streets and just doing your job, you don't get credit for that.
Speaker 3:You could focus on that reduction in recidivism. So el paso county and these numbers are measured right el paso county sends more people to prison than any other county in colorado and more people back to prison than any other county in colorado, which to me is a blinking red light.
Speaker 3:It's a siren saying we're not doing things right here. Policy failure somewhere? Yeah, right, right, yeah. And so the problem solving courts are one option. You can definitely expand that. There's tons of funding for it nationally there's. There are people who are super enthusiastic about it. There are nonprofits that support it. I think the treatment community around here locally supports it and you can expand that as wide as it'll go.
Speaker 1:Yeah absolutely, you know like why not, Like put it in every domain?
Speaker 3:that the criminal justice system sees. And then you know, restorative justice is another thing. That's in diversion programs which are run out of the DA's office. The diversion programs that the DA's office has, you know, they take the case out of the system and they say if you do these things, which often mirror kind of problem solving court approaches, then we won't file this. But if you don't do these things, then we'll file it and then you'll be in the system. So that's one tool in the toolbox that I don't think gets used enough. And then there are restorative justice programs that are not run by the DA's office but the case will be referred to them or something.
Speaker 1:So does it have to be referred by the DA's office for them to even get into those programs?
Speaker 3:Yeah, really it does and the reason for that is hopefully that's not my card.
Speaker 1:I always sit on my keys.
Speaker 3:The reason for that is because the DA has such power. They are the ones that charge the cases. But yeah, so the DA's office has such power, they have such discretion, and that's one of the reasons that if you have a change of DA, you don't have to change really anything else. If you have a drastic change in perspective, you can change up and down the DA's office and have a massive impact, or you can keep doubling and tripling down on the same failed crap that they've been doing for decades now Decades.
Speaker 1:One of the things that you know I'm pretty passionate about here locally is getting legalized recreational cannabis sales. You know the tax money that that's going to bring in $10 to $15 million. We can use it to build the police academy that they want serve some of these programs that you're talking about and things like that. In the legal language of it, they tell you which buckets they're going to be putting things into, pretty clearly, and stuff like that. What are your thoughts on something like that that's going to bring in tax money, like that? Is the tax money worth it or what is it in your viewpoint?
Speaker 3:Well, you know it's an interesting question because, like, from a problem solving court perspective and all of the information I have floating around in my head about addiction and all of this stuff and the way that as a society we've, you know, sort of just normalized drinking as a way to cope with, you know, mental health stuff, like there's a part of me that's like I just I have a hard time getting on board with just expanding more ways and more acceptance of of kind of checking out mentally.
Speaker 3:But leave that all to the side. We're talking about people who are using marijuana anyway, recreationally or or you know, however they want, and so capturing that taxpayer money or capturing taxes on that and then pouring it into programs that could help. You know people do different things with. You know, help the community, like with funding the problem-solving courts. Or you know, pouring money into restorative justice community, like with the funding the problem solving courts or problem, you know, pouring money into restorative justice. The da's office could be a, an aid in in kind of channeling that conversation, because I think for a lot of people they're like ah, you know it's a this knee-jerk law and order thing. Like you know, I I don't, I don't want people to be able to smoke weed legally or buy illegally, and so they just kind of think of it in that binary way and it doesn't help anything.
Speaker 4:That was one of the weirdest arguments that I've heard. I've been in testimony situations in local and state-level hearings about new initiatives for legislation around cannabis, and here locally I think it's been this way for a long time. But the talking point was if we have legal stores, then we've sent the message throughout the entire society that it's okay for every single person to just pick up marijuana and start smoking it. Like you said, it's a very black or white language to say if the adults that are supposed to be responsible say this is okay, then we've told children or anybody who it's not safe for that they should go ahead and do it too.
Speaker 3:That's just nonsense.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's nonsense.
Speaker 4:I mean that's the only way to say it is, it's nonsense, and I had not heard that anywhere else. So it's a unique staunchness. I think in this specific community that's a little bit heavy-handed.
Speaker 3:It's so weird. We have liquor stores all over the place.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we see it how we teach our kids about drinking and things like that too, where we kind of make it so taboo until you're 21 or until you're away from mom or dad for the first time. And we have all these cases of alcohol poisoning and just people falling into alcohol addiction pretty quickly after leaving the nest because we don't teach them responsible right, we don't have honest conversations with them about these things?
Speaker 3:um, yeah, so I mean, I, I'm, I'm for, uh, that recreational, you know, marijuana initiative being put forward and, you know, becoming a part of the solution that we're talking about.
Speaker 1:It's brilliant to me. You make the drug users pay for the police academy.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it just makes sense that tax-free money can be used for good right.
Speaker 4:That almost sounds like something out of a high school, like president, you know, like class president, I'll make the druggies pay for the police academy.
Speaker 1:It's that simple, right. It's that simple.
Speaker 3:But policy-wise it can happen. Right, let's do it. You know, I don't know. Actually I don't know where this DA stands on that. My guess is he's kind of against it, or kind of against it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we just talked to the city council a couple weeks or last week, and it was an eight to one vote that they were against it.
Speaker 3:Um, so, yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if he was yeah, I mean he just falls in line with all of these.
Speaker 1:You know right, he's got all the endorsements of the folks sitting in on these city hall meetings more and more, like you hear them talk and like you're just hearing national talking points. You know nothing that's really local here. They're not listening to the local folks because with this, uh, the cannabis one, we had 28 000 signatures that we turned in and they were trying to and that that was to you know the yes or no legalize it. Um, the city council was putting one another ballot measure out to remove it from the or to make it into the charter that you cannot have recreational sales here. So they're going to spend $400,000 on a campaign to put this on the ballot against just the yes or no question that the citizens have already said that they want.
Speaker 1:The 28,000 folks that have signed the petition. They're just going to waste this taxpayer money to try to confuse folks really, and it's frustrating that it's a common playbook that we see throughout. You know politics now. It's like just obstruct versus actually talk and move things forward Right.
Speaker 4:I think you know, just from the voter perspective, there's going to be two questions on there that ask you the same question, but essentially one says yes or no and the other one says no or yes, right, I mean. And so you know your position of I'm for it or I'm against it. But then you see these ballot questions. People are for sure going to be confused. I mean, I've read ballot questions about school levies and things like that, and even those which are straightforward and don't have a competing issue on the ballot aren't always clear what exactly are you agreeing to pay for? Right? So take it to something else which is a bit more of a radical change, and then have two versions of the same question on there. It's irresponsible.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, they got the last election cycle by splitting the tax away from the yes or no question to begin with. So they split the tax off and then said you know, do you want to get tax revenue? Yes or no? Do you want to make tax revenue, yes or no? Do you want to make it legal? Yes or no? And so like we passed the tax but not make it illegal, so they intentionally do this just to confuse folks. It's pretty sad.
Speaker 3:Well, and that's because they benefit when people are confused, when people check out. So, it's like this flood, the zone with BS approach right.
Speaker 4:Absolutely yes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's straight up Russian propaganda.
Speaker 3:I'm sure you guys I recognize it just from my political, science and history background. These are authoritarian tactics to manipulate and they 100% are employing them and that's without even having to wonder about how much is Russia involved with this kind of stuff and how much is China involved with this kind of stuff. It's just undermining a democracy.
Speaker 1:It's probably easier than it's ever been, way easier than it was in the Cold War. You can get so much information that just is in your own echo chamber, so you hear it from multiple sources, but they're all spewing the same bs, yeah, and you're not ever really stepping outside of your own sources. Um, it's, yeah, it's way too easy to to fall trap to these things, right, yeah, so the third one is re-entry.
Speaker 3:So the da's office should be a partner in the successful reintegration of people coming out of prison. And I always say that if somebody has completed their prison time successfully and they're coming back to our community, I'd write them a letter of recommendation as DA, because they have served their time, they have paid their debt and now we need to be a partner in their success in our community. Because if they are constantly getting hammered down after having gone to prison, you know, and they genuinely want to come back into the community and start over, there are so many doors that are shut in their face. Like you know, the felon label just completely cuts you out of entire industries and that's counterproductive so.
Speaker 1:But before they, even you know, get their walking papers and can leave, what couldn't their rehabilitation program start from the time that they're sentenced like you're gonna be sentenced to this, you're gonna do this here, you know, if you get your ged, if you get this degree, if you get this certification, something like that? Could that be laid out in the sentencing process to motivate them to not just sit in jail on their own accord but actually have a path and a goal moving forward?
Speaker 3:I think that is happening at the Department of Corrections, which is a separate bucket of funds and administrative agencies and all of that stuff. But where the DA's office could be helpful is lobbying to expand those programs, lobbying to make sure that those programs are real and not just paper programs. And I think, uh, the colorado department of corrections has made some progress on that. I know the federal department of justice has, um, you know, really worked to implement those sorts of programs in their prison system and then there's lots of reform that has to happen there too. But, um, yeah, that's just good sense, right, like you, you want, you're going to be here. The punishment is the removal from society, that the punishment is the deprivation of your freedom, your liberty to do what you want. It shouldn't be. And some people we kind of just fall into these thought traps about this stuff but like not only should you have to go to prison, but it should be a hell on earth yeah, right, forever yeah.
Speaker 3:So it should just further, grind you down and embitter you and make you hate society. Yeah, what is the benefit of that? Right, you come out of there even worse than you went in and um, as opposed to what the most successful model in the world tries to rehabilitate people away from criminogenic thinking. Right Like, give them an in, give them something to work toward while in prison? Right, so that they come out and now become a constructive member of society? Yeah, and just have a skill, skills, education, all kinds of stuff. There's nothing that should be foreclosed to them in that they should be able to learn trades. They should be able to learn whatever they're interested in it's a reset button Right.
Speaker 4:As much as, as you mentioned earlier, the punishment is removing your freedom.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 4:But while you're here, we want you back in society. We want you to in society, we want you to be productive. We don't want you to fall back into the same trap or suffer from the same addiction. Let's do it. Let's do something about it.
Speaker 3:Over 90% of the people that go into the DOC are coming back because there are very few life sentences.
Speaker 1:Another thing I just read or saw a headline on was prisoners being rented out to do some work for, like croppers and things like that. You know, with the, with immigration being shut down and not as many migrants going to Florida and areas like that, they're renting out their prisoners, which is, it seems like, not even like a great line there. Like it seems like slavery to me.
Speaker 3:Yeah, like if you're gonna write that, they're literally taking advantage of that clause in the 14th amendment.
Speaker 4:It says you know, you, you slavery is out, except for person right so forget the amendment the point is that we're gonna quote you on it. Yeah, right.
Speaker 3:But they're taking advantage of that clause, that indentured servitude clause, right, and so that's the wrong way, right, that's the wrong approach, like that just says you're now, and it actually furthers the problem, and we have a situation where I can't remember it, but I think it's like it's at least five times more likely that if you're a person of color, that you'll be in prison, right, and so then you're going to send those people out to the fields again. How is that any freaking different?
Speaker 1:I mean, that's how they got around it during Reconstruction and everything Right. Like it's been in their playbook for so long, where, if you make them indentured servants, they have to Sometimes it feels like the Civil War never ended. That's why, when you talk about being passionate about the Civil Rights. We have to continue talking about these things and making sure people understand that this isn't a new fight, it's the same old playbook.
Speaker 3:The DA's office should put every resource they can into the six. Six, the successful reintegration of people coming out of prison back into our communities. If you know, if we know they're coming back, you know, like I said, the da's office should have a program that helps launch them.
Speaker 1:You know they take advantage of whatever skills they had um help launch them you know, I just saw a village up in Denver, one of the suburbs up there. It's a veteran village that has like little tiny homes that vets can live in for like two years to get back on their feet and actually, you know, get involved in things like that. But, like you mentioned, there's a lot of these organizations out there that want to be a part of these things. But, like you mentioned, there's a lot of these organizations out there that want to be a part of these things no-transcript at the door, though, right.
Speaker 3:So if you're an elected leader, um, like, uh, michael allen, you have to be willing to check your ego at the door and say I don't have all the answers. I'm not the end, all be all repository of every good idea that ever came down the pike. You know like, literally, work with everybody else. They're the power of collaboration, and collaborative problem solving, which is what's demonstrated in those courts which have been shown to help solve problems, is massive because people work together, people from different fields, people with different experiences. They'll bring people that have been through the system into the process. They'll bring people that you know work with people that have been through the system into the process. They'll bring people that work with people that have been through the system.
Speaker 3:All of it, right, and it's like we have this homelessness problem in Colorado Springs and in other communities in Colorado. The last thing you should be doing is throwing the book at those people. Right, there should be a diversion program or a problem-solving court that does nothing but attack that problem, and it needs to be expanded to its fullest extent of that funding will allow program or a problem solving court that does nothing but attack that problem. And, and you know, and it needs to be expanded to its fullest extent of that funding will allow. And then you need to go try to get more funds right, all of these programs. If you run into a funding barrier, go get more funds. I bet you, denver would help Absolutely.
Speaker 1:And you know we're not getting any smaller. We're going to keep growing. So, like the problems that we solved today, like there's more coming right behind them, we've got to get a good footing in this. Jeremy, thanks for joining us today, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:It was a great conversation. I really enjoyed it. I appreciate the opportunity to talk to you guys. Thank you everyone for tuning in to the All Things Military and Veteran Podcast. As a quick reminder, this podcast is brought to you by Native Roots. They've been working pretty hard in our community to try to get the legalized recreational cannabis passed. That's going to bring $10 to $15 million into our communities to help solve some of our problems. So please go out and support them because they are supporting our community. So for my co-host, dick Wilkinson, my name is Adam Gillard. Thanks again for tuning in. Take care of each other.
