Denver’s next DA John Walsh on prosecuting violent crime, drugs

Democrat John Walsh’s victory in this week’s primary election all but ensured he’ll be Denver’s next district attorney.

In a conversation with The Denver Post on Thursday, the former U.S. attorney for Colorado discussed his vision for the Denver District Attorney’s Office and his approach to violent crime, drug prosecutions and racial disparities in the criminal justice system.

After the general election this November — a formality since there are no challengers in the race — Walsh will replace current District Attorney Beth McCann in January for a four-year term.

The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: You’ve said addressing Denver’s violent crime is one of your top priorities once you take office. What specific strategies are you considering?

So we have in Denver sort of a stubbornly high violent crime rate. If you look around the country, there’s really been a significant drop in the last couple of years in violent crime. There has been a drop in Denver, but it hasn’t been as fast or as big. And unfortunately, we’ve also seen this uptick in youth violence in Denver. So those two things really inform the way that I would approach the issue and why it’s such a big priority. To me, the way that we have to approach this is really firm enforcement and targeted enforcement, identifying the people who are actually posing a danger to the community — essentially the people pulling the trigger on guns.

But combine that with a really aggressive effort to work with the schools, to work with the community so that we’re giving kids alternatives, development programs. So that kids, especially in that, 12- to 16- to 18-year age range, have alternatives so that when school lets out at the end of the day, they’re not just at loose ends for four or five hours with all the potential problems there.

…When I was U.S. attorney, I worked directly with Mitch Morrissey, who was the DA at that time in Denver, and we collectively set up the Denver Crime Gun Intelligence Unit. What the program does is it uses the spent casings on semi-automatic weapons to… identify the guns. What’s remarkable is what a small number of guns are responsible for such a large number of shootings. …If you go out to shootings that thankfully no one’s been hurt at and you retrieve the casings, that can sometimes link that shooting to other more serious events and give you an opportunity to really investigate and target the folks who are responsible for a disproportionate number of shootings. That’s a strategy that absolutely works.

Q: Is there something within the DA’s office that you anticipate changing in the prosecution of violent crime?

Absolutely. I think it is so important that the DA’s office really team up in the strongest way possible with the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Because on the federal side, there are tools available that we don’t have on the state side. In a time of budget constraints in the city, that’s an opportunity for us to really leverage federal resources in an effective way and just build that relationship.

Q:  What kind of prosecutions would you want to hand over to the federal side?

The federal felon in possession (of a gun) laws are very strong, and stronger, in many ways, than the state equivalent.  And that’s an area where, if you’re targeting people who you know are of a danger to the community, that kind of prosecution really can make a lot of sense.

Q: Are you worried that approach subverts the will of Colorado voters?

No. I mean it’s a great question, but no. And the reason for that is, I think the will of the Colorado voters is that their elected officials do everything possible to reduce crime, and there are a lot of different ways to do that.

…The felon in possession laws on the federal side carry much more significant penalties than on the state side, and they apply to a broader set of crimes. And that’s a situation where yes, our state legislature has limited the crimes. But again, we’re not talking about a broad-brush approach. We’re talking about a targeted approach looking for people who really have demonstrated they are a danger.

Q: What do you mean by “demonstrated they are a danger”? Are you looking to use these federal prosecutions to keep someone you suspect of homicide in custody on federal charges while you build a state case for homicide?

Every case you have to look at individually, obviously. The federal side has a detention process, whereby if the judge finds that a person poses a risk to the community, can hold a defendant without bond. There are circumstances under which there may be, for example, a homicide investigation going on, but there’s a clear federal charge and evidence to support detaining that person — that’s a legitimate approach, and an important approach. Because there’s always the risk of witness intimidation, the risk of further damage to the community. It’s been a while, but we did have a witness murdered here in Denver, 10 years ago on the eve of her testimony. So you have to take those threats seriously and the federal side can be, in specific cases, so helpful.

Q: Do you have goalposts for what you want to see after your first year in office? How will you measure success?  

I don’t have a specific goalpost, but I know which end of the field we’re running towards. The mayor, of course, has set a goal of reducing violent crime by 20% by the end of this year. I won’t be in office yet, but I very strongly hope that is successful. It’s that kind of a significant move in the right direction that, after a year, I would hope to achieve, working with the police department. It’s not something the DA’s office is going to do by itself.

Q: Recent studies have shown people of color face persistent racial disparities in the Denver DA’s office. How will you correct that? 

Anything that looks like a disparate impact based on race or other characteristics of a person is something that we have to address. It’s not an optional thing.

…What’s really interesting about those (studies) is that they really reflect a more systemic issue. There may be defendants who don’t get the opportunity to participate in a diversion program or some sort of special probation program, but the reasons for that are complicated. Those programs often require some financial resources, and family supports, and other sorts of outside considerations that sometimes Black and Latino defendants just don’t have at the same level that Anglo defendants do. We have to look at those issues and really identify the root causes and take steps to adjust those causes so that we don’t have that disparate impact.

Q: Aside from violent crime, what are your other priorities?

The first one is the opioid and fentanyl epidemic, and that’s a multi-faceted issue, because the impact of open drug use and open-air drug markets on communities and neighborhoods is so severe that we have to approach it in multiple ways.

…We have to be thoughtful about the way we prosecute those lower-level drug offenses. If you have someone who’s addicted, and their criminal activity is flowing from that addiction — yes, of course, you need to enforce the law. And part of that has got to be doing everything possible to push that person into treatment, so that you’re not just cycling them through the jail for a relatively short period of time, and then they come back out and go back to exactly the same thing.

…But in addition to that, we really do need to pay attention to the impact it has on a community. There’s so much collateral damage. We also need to focus there and make sure that we’re disrupting those really intense areas. That could include making sure that we’re using tools like area restrictions — effectively within the bounds of the law and fairly — so that we can essentially disrupt those concentrated areas of activity. The basic aspect of (that) is that if someone is being geo-monitored with an ankle bracelet, there are areas, like a 10-block area, where they’re not permitted to go.

Q: How do you “push” people into treatment? Is that treatment as a condition of probation? A sentence to a halfway house?