The Colorado Legislature, usually in session from January until May, started late and may run until June 12, the last day it can be in session this year. The Front Porch will have a wrap-up of bills passed this year in the July issue.
Just three weeks after a mass shooting at a Boulder King Soopers store left 10 people dead, Governor Jared Polis signed two bills into law designed to reduce gun violence: one mandates the safe storage of weapons, the other requires owners to report lost or stolen guns.
Legislative leaders tried to tamp down expectations for the session, given the continuing pandemic. But the volume and variety of bills introduced after lawmakers returned indicate this will be a full and contentious session ranging over many issues.
Law enforcement may well be the only profession where you can be called upon to change a tire, address neighbors’ disputes over barking dogs, intervene on behalf of someone who has been physically battered by a spouse, and talk down a gunman. All in one day. “Regardless of the purpose of the call,” says Capt. Sylvia Sich, the 38-year Denver Police Department veteran now in charge of the Police Academy, “that is the most important thing happening in that person’s life right now…And you respond to it that way.”
Long before he was a rapping, swaggering Broadway sensation, Alexander Hamilton was an unapologetic elitist. To be fair, Hamilton was not alone among the Founding Fathers in this regard. They created the Electoral College, with its electors as a buffer between the people and the president.
Harold Fields says of reparations: “We have pipes that are deep underneath these buildings and underneath our streets. The pipes are decaying, they’re old. They’re leaking, and they are only distributing resources to certain places. You’ve got to be able to dig up those pipes and re-do the system. It’s not a matter of changing the washers on faucets or putting in a new shower head, but changing the system.”
If you were listening carefully on July 17, you could almost hear the city-wide moan as DPS announced its decision to postpone in-person learning until at least after Labor Day.
Will the confluence of Covid-19 and the ongoing wave of social movements redefine our political life for the generations that follow? Will future historians point to this moment as the one that created a new style of politician?
With Gov. Polis’ signing of the Law Enforcement Accountability and Integrity Act on June 19, Colorado became the first state in the nation to implement comprehensive police reform since the brutal killing of George Floyd ignited nationwide protests.
