07-08-25 INTERVIEW - Chris Vanderveen of 9News on Parole Board Risk Assessments

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
One of nine News's crack reporters, Chris Vandervena, waits because
last week, before the holiday weekend, he did a story
that alarmed me, just just straight up alarmed me, and
I thought it would be useful to have him come
on and talk about the nuts and bolts of it.
First of all, Chris, welcome to the show.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Thanks for having me. Mandy, good to talk to you.

Speaker 1 (00:19):
So I got to ask you, like, what this story
is not new?

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Right?

Speaker 1 (00:23):
You guys have kind of been following some bad guys
who were put out on parole only to reoffend like
this is This is kind of a long arcing story
in a bit, isn't it?

Speaker 2 (00:35):
Yeah? Sureious. Since twenty twenty three, we've been tracking parolis
that have gone on to reoffend, most notably what happened
in twenty twenty three that there was a man by
the name of Vincenzo Moscoso got a lot of attention
at the time. He was on parole at the time
and has alleged by Dever police he stabbed and killed
two people at random over on Federal in Northwest Denver

(00:56):
over a period of a couple hours.

Speaker 1 (00:58):
Right.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
He's now continuing to go through the course of them.
There's compacy issues. But ever since then we here at
nine News have gotten the habit of asking for how
are these people being assessed while they're on parole and
what is the state doing to sort of make sure
that they're sort of keeping tabs of people. And I
think what we've been able to find through now this

(01:19):
year and a half of work is that the state's
not doing a very good job of keeping tabs of
people on pearol. There's roughly eight thousand people that are
currently on parole in the state of Colorado. They're supposed
to each one of them are supposed to go through
something simple called the risk assessment. It's exactly what you
think it is. It's determining their level of risk. We
can determine their level of supervision, we can determine their

(01:39):
level of care, what they might need while they're out
on parole. And it goes from low to very high.
We know for sure when Vincenzo must go. So was
assessed that the State of Colorado now says for the
Apartment of Corrections that there were six errors on this assessment.
And that alone may not seem like a big deal,
but what we found is that there's a continued pattern

(02:01):
of problems with how people are being assessed, and this
leads us up to what happened in the last week
and a half. We're a guy by the name of
Ricky Lee Royball Smith. He's the individual that was arrested
about a week and a half ago because two people
turned up dead on Colfax near Peoria, one on Peoria
and Callfax, one near Malin in Callfax over the spirit

(02:21):
of just a couple of a period of a couple hours.
Both people stabbed to death, both people repeatedly stabbed. And
then a guy shows up in the Denver jail wanted
on a vehicular a dui case where he was alleged
to have run into two people over at nine in Galapaga.
What turns out that guy's name as alleged by the
Denver police departments, the guy by the name of Ricky

(02:42):
Lee roy Ball Smith, who just so happens to be
on parole. It's a very it has huge similarities to
what happened in twenty twenty three with ben Terns of
must Go. So now we have another instance where guy
Alan Barol is accused of very serious crimes and We've
now found errors on assessments of dozens of people, and

(03:02):
what it tells me is that there's a systemic problem
in terms of how Colorado's assessing people on parole and
it absolutely is a public safety concern.

Speaker 1 (03:11):
Can you walk me through what these assessments look like?
And I mean it would be an error if it
was hey, you know, he doesn't sleep well instead of
hey has murderous intent? Like what are some of the
is what we're assessing? Are we assessing the right things
or is it a failure of the people assessing to
properly take some things into consideration? So what's on this

(03:32):
assessment overall?

Speaker 2 (03:34):
I think it's the latter. And these assessments are basically
it's I'll get a little bit technical here, but not
too technical. They're run put out by the University of Cincinnati.
It's an assessment that's used in states around the country.
Colorado is one of the states that uses them. And
in Colorado, when somebody's on parole, they now give somebody
something called a CST, which is a community supervision tool.

(03:56):
It's just a series of about thirty five questions that
can be simple about did you finish high school? Get
your ged how many crimes have you been accused of
committing before? Have you ever absconded while on parole? Those
types of things, And then there's some more subjective questions
about do you believe it's okay to lie? Do you

(04:16):
do you believe and do under others as they would
do unto you, kind of mentality, And you add up
the points. It's not terribly complicated. You have the points,
and the higher points the more risk level that you have,
and consequently, the more supervision that is generally assigned to
you through the Colorado Division of Parole. Keeping in mind

(04:36):
that parole in the state of Colorado was run by
the Colorado Department of Correction. So these are parole officers
that are giving these assessments to These are assessments by
They're given by parole officers to the people on parole.
And what we found is sometimes very simple errors. I meaning,
for years somebody was determined that they were they had

(04:58):
problems using drugs, and then all of a sudden, magically,
one year it says they've never had problems using drugs,
and so you asked, well, what changed, Well, it's a
scoring year and taken by itself, if this was just
a one off. On Vincenzo Moscoso's case. For example, the
guy who was the legis to stab a couple of
people on federal you can sort of excuse it as well,

(05:20):
that's a one off. But I think what we've been
able to identify is that this is a systemic problem.
We have looked at roughly, you know, forty forty five assessments,
and there are significant errors on at least half of them.
And now we've not been prieved, we were not had
access to all of the assessment scores. This is a

(05:40):
laborious process. A year and a half. When we ask
for these assessment scores, it sometimes takes a week and
a half to get after every case. It costs money
those types of things. So the legislatures keep trying to
get involved now, and I think rightfully so, but this
is a you know, how we keep tabs of an
at risk population. Keep in mind, people on parole, they've

(06:02):
already gone to prison, they have done their time, they've
been they have been convicted of felonies, and now parole
is in serious designed to be the sort of transition
period to go out into society. What we need. We've
also recognized me to watch them like, we need to
keep pose tabs on them because they are essentially more
vulnerable to repeat a hunding and when somebody goes out

(06:23):
and repeat offense in such a solizic way, as has
been alleged in a in a number of cases that
we've looked at. Now we're talking murders, chex assaults, attended murders, assaults,
all sorts of things. And when you find out that
the parole system isn't keeping the tabs of these people, yeah,
I think Colorado we got a problem.

Speaker 1 (06:45):
So let's ask like, and I'm not asking you to
solve the problem here on the you know, on the radio,
but if you as a reporter, do you think it
is a matter of people being sloppy? Do you think
it's a matter of people being overworked? Do we have
enough parole officers to make these assessments? Have we've got
eight thousand people you know, out on parole or up
for parole?

Speaker 2 (07:05):
What did you see?

Speaker 1 (07:06):
Did anything jump out at you as easily identifiable and
therefore perhaps easier to address than than not.

Speaker 2 (07:16):
I think there is sloppiness that is involved here, and
I think a number of pro officers we've spoken to
will tell you that they continue to feel overworked. And
they also look this dependulum swings in this in the
state from left to right and back and forth and
right now, as you know, Democrats run this state, and

(07:37):
so there has been a prevailing thought, right or wrong
in the state of call Or to try to keep
people out of prison, and that comes with a cost,
potentially in some instances, as in this case. And parole
officers will tell you that they feel like people are
getting into trouble. The number of people that we've looked
at that they get into trouble when they're on parole.
I mean, I think some people would expect, like if

(08:00):
you use maths, for example, or cocaine while you're out
on parole, that would automatically qualify you to go back
to jail in prison, right not in the state of Colorado,
you oftentimes will get a slap on the wrist. And
it is trying to identify that sending people back to
prison isn't always the best idea, and there's a philosophical
debate on whether that's right or wrong, and I don't

(08:20):
want to get into that, but I think there has
been that pendulum shift that I think parole officers feel
like they're not being listened to as well when it
comes to hey, these guys are getting into trouble. A
number of people that we've looked at inclining attentive asco so,
including another guy that went on to eight days after
he was assessed and was given a glowing score by

(08:42):
his assessment. He went on to be accused of the
murder here in Denver. I think that it had a
very very low score. I think the issue is is
that the scores don't reflect where the person is at
all the time, and I think that comes from a
combination over worked maybe. I think some of them would
say underappreciated also in the system that is designed to

(09:03):
try to keep people out of prison.

Speaker 1 (09:05):
And you know what I'm I probably am not as
as hard knows. I believe in rehabilitation in prison.

Speaker 2 (09:14):
I really do.

Speaker 1 (09:14):
I think that we are not serving the community if
we're just taking people who've committed crimes, holding them in
a pen, and then releasing them back out with the
same set of skills and issues that they had when
they went in. So it's distressing to me to hear
that someone and it seems like this Royal guy. I mean,
he didn't do anything positive or to give them the

(09:36):
impression that he was going to come out and be
a better human being. At two o'clock, I actually spoke
to the uncle of the victim may be a victim,
maybe not of his cellmate that was found dead, and
his family's been told, oh, he choked on an apple.
But yet there's still a homicide investigation going on. Do
you guys know anything more about that?

Speaker 2 (09:57):
Yeah, I mean that's sort of an interesting dynam of
the roy Ball case, is that. So he's a case.
So what happens is that the two murders happen on
a Sunday in June twenty ninth, and they have an
early in Aurara, and they don't have a suspect in
that case. But sometime that afternoon, a guy, Ricky roy
Baalsmith is alleged by the Denver Police Department, gets involved

(10:18):
and basically a traffic accident where he hits a couple
of pedestrians at Ninth and Galipego. So he goes to
jail and through court documents, seems pretty clear. At that point,
Aurora says, huh, hey, the guy you've got into Denver
jail on that on that suspected duy case, the ninth
of Galipeago. We believe that's the guy that we're looking

(10:39):
for in the stabbing case. But they keep him in
the jail overnight and that night his cellmate dies. And
so the question is the autopsy I think is a
bit of the problem here, because the autopsy so far
is inconclusive into terms in terms of how that inmate dots.
You know, you're either looking at a heck of a
coincidence here, right, or an inmate who is animate. A

(11:02):
guy now suspected a double homicide just magically dies of
choking on something, which I suspect is possible. But it's
a heck of a coincidence or that, or it's a homicide.
I think the official line is that case has been closed,
but I don't think it's closed forever. And the impression
that I get is that it's still being actively worked

(11:23):
by investigators, and I would not be surprised to see
that case come back.

Speaker 1 (11:27):
I mean it it is a stunning coincidence, you know,
I mean, it does stretch the bounds of reason, just
to hair. One of my texters asked a really good
question about this the assessments that we're using here in Colorado.
Are other states using those same assessments? Are they having
similar issues? Is this unique to Colorado? And perhaps do

(11:48):
we need to make a different assessment.

Speaker 2 (11:52):
Well, I think those are excellent questions. Well, here's what
I'd say is that I think there's a number of
different assessments that used by states, and I think that
you know there was what happened years decades ago is
that we went by the gut level instinct of parole
officers in terms of whether this person was high risk
or low risk, and I think we started to identify

(12:13):
that maybe there were some problems with that, so that
we went with these written assessments. I think when they're
done correctly, if they're scored correctly, that there aren't problems
with the scoring, obvious problems with the scoring. I think
they can have value. I think what I think we're
looking for at nine News, and I think what I'm
looking for personally as a reporter on this investigation is

(12:34):
for something in the state to care a little bit
more than what we're seeing right now. The legislature have
asked for a couple of months ago now for the
Department of corrects and seventy more assessments that they could
look at people that were suspective being involved in homicides
in over one year period. There were seventy more names
on that list. There were people who were on par role,

(12:55):
and so we could take a look at a larger sample,
because what we're looking at right now is a relatively
small sample forty five out of eight thousand. I think
we've identified a problem, But my gut tells me that
this is a problem with scoring, not necessarily with the
assessment itself, and there's just obvious errors we showed. We

(13:17):
showed the scores to a woman. His brother was shot
and wounded by Lakewood police by officers in Lakewood earlier
in the year, and he survived. But in the arrest
report on that case, he'd been arrested in charged nearly

(13:37):
sixty one times like the course of his life, and
on his assessment it said his criminal attitudes and behaviors
was zero. So think about that, where a guy who's
been in and out of I mean, I don't think
he's the world's worst guy. I also think he's had
some significant problems with incarceration and getting in trouble with

(13:58):
the law. When you score some many like that is
zero in terms of criminal behaviors and attitudes, that's a problem.
And we showed the scourse to his sister, his sister
who loves it very much, and she said, this is
a joke. This is not right. And I think that's
what we continue to find.

Speaker 1 (14:13):
Last question, we got about a minute left, Chris, do
you see what is the parole board members said? Because
they're the face of parole, right, so they get to
blame when somebody gets out on parole and goes and
murders someone. What is their response to your reporting?

Speaker 2 (14:28):
Then? It is amazing the Department of the Department Corrections
as well as the Parole Board is silent on all
of this. We've reached out to the Parole Board repeatedly
on this. We've reached out the Apartment of Corrections repeatedly
on this. We've reached out to the Governor's office repeatedly. Honest,
no one wants to go on camera with us, doesn't

(14:49):
mean we're giving up. We're doab should get somebody on camera,
whether they like it or not. But like there there
has been dead silence from the Parole Board, and I
think that's you know. What you've known is that we
have a Department of Corrections and Parole Aboard that does
not talk to the public at all. Don't just take
my word for it. Google how many times roll aboard

(15:10):
members have done the interviews. Almost never, and that's sometimes
that's on purpose, but it's now led to a system
that is not transparent and is not being held to
account for what's going on right now.

Speaker 1 (15:23):
Well, Chris, I appreciate your reporting and if you get
anything new, please feel free to let me know so
we can make sure that we report it to our listeners.
This is a huge issue. Wait one last last question,
and this is a quick one. Do you know if
parole officers are incentivized in any way to get these
people out of prison?

Speaker 2 (15:42):
That's an excellent question. We've found no evidence of that.
I can understand why people would feel that way, And
if anybody knows and listening to the show right now,
want to talk to me. Chris at ninnews dot com
always happy to take tips.

Speaker 1 (15:55):
Chris Vanderben, thanks for your time today, great reporting on this,
and keep up the work all right. Thank you.