October 24, 2025 • 11 mins
WE PUT THE COPS ON THE HOOK And it is affecting how policing is done and not in a good way. DA Michael Allen of the 4th Judicial District was listening the other day when we talked about this study by the Common Sense Institute about how we've stopped putting criminals in jail and crime has gone up. He reached out to remind me that the changes made to qualified immunity for cops has also had negative pressure on policing, so we're going to check in with him about that today at 2:30.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
About the man who was just arrested for attempted murder
for the shooting on two two five in Denver. Apparently
the gentleman who had already been deported three times. He
in twenty twenty, when he was arrested for child sex
assault charges. I said, lodged a detainer on him. The
Denver Justice Center declined to honor the detainer and released
(00:21):
him into the community instead. Ice caught him later and
deported him after that. But we know that at some
point he walked back across the southern border and now
has perhaps murdered someone. The guy still in the hospital
fighting for his life. So I just wanted to get
that update. Another example of the things Democrats fight for
in Colorado. Joining me now from the fourth Judicial District
(00:42):
is DA Michael Allen, who reached out to me after
the conversation with former police chief Paul Pasin about releasing
criminals and seeing violent crime rise. Although DA Michael Allen,
I'm sure there's no connection at all between those two things,
but then you sent an email and said, man, we're
not even talking about what the lack of qualified immunity
(01:03):
for police officers is doing. So welcome to the show.
To have that conversation.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Yeah, well, thanks a lot, Mandy for having me on
and having a chance to discuss this. I thought the
conversation you had with Paul Paysen, I think it was
a Tuesday or Wednesday. I thought it was really good.
I happened to catch a big chunk of it. And
one of the things that I think people have forgotten
about is that Senate Bill twenty dash two seventeen, which
was called Police Accountability. I think they had some other
(01:29):
fancier name for it to make it sound like it
was a good thing, but it has turned out to
be a bad thing, and it really it was designed
to remove qualified immunity protections from police officers who are
out in the field making tough decisions every day, fighting
crime and that kind of thing, and it really had
a detrimental impact on law enforcement agencies around Colorado.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
Well, let's talk about what their qualified immunity did first,
because I think a lot of people don't understand. They
do know, like people understand, you can't sue government, right
because government has always assumed to act in our best
interest even when they're clearly not. So I can't sue
government because they have what's called qualified immunity, which means
they don't get sued because they're expected to do the
(02:09):
right thing. For US cops had the same kinds of protections.
What changed in that crime bill?
Speaker 2 (02:15):
So basically what changes It stripped that qualified immunity from
police officers. As I said, they're making really tough decisions
out in the field in real time and reacting to
dynamic situations that are really dictated by a criminal behavior,
and by removing qualified immunity, it just puts them personally
liable for any decisions they made, which is a new
(02:37):
thing in Colorado that had never been taken away before. Legislators,
by the way, have immunity for the bills that they've
passed because they're also weighing really tough things and they
have to say some things maybe that they wouldn't say otherwise,
or do things they wouldn't do otherwise.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
And so they're also immune from lawsuits.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
We don't see legislators getting sued for bad bills, even
though maybe we should.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Take that way, Amen, I would be in favor of that.
So how has this affected the actual policing? What are
the real world impacts of this qualified immunity situation?
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Yeah, so there was a couple of real world impacts.
I think one you can't discount the idea that this
had a psychological impact on law enforcement. This was legislation
designed to be very punitive towards law enforcement officers all
over the state of Colorado.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
So just from a psychological standpoint, when.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
The tough work you're doing isn't being appreciated by those
passing laws, it makes it tough to do the job,
makes it tough to wake up every morning, put on
the uniform and go out and fight crime. And then
on a separate, more real world basis, you know, it
really affected recruiting and retention, and so we saw people
that were close to retirement age they might retire early
(03:48):
or you know, get out as soon as they possibly can,
and then the recruiting effort.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
Was really difficult. And so law enforcement has.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Had a real fight really since that bill was passed
to recruit and properly fully staff their police departments. So
down here in Colorado Springs, we've got the second biggest
city in the state of Colorado, and our police department
is severely understaffed and it struggles all the time to
get even close to something that on what we actually
need down here, and it's the same all over the state.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
I want to share with you an email from a
former law enforcement officer here in Colorado who has since
left the state, and he said, I have so much
to say on this. First, it's not really the pay
up to twenty five K, because that was always the case.
When you were found to be acting outside the color
of authority, you can be held liable and no immunity applies.
One of the most chilling parts of the reforms was
(04:37):
the form you have to fill out after every contact.
It consists of why contact, race, outcome, forced use, and
who initiated the contact. An extra fifteen minutes if there's
only one person in the contact, add more time for
more people. It is one of the huge reasons why
cops don't do traffic stops. And this may shock you.
When it came out, it was so gray as to
(04:59):
was what it was used for and when you needed
to fill it out. According to the Democrat pass law,
just another pain in the ass and a tool which
can selectively be used to show racism depending on how
you pull the data. So there's I think for people
who are not in law enforcement and generally speaking, I
hate it when legislators legislate anything that they don't know
(05:21):
anything about. And let's be real, they don't know anything
about most stuff, right, They just don't. They have their
very individual, siloed views. What I've always found fascinating, Michael,
is when you see news stories where you have a
community activist who then goes through the point and shoot
training that the cops have to go through, the split
second training, and they come out on the other side
(05:41):
and go, holy crap, that was a lot different than
I thought.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
What was going on?
Speaker 1 (05:46):
What can we do in Colorado to either help legislators
or help regular people understand these life and death decisions
that are made instantaneously every single day.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
Yeah, I think if we can ever figure that out,
we'd be onto something. It's a tough thing.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Voters, unfortunately, are so distracted by so many different things,
and I think that's ultimately what it comes down to,
is that elections do have consequences. When we're allowing people
to get elected into the state legislature that.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
Have maybe an acts to grind against law enforcement.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Yeah, the thing that we get and we shouldn't be
surprised when we get the government we deserve.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
When we're so distracted as a community.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
So what do we do with this bill and how
would that make an impact? I don't see this legislature
made up controlled by Democrats. This is a zero percent
chance they're going to roll back this qualified immunity change.
So what could we do? What could be possible?
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Well, I think you asked Paul this the other day
on the radio too, about if he could undo one
legislative change over the last several years with the criminal
justice reform, what.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
Would that be?
Speaker 2 (06:50):
The problem is, there's been so many that are so
detrimental to public safety that it's hard to pick just one.
I think the Senate built two seventeen from twenty twenty
would be a really good one to just completely undo.
It's led to less police on the streets and that
means fewer crimes being solved. And then as you all
we're talking about on Tuesday, is more repeat offenders. They're
(07:11):
just down on the street and they have a proclivity
to commit crime and they're doing that because they can.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
I'm want to ask you another question that isn't directly
related to the qualified immunity story, but we've just had
a story where we have a guy who's been arrested
for attempted murder after allegedly shooting someone on two two five,
And he is an illegal immigrant from Honduras. He was
deported three times, and I don't even know how the
Aurora ped was able to loop in Homeland Security to
(07:41):
get this guy off the streets finally, But we're in
a state where Democrats are increasingly protecting people like this.
This is what's going on. How has the banning of
any cooperation between your office or any law enforcement agency
and ICE affected you in the fourth Judicial District?
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Well, I think it's I can actually point to even
across the whole state of Colorado law enforcement. You know,
our local law enforcement agencies, whether it's a sheriff's office
or a police department, they're really nervous about working with
ICE on anything or any federal agency for that matter,
that might have some tangential connection to immigration. So if
we have a drug distribution investigation and it is involving
(08:24):
cartel activity, that means somehow that the federal government is
involved in investigating these people because it's a transnational drug
distribution organization, which means that immigration potentially is at play
in any sort of convictions.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
That you might get in the case like that, And
I've had.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Police officers locally tell me that they're nervous about working
on those types of cases because we've had our attorney
general suing law enforcement officers across the state of Colorado.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
We've obviously got the law that says you're not.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Allowed to do that, although there is a caveat in
that law that says if you are working on an
active criminal investigation, you can still cooperate on that criminal investigation.
But when you've got an attorney general that's actively going
after people, it makes them nervous about working on these cases.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
In a general sense, my frustration with this entire thing
is that imagine, just imagine if Colorado said to the
federal government, we'd love your help in getting these people
that are violent criminals, like this guy from Honduras out
of our state. We'd love to cooperate with you to
get these violent criminals who already have a deportation order,
maybe been deported three more times. We'd love to work
(09:29):
with you. At least from that perspective, a collaboration could
actually get something done. A collaboration could actually get this guy,
maybe permanently out of the country, although I have no
reason to think he won't just come back because there's
no penalty to be paid, right if you just keep
coming back, Apparently all they do is keep sending you
out again. I just it's insane. How is there any
(09:50):
way for your office to and you just kind of
explained how to navigate this whole thing, But I mean,
what what I want, and I'm never going to get it,
is for everyone outside state government to just say we're
not following this bad law. It's a bad law and
we're not following it. I realize that won't happen, but
(10:12):
it seems to me we have ample ammunition rhetorical to
make the case that we are actually harming Colorado and
citizens by not doing that. So I mean, can you
make that argument in any compelling way to anyone who
will listen.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Yeah, I think that's a hard thing to actually put
into practice, because you know, as an executive branch member
that's where I am as a prosecutor.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
The police are executive branch. We take a note to support.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
The constitution of the State of Colorado, the laws of
the State of Colorado. It's hard to start picking and
choosing and you know, you could get a scenario potentially
where maybe a far left leaning person gets elected to
a position like this and they start ignoring other laws
that we think are important on violent crime, for instance. Right,
I think that's a slippery slope to go down. The
(10:57):
I think for me, the better avenue is bring attention
to it, and let's try to get some advances in
the legislature so we can get more seats and maybe
stop some of this, and then as we build momentum,
maybe start undoing.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
Some of the nonsense.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
D A.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
Michael Allen from the fourth Judicial District, Thanks so much
for your time today, Mike. I really appreciate it. Thank you,
Mandy all Right, that is good information.
About the man who was just arrested for attempted murder
for the shooting on two two five in Denver. Apparently
the gentleman who had already been deported three times. He
in twenty twenty, when he was arrested for child sex
assault charges. I said, lodged a detainer on him. The
Denver Justice Center declined to honor the detainer and released
(00:21):
him into the community instead. Ice caught him later and
deported him after that. But we know that at some
point he walked back across the southern border and now
has perhaps murdered someone. The guy still in the hospital
fighting for his life. So I just wanted to get
that update. Another example of the things Democrats fight for
in Colorado. Joining me now from the fourth Judicial District
(00:42):
is DA Michael Allen, who reached out to me after
the conversation with former police chief Paul Pasin about releasing
criminals and seeing violent crime rise. Although DA Michael Allen,
I'm sure there's no connection at all between those two things,
but then you sent an email and said, man, we're
not even talking about what the lack of qualified immunity
(01:03):
for police officers is doing. So welcome to the show.
To have that conversation.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Yeah, well, thanks a lot, Mandy for having me on
and having a chance to discuss this. I thought the
conversation you had with Paul Paysen, I think it was
a Tuesday or Wednesday. I thought it was really good.
I happened to catch a big chunk of it. And
one of the things that I think people have forgotten
about is that Senate Bill twenty dash two seventeen, which
was called Police Accountability. I think they had some other
(01:29):
fancier name for it to make it sound like it
was a good thing, but it has turned out to
be a bad thing, and it really it was designed
to remove qualified immunity protections from police officers who are
out in the field making tough decisions every day, fighting
crime and that kind of thing, and it really had
a detrimental impact on law enforcement agencies around Colorado.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
Well, let's talk about what their qualified immunity did first,
because I think a lot of people don't understand. They
do know, like people understand, you can't sue government, right
because government has always assumed to act in our best
interest even when they're clearly not. So I can't sue
government because they have what's called qualified immunity, which means
they don't get sued because they're expected to do the
(02:09):
right thing. For US cops had the same kinds of protections.
What changed in that crime bill?
Speaker 2 (02:15):
So basically what changes It stripped that qualified immunity from
police officers. As I said, they're making really tough decisions
out in the field in real time and reacting to
dynamic situations that are really dictated by a criminal behavior,
and by removing qualified immunity, it just puts them personally
liable for any decisions they made, which is a new
(02:37):
thing in Colorado that had never been taken away before. Legislators,
by the way, have immunity for the bills that they've
passed because they're also weighing really tough things and they
have to say some things maybe that they wouldn't say otherwise,
or do things they wouldn't do otherwise.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
And so they're also immune from lawsuits.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
We don't see legislators getting sued for bad bills, even
though maybe we should.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Take that way, Amen, I would be in favor of that.
So how has this affected the actual policing? What are
the real world impacts of this qualified immunity situation?
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Yeah, so there was a couple of real world impacts.
I think one you can't discount the idea that this
had a psychological impact on law enforcement. This was legislation
designed to be very punitive towards law enforcement officers all
over the state of Colorado.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
So just from a psychological standpoint, when.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
The tough work you're doing isn't being appreciated by those
passing laws, it makes it tough to do the job,
makes it tough to wake up every morning, put on
the uniform and go out and fight crime. And then
on a separate, more real world basis, you know, it
really affected recruiting and retention, and so we saw people
that were close to retirement age they might retire early
(03:48):
or you know, get out as soon as they possibly can,
and then the recruiting effort.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
Was really difficult. And so law enforcement has.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Had a real fight really since that bill was passed
to recruit and properly fully staff their police departments. So
down here in Colorado Springs, we've got the second biggest
city in the state of Colorado, and our police department
is severely understaffed and it struggles all the time to
get even close to something that on what we actually
need down here, and it's the same all over the state.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
I want to share with you an email from a
former law enforcement officer here in Colorado who has since
left the state, and he said, I have so much
to say on this. First, it's not really the pay
up to twenty five K, because that was always the case.
When you were found to be acting outside the color
of authority, you can be held liable and no immunity applies.
One of the most chilling parts of the reforms was
(04:37):
the form you have to fill out after every contact.
It consists of why contact, race, outcome, forced use, and
who initiated the contact. An extra fifteen minutes if there's
only one person in the contact, add more time for
more people. It is one of the huge reasons why
cops don't do traffic stops. And this may shock you.
When it came out, it was so gray as to
(04:59):
was what it was used for and when you needed
to fill it out. According to the Democrat pass law,
just another pain in the ass and a tool which
can selectively be used to show racism depending on how
you pull the data. So there's I think for people
who are not in law enforcement and generally speaking, I
hate it when legislators legislate anything that they don't know
(05:21):
anything about. And let's be real, they don't know anything
about most stuff, right, They just don't. They have their
very individual, siloed views. What I've always found fascinating, Michael,
is when you see news stories where you have a
community activist who then goes through the point and shoot
training that the cops have to go through, the split
second training, and they come out on the other side
(05:41):
and go, holy crap, that was a lot different than
I thought.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
What was going on?
Speaker 1 (05:46):
What can we do in Colorado to either help legislators
or help regular people understand these life and death decisions
that are made instantaneously every single day.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
Yeah, I think if we can ever figure that out,
we'd be onto something. It's a tough thing.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Voters, unfortunately, are so distracted by so many different things,
and I think that's ultimately what it comes down to,
is that elections do have consequences. When we're allowing people
to get elected into the state legislature that.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
Have maybe an acts to grind against law enforcement.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Yeah, the thing that we get and we shouldn't be
surprised when we get the government we deserve.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
When we're so distracted as a community.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
So what do we do with this bill and how
would that make an impact? I don't see this legislature
made up controlled by Democrats. This is a zero percent
chance they're going to roll back this qualified immunity change.
So what could we do? What could be possible?
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Well, I think you asked Paul this the other day
on the radio too, about if he could undo one
legislative change over the last several years with the criminal
justice reform, what.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
Would that be?
Speaker 2 (06:50):
The problem is, there's been so many that are so
detrimental to public safety that it's hard to pick just one.
I think the Senate built two seventeen from twenty twenty
would be a really good one to just completely undo.
It's led to less police on the streets and that
means fewer crimes being solved. And then as you all
we're talking about on Tuesday, is more repeat offenders. They're
(07:11):
just down on the street and they have a proclivity
to commit crime and they're doing that because they can.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
I'm want to ask you another question that isn't directly
related to the qualified immunity story, but we've just had
a story where we have a guy who's been arrested
for attempted murder after allegedly shooting someone on two two five,
And he is an illegal immigrant from Honduras. He was
deported three times, and I don't even know how the
Aurora ped was able to loop in Homeland Security to
(07:41):
get this guy off the streets finally, But we're in
a state where Democrats are increasingly protecting people like this.
This is what's going on. How has the banning of
any cooperation between your office or any law enforcement agency
and ICE affected you in the fourth Judicial District?
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Well, I think it's I can actually point to even
across the whole state of Colorado law enforcement. You know,
our local law enforcement agencies, whether it's a sheriff's office
or a police department, they're really nervous about working with
ICE on anything or any federal agency for that matter,
that might have some tangential connection to immigration. So if
we have a drug distribution investigation and it is involving
(08:24):
cartel activity, that means somehow that the federal government is
involved in investigating these people because it's a transnational drug
distribution organization, which means that immigration potentially is at play
in any sort of convictions.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
That you might get in the case like that, And
I've had.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Police officers locally tell me that they're nervous about working
on those types of cases because we've had our attorney
general suing law enforcement officers across the state of Colorado.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
We've obviously got the law that says you're not.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Allowed to do that, although there is a caveat in
that law that says if you are working on an
active criminal investigation, you can still cooperate on that criminal investigation.
But when you've got an attorney general that's actively going
after people, it makes them nervous about working on these cases.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
In a general sense, my frustration with this entire thing
is that imagine, just imagine if Colorado said to the
federal government, we'd love your help in getting these people
that are violent criminals, like this guy from Honduras out
of our state. We'd love to cooperate with you to
get these violent criminals who already have a deportation order,
maybe been deported three more times. We'd love to work
(09:29):
with you. At least from that perspective, a collaboration could
actually get something done. A collaboration could actually get this guy,
maybe permanently out of the country, although I have no
reason to think he won't just come back because there's
no penalty to be paid, right if you just keep
coming back, Apparently all they do is keep sending you
out again. I just it's insane. How is there any
(09:50):
way for your office to and you just kind of
explained how to navigate this whole thing, But I mean,
what what I want, and I'm never going to get it,
is for everyone outside state government to just say we're
not following this bad law. It's a bad law and
we're not following it. I realize that won't happen, but
(10:12):
it seems to me we have ample ammunition rhetorical to
make the case that we are actually harming Colorado and
citizens by not doing that. So I mean, can you
make that argument in any compelling way to anyone who
will listen.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Yeah, I think that's a hard thing to actually put
into practice, because you know, as an executive branch member
that's where I am as a prosecutor.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
The police are executive branch. We take a note to support.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
The constitution of the State of Colorado, the laws of
the State of Colorado. It's hard to start picking and
choosing and you know, you could get a scenario potentially
where maybe a far left leaning person gets elected to
a position like this and they start ignoring other laws
that we think are important on violent crime, for instance. Right,
I think that's a slippery slope to go down. The
(10:57):
I think for me, the better avenue is bring attention
to it, and let's try to get some advances in
the legislature so we can get more seats and maybe
stop some of this, and then as we build momentum,
maybe start undoing.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
Some of the nonsense.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
D A.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
Michael Allen from the fourth Judicial District, Thanks so much
for your time today, Mike. I really appreciate it. Thank you,
Mandy all Right, that is good information.
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