Marked for Destruction: Colorado
Colorado is determined to out-California California, and is succeeding to become the new benchmark for crazy.
Colorado, but mostly Denver and Colorado Springs, has become a gateway to hell. The state is in the grip of sanctioned lawlessness that has been building for years, but accelerated with and after the pretendemic.
The recent Boulder, CO, firebomb attack on a pro-Israel/Zionist protest is the latest in a string of serious incidents that the authorities are winking and nodding at. The common theme to nearly all the recent troubles is mass legal and illegal immigration amplified by SSRI Liberalism.
Boulder was the scene of another attack by a Muslim, Ahmad Al Aliwi Al-Issa, whose family was originally from Raqqa, Syria. He went on a jihadist shooting spree in 2021, taking the lives of 10 people.
Colorado has also become infamous for playing the generous innkeeper and public defender for the violent Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua, that hijacked apartment complexes within walking distance of Hope Lutheran Church in Aurora, CO.
The gangsters arrived as part of an estimated 41,380 (6% of Denver’s entire population at the time) illegal alien shipment, dominated by Venezuelans, to Denver courtesy of the Biden regime. Thousands more “gotaway” illegals of all nationalities also arrived, combining to drive a massive hole through the city and county budgets as they treated emergency rooms as their primary care doctor, and flooded schools with children well below grade level, but aged well above even outlier grade cohorts, and unable to function in English or only passingly literate in Spanish.
Across the Colorado Front Range, the illegal alien direct cost burden easily runs more than $1 billion, with many expenses buried in government obfuscation and cross-subsidization tricks. That estimate excludes the state's hidden impact of soaring insurance premiums (many people cannot renew), thanks to unlicensed and uninsured drivers causing mayhem, and crime spiking. Likewise, the influx of illegals has contributed to the area’s housing shortage, heavy inflation, crowded schools, and overflowing emergency rooms.
So, the total visible and hidden costs are probably well north of $10 billion by this point, if you can even count the people who lost their jobs to substitute labor, or whose kids have lost out at school because classes advance at the rate of the least capable children.
Denver schools are criminally abysmal. For example, at McGlone Academy, only 6.6% of kids were English proficient, and only 3.2% met the math requirement, but all the teachers and administrators remain fully employed and paid. The entire state’s education is a joke, spending $16,000/student/year ($18 billion/)year for these outcomes:
Naturally, the solution was to raise taxes and cut services and employment for Denver County residents.
Beyond the national headlines
These headline-grabbing incidents crowd out news about the massive crime wave and collapse in quality of life in Greater Metro Denver and Colorado Springs, especially, but it is spreading throughout the state. The extent of the problem is clear when you travel around Denver and Colorado Springs at night. You will notice hundreds of blue lights blinking on tall masts - they are remote camera stations hoping to discourage the criminals who are mass looting housing developments under construction, warehouses, and anything else that is vulnerable. Warehouse parks are ringed by truck trailers to thwart homeless RVs from setting up camp for months before the cities will take action.
Last year, Colorado’s violent crime rate remained the nation’s 8th highest. Between 2021 and 2023, violent crime levels were equivalent to those of 1994 and 1995. Colorado’s property crime rate is the nation’s 4th highest. Additionally, Colorado ranked 4th in auto theft rates and is surely a persistent leader for vehicle break-ins and vandalism. If you own a Ford F-250/350 or similar, there are excellent odds it will end up in Mexico as a crew-served weapon platform for one of the cartels.
The state has changed dramatically since we moved here in mid-2011, when violent crime was bottoming out. Since then, violent crime has risen 156%, above the national average, and quality-of-life crimes have exploded.
Crime is downstream from politicians
A friend, who must remain nameless because he will be retaliated against, works for a government agency in the area. He was rear-ended in an automobile accident recently while on the job, and both vehicles were written off. The driver who rammed into him:
was an illegal alien,
had a fake driver’s license,
was uninsured,
was driving an unlicensed vehicle,
had plates from a completely different vehicle on his car, and
was employed full-time at a related government entity, which is supposed to require stringent security clearances because it is a sensitive operation.
The police showed up, but upon learning that Mr. Illegal Everything was employed by XYZ entity, they called that agency. Soon enough, a blue-haired HR lady showed up, and not long after, the culprit was sent on his way, including being allowed to tow the vehicle from the crime scene. He was not arrested or cited, but my friend had points docked from his driver’s license for having the gall to get into an accident.
Such incidents are not unusual. An elderly lady from our congregation had her treasured Mercedes totaled by an illegal alien driving without insurance, a license, or any driver training. A work colleague was hit head on by a druggie who fled the scene, and it took two hours for Denver PD to respond. The ordinary citizen cannot drive a car off a lot without a license and insurance, but the illegals do it all the time.
The solution to Denver's traffic lawlessness was predictable: Denver PD now requires two forms of reasonable suspicion to stop a vehicle because of “disparate impact,” de-escalation, and community policing. To ensure that everything is more terrible, individuals with multiple felonies continue to be released into the communities to continue their terrorism.
Tip of the iceberg
First responder friends and acquaintances all have a common refrain: “You have no idea how bad it is.” Crimes are being heavily underreported. Mexican cartels control the area’s underworld, and the multitude of homeless encampments house armies of drug dealers, thieves, and mules who are indentured labor.
First responders are totally despondent. They are only staying on the job if they don’t have better options or if they’re near retirement. Denver agencies have been decimated by radical DEI that has promoted dangerously incompetent individuals and pressured white men to exit or tolerate rampant discrimination against them. Most of their time is spent engaging the severely brain-damaged homeless population (blitzed by meth and fentanyl) and a minority of criminals responsible for most of the crime, but whom the courts will not send to jail because of “restorative justice”.
If you bike, walk, or run Denver’s extensive trail network, which is at least something to commend, you will invariably encounter the state’s special breed of zombies, or the used needles they like to discard, even near schools. Walking downtown is inadvisable due to assaults, muggings, and murders. Avoid being out on the streets of Denver after 8 p.m.
Why?
The explosion of crime and the ridiculous cost of living in Colorado can neither be incidental nor accidental. Part of it is vanilla corruption, as state, county, and municipal funds are diverted to friends, family, and patronage networks for thinly disguised “human service” programs. However, there is also sufficient evidence for a deliberate deracination campaign to overturn the state's historic social, cultural, and economic character.
Consider:
Pioneering mail-in voting and successfully turning the state blue within a short period. Examining ballot results over the years should raise eyebrows - the results are suspicious across various issues, and the state has ensured that audits are impossible.
Obsessively championing and subsidizing weed legalization, which was supposed to be so successful that it would pay for all the schools.
Prosecutors are satisfied with catch-and-release policies for serious crimes. Violent felons cannot accumulate a long enough rap sheet to keep them in prison unless they violate some central shibboleth of the regime.
The relentless effort to end TABOR. It is the last tax safety net residents enjoy, and the social engineers despise it.
Spending to “address homelessness” has expanded massively, but has only succeeded in creating more derelicts to roam the streets and threaten the law-abiding.
Providing needle exchanges and drug kits to addicts who long ago reached a point of irreversible brain damage.
Facilitating exclusively luxury detached housing developments that drive young families into deeper debt and more despair about owning a home.
Pretending that soul-crushing, high-density apartments and “tiny homes” represent affordable and desirable housing.
Restricting police and Sheriffs from the required levels of enforcement to keep a lid on crime, and keeping them understaffed and underfunded.
Attacking critical pillars of the state economy: coal mining and oil and gas extraction.
Cheerfully transferring the burden of expensive and destructive social policies to the middle class.
Cultivating illegal aliens as a protected class who have been showered with benefits, funds, and the latitude to be as lawless as they choose.
Allowing education to collapse.
Passing legislation to make pronoun usage subject to civil punishment.
Relentlessly persecuting a cake baker for refusing to set aside his Christianity to bless homosexual marriage and transsexuals.
Continually raising taxes at every opportunity, from local mill levies to sales taxes, school bonds, and ever-increasing nickel and dime vehicle taxes. No jurisdiction ever has enough money, even though schools are sitting empty all over the state, because there are fewer and fewer children.
We could list one hundred more similar and related developments in Colorado, but the reader gets the point. What we are seeing can only be deliberate demoralization. Repressive tolerance is being aggressively applied in Colorado, and it is even inescapable in the distant hinterlands that once barely had an idea Denver existed.
Colorado’s future is unclear, but there is little reason for optimism as the pace and extent of the destruction continue to pile up. It is crystal clear that Colorado is not being managed for its citizens.
☩TW☩
Not to mention the increasingly restrictive gun laws. That way while they de-fund and de-moralize law enforcement and let the criminals run loose, you can't take responsibility for your own safety either.
Boulder and Denver, yes; Colorado Springs, not as much. Perhaps military and para-church workers contribute some sanity. I have lived in Colorado Springs for 25 years and grieve to see the changes in Colorado.