Speaker 1: So earlier this week we chatted with Barb Kirkmeyer about
Speaker 1: the passage of a bill, a House bill last year
Speaker 1: I believe, yes, last year that changed the competency rules
Speaker 1: around whether or not someone could be held when found
Speaker 1: incompetent to stand trial or unable to participate in their defense.
Speaker 2: And joining me.
Speaker 1: Now to talk about the latest study from the great
Speaker 1: folks at the Common Sense Institute Colorado is former DA
Speaker 1: and now Common Sense fellow John Kellner.
Speaker 2: John, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 3: First of all, Hey Mandy, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1: So tell me a little bit about this report. And
Speaker 1: first of all, why did you guys dig into this?
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously it's been a topic, but what was
Speaker 1: the thing that made common Sense go, you know, we
Speaker 1: probably need to check this out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, great question. So, you know, as district Attorney of
Speaker 3: the eighteenth Judicial District, I'd begun to see the cracks,
Speaker 3: of course, in our competency system, and we of course
Speaker 3: had issues with many defendants who were either actually competent
Speaker 3: or claiming to be incompetent and going through this incredibly
Speaker 3: long process. I mean that would often take hundreds of
Speaker 3: days in order to get a decision on whether or
Speaker 3: not they could go forward with the case, and so
Speaker 3: I was already interested in it. But then you start
Speaker 3: to see a lot of media attention on some high
Speaker 3: profile cases, one of them being Solomon Gallaghan. That's the
Speaker 3: man who was alleged to was going to kidnap acate
Speaker 3: at a middle school. The DA had to dismiss his
Speaker 3: case after he was found to be incompetent and not restorable.
Speaker 3: And then most recently you've heard it from your Sheriff
Speaker 3: Reims and the district attorney in will County, this man
Speaker 3: named Davisa Ephraim who was on charges being held in
Speaker 3: jail for very violent crimes, including attempted murder, and he
Speaker 3: was ultimately released and then made headlines again when he
Speaker 3: was just re arrested. So you know, there's a lot
Speaker 3: of emphasis, i think, in the media right now, But
Speaker 3: there's so much more to this story that we wanted
Speaker 3: to dive into with the Common Sense Institute.
Speaker 2: So let's talk about what you found.
Speaker 1: Because we've talked about this extensively on the show, and
Speaker 1: obviously it's a significant issue that does not necessarily have
Speaker 1: one simple answer. As we learned after talking to Barb Kirkmeyer,
Speaker 1: just from the way that the law is written.
Speaker 2: But what did you guys discover.
Speaker 1: Give me the kind of nuts and bolts of the
Speaker 1: paper for the audience, please.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you bet, And I mean, I'm sure Barb mentioned this.
Speaker 3: This is a longstanding problem, right that has grown I
Speaker 3: think was exacerbated our law. But really what we have
Speaker 3: in the state of Colorado is most people don't know
Speaker 3: that the state's actually under a consent to cree as
Speaker 3: of twenty nineteen, where they agreed in federal court that look,
Speaker 3: we must reduce our waight times to get people out
Speaker 3: of jail into these incompetency restoration in patient beds. They're
Speaker 3: supposed to keep it under twenty eight days of wait time. Instead,
Speaker 3: those folks end up staying in jail for on average,
Speaker 3: we found one hundred and ten days. That costs our
Speaker 3: state every single year twelve million dollars in fines that
Speaker 3: we have to pay because we're not living up to
Speaker 3: the consent decree. Now, it would be a whole lot
Speaker 3: more if we didn't actually have a cap on that
Speaker 3: consent decree. The fines would actually be up to about
Speaker 3: sixty five million dollars every year. So if you have
Speaker 3: the audience an idea of just how out of step
Speaker 3: the state really is in dealing with the competency issue. Now,
Speaker 3: what we also found is, on average, it costs the
Speaker 3: state about three hundred and eighty eight thousand dollars to
Speaker 3: have one additional bed for somebody who is pending or
Speaker 3: going through that incompetency restoration process. So to bring the
Speaker 3: state in compliance with that twenty nine team consent decree,
Speaker 3: it would cost the state about sixty million dollars every
Speaker 3: single year, you know, to just get into the baseline.
Speaker 3: And then when you look at some of the latest
Speaker 3: information about our state where we're falling in at usually
Speaker 3: the second worst in the country, including Washington DC, when
Speaker 3: it comes to mental health outcomes and treatment, and you know,
Speaker 3: issues with diagnoses in our state the second worst in
Speaker 3: the country, it gives you a sense that, look, this
Speaker 3: is not just a today problem, it's future problem. And
Speaker 3: the other thing we found, Mandy, was that, you know,
Speaker 3: with the change in the law of the state is
Speaker 3: really pushing a lot of the public safety concerns with
Speaker 3: people who are incompetent they may be a danger to
Speaker 3: themselves or others, and making an emphasis to put them
Speaker 3: out of custody basically into a program called Bridges. It's
Speaker 3: a state program that's intended to help get these people
Speaker 3: to navigate through getting back to competency. And we've seen
Speaker 3: some terrible outcomes from that, including the allegations of the
Speaker 3: man who killed two people on the sixteenth Street Mall
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty four. He was a person who was
Speaker 3: reliefed for outpatient competency treatment and obviously didn't follow through
Speaker 3: on it, and the results are catastrope.
Speaker 1: So I've got former da in Common Sense Institute fellow
Speaker 1: John Kellner with me.
Speaker 3: John.
Speaker 1: This is one of those things where I feel like,
Speaker 1: is this going to be if the State of Colorado
Speaker 1: really wants to address this, because this is part of
Speaker 1: a bigger mental health issue that I don't think we
Speaker 1: have enough in patient facilities, long term in patient facilities
Speaker 1: to deal with some of the issues that we're seeing,
Speaker 1: issues that I believe had been significantly exacerbated by the
Speaker 1: sort of open drug use that we have here in Colorado.
Speaker 1: Just from personal experience, I know that when you are
Speaker 1: a person with any kind of predisposition to schizophrenia and
Speaker 1: you start using drugs that's going to kick that mental
Speaker 1: illness into high drive. Not all the time, but it
Speaker 1: can happen, and it is happening. So what kind of
Speaker 1: investment And I don't even know if you guys looked
Speaker 1: at this, what kind of investment would it take on
Speaker 1: the front end?
Speaker 2: And is it sixty.
Speaker 1: Million dollars every year or are we looking at we
Speaker 1: need to invest in facilities in institutionalized care for people
Speaker 1: that cannot be in the public and then we have
Speaker 1: sixty million dollars.
Speaker 2: Ye, do you know what I'm asking I do.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And first of all, I agree with you wholeheartedly
Speaker 3: that the permissive nature around drugs in our state really
Speaker 3: set us apart even from states like Utah and their
Speaker 3: outcomes with mental health treatment where they don't have this
Speaker 3: sort of permissive environment around drugs. And a lot of
Speaker 3: this has been brought on, frankly by ourselves, by the
Speaker 3: voters and passing laws that have increased access to things
Speaker 3: like incredibly high potency marijuana, right and those sorts of
Speaker 3: things I do think contributes significantly to our mental health
Speaker 3: crisis in this state. To answer your question directly, Yeah,
Speaker 3: sixty million dollars a year is just the starting point
Speaker 3: to meet the baseline of to consent to create. The
Speaker 3: reality is we don't have the physical infrastructure either to
Speaker 3: deal with the number of people that actually need to
Speaker 3: go through the competency process. So historically we use the
Speaker 3: Cardo Mental Health Hospital in Pueblo, and the people there
Speaker 3: are fantastic, They do incredibly good work. It is very
Speaker 3: hard though, for them to recruit and retain top none
Speaker 3: salent down there. It's just a difficult spot to have
Speaker 3: your state's primary mental health hospital. And one of our
Speaker 3: recommendations and the common sensens to report, is that we
Speaker 3: really do need to explore expanding the state hospital capacity
Speaker 3: with new infrastructure and frankly with the Denver area facility,
Speaker 3: and we could leverage a lot of the output of
Speaker 3: tremendous healthcare practitioners coming out of Anshoot's medical care.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I agree, I mean in that sense, I really agree.
Speaker 1: When you think about how much has just been spent
Speaker 1: by the City of Denver building or buying these this
Speaker 1: housing and I realized that if we're talking about secure housing,
Speaker 1: and you can't just buy a double tree and switch
Speaker 1: it into you know, secure housing for people suffering with
Speaker 1: severe mental illness, but that investment in space is one
Speaker 1: of those things that in my mind, it just we
Speaker 1: have to buckle up, find the money, and make it happen,
Speaker 1: because we're releasing people who are not just a danger
Speaker 1: to themselves, they're a danger to other people. And I
Speaker 1: hate to say it, I think we've already seen it.
Speaker 1: To your point, you reference the guy on the Sixteenth
Speaker 1: Street Mall that had, you know, been released to outpatient
Speaker 1: care and never followed up and nothing happened. People are
Speaker 1: going to get killed, and I don't want to see
Speaker 1: that happen. So is there the political will And this
Speaker 1: is just a you don't have to answer this question
Speaker 1: if you don't want to wait into the politics of it.
Speaker 1: But it seems to me that now, because of the
Speaker 1: high profile nature of Devisa Ephraim and the other gentleman
Speaker 1: that you referenced as well, this might be the best
Speaker 1: moment for a big swing on this.
Speaker 2: But is there any.
Speaker 1: Sort of bills that you guys are aware of that
Speaker 1: would be that big swing.
Speaker 3: I've heard legislators are obviously talking about it. I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, to their credit, they're hearing the outcry, they're
Speaker 3: seeing the issue, and I think there's a lot of
Speaker 3: some introception going on with respect to the twenty twenty
Speaker 3: four law, which kind of poured gasoline on a fire
Speaker 3: by mandating the automatic dismissal of these cases rather than
Speaker 3: potentially re evaluating them. And it also didn't provide for
Speaker 3: when there's an automatic dismissal, a handoff to the civil
Speaker 3: competency system where you're talking about civil commitment. You know,
Speaker 3: they don't have to case going on, but they still
Speaker 3: need treatment, right they're a danger to themselves or others.
Speaker 3: And instead the result was well, case dismissed. I guess
Speaker 3: you're out the door of the jail, and you know,
Speaker 3: best of luck to you. That is not a way,
Speaker 3: of course that Colorado should take care rankly some of
Speaker 3: the most vulnerable people, and then putting that public safety
Speaker 3: risk out on the community is absolutely unacceptable. Is their
Speaker 3: political will. I mean we're already talking about, you know,
Speaker 3: folks saying we are underwater with our budget, right. I
Speaker 3: think the budget is significantly increased the year over year,
Speaker 3: but there has to be a focus on public safety
Speaker 3: primary responsibility of government in my opinion, and hopefully we'll
Speaker 3: see some legislators talk about bold solutions instead of sort
Speaker 3: of nabbling around the edges of well, let's add ten
Speaker 3: twenty more beds. No, we need a bold action plan.
Speaker 1: Well, I would say, John, I would think that there's
Speaker 1: something in it for both sides here in that Republicans
Speaker 1: can sell it to their caucuses because it is a
Speaker 1: law and order issue, and Democrats should be able to
Speaker 1: sell it to their off you know, their caucuses based
Speaker 1: on the humanity issue they don't want.
Speaker 2: I don't think Democrats want.
Speaker 1: To see these people that we see on the streets
Speaker 1: of Denver and other places obviously out of their minds
Speaker 1: with either mental illness or drugs or both. Like people
Speaker 1: don't want to see people live that way. So I
Speaker 1: would hope that this would be one issue where we
Speaker 1: could get the two sides to really say, we've to
Speaker 1: your point, We've got to address.
Speaker 2: This in a bold way, and hopefully that will happen.
Speaker 1: We shall see, John, you guys are doing such great
Speaker 1: work at the Common Sense Institute. I put a link
Speaker 1: to this paper on my blog today so people can
Speaker 1: find it there, and you really should read it because
Speaker 1: this is a serious, serious issue. And again, as John
Speaker 1: just mentioned, I don't want Tom nibbling around the edges either.
Speaker 3: Well, thank you, Mandy. I appreciate you bringing attention to
Speaker 3: this issue and appreciate you having me.
Speaker 1: On all right, John, thanks so much. We'll talk again
Speaker 1: in the future.