Speaker 1: If you have been paying attention to Chris Vandervein of
Speaker 1: nine News, He's got a great Twitter feed. He has
Speaker 1: been on this story, and I feel like it's been
Speaker 1: a while now that Chris has been sort of digging
Speaker 1: into our parole system, how people are parolled, information that
Speaker 1: the parole board uses in order to decide make decisions
Speaker 1: about parole and Chris, first of all, welcome.
Speaker 3: Back to the show.
Speaker 2: Thanks Manny for having me. Yeah, this has been a
Speaker 2: lengthy investigation. I think technically we started working on it
Speaker 2: in early twenty twenty four last year after a parole
Speaker 2: lead by the name of Vincenzo Moscoso was accused of
Speaker 2: murdering two people in northwest Denver, and since then we've
Speaker 2: really like tried to focus in on, I think identification
Speaker 2: of the what I think are some potentially systemic gaps
Speaker 2: within the parole system of Colorado.
Speaker 1: So let's start really quickly with how the parole system
Speaker 1: works in the sense that these evaluations that we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about next, what role they play and whether
Speaker 1: or not someone is paroled. Because the parole board is
Speaker 1: just made up of people who come to a meeting
Speaker 1: with information they get evaluations. They get that stuff. So
Speaker 1: we're talking about the evaluations that are done by who
Speaker 1: does these evaluations.
Speaker 2: Yeah, by corrections officers, Department Corrections officers when they're on inside.
Speaker 2: There's there's a number of assessments that are done and
Speaker 2: in order to understand the story you really understand, like
Speaker 2: basically think of this. Every six months or or every year,
Speaker 2: the Department of Corrections, whether you're an inmate within prison
Speaker 2: or you're arrolling who's out of prison, will try to
Speaker 2: assess your risk level to reoffend. And it's really this
Speaker 2: idea of like, can we ask you a series of
Speaker 2: questions that we'll get to the heart of.
Speaker 3: Let's take Chris Vanderfiedt, the felon.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately I'm not. But let's let's take that as a
Speaker 2: as a hypothetical hypothetical example that I will answer a
Speaker 2: series of questions with a parrole officer crrect softs in
Speaker 2: front of me, and they will come up with a
Speaker 2: score that will determine am I low risk to reoffend?
Speaker 2: Or am I very high risk to reoffend? And based
Speaker 2: upon the answers that that assessment gives, you can sort
Speaker 2: of like give finely tune the level of care, treatment.
Speaker 3: Supervision to that person.
Speaker 2: So it's like it's it's getting into the weeds a
Speaker 2: little bit, but I think it's important to sort of
Speaker 2: understand that base level. Yeah, and the higher the score
Speaker 2: that you have, the more risk that you have. It's
Speaker 2: not predictive fully in nature, that means to guarantee that
Speaker 2: Chris biannit means going to reoffend if he's high risk
Speaker 2: or very high risk to reoffend, but it means statistically speaking.
Speaker 3: I'm more inclined to reoffend. And you want to know.
Speaker 2: That when somebody's out on parole, are there some of
Speaker 2: you got to watch closely or some of you don't
Speaker 2: have to watch this bock so and.
Speaker 1: One of the things, I mean, there are things, and
Speaker 1: I want to believe that people are capable of change
Speaker 1: and capable of rehabilitation. So I would assume that some
Speaker 1: of those measures could change dramatically over the course of
Speaker 1: one's incarceration. But some of those measures are should be static, right,
Speaker 1: They should be the same on every report. How many
Speaker 1: felonies this person has committed, has this person violated parole
Speaker 1: in the past. I mean, these are numbers, These are
Speaker 1: hard data that should never change. And that's kind of
Speaker 1: where we're talking about here, right, That's where the.
Speaker 2: Issues are, and that's what we're the investigation is really
Speaker 2: sort of concentrating on because they're there. They're the more
Speaker 2: the once more obvious errors in these assessments.
Speaker 3: And think about it this way.
Speaker 2: There's a question, were you ever expelled from high school
Speaker 2: or school?
Speaker 3: If the answer to that.
Speaker 2: Question is yes, If Chris, if I were expelled from
Speaker 2: what Thomas Jefferson High School is the school I went
Speaker 2: to here in Denver, if I was expelled from TJ,
Speaker 2: and the answer to that is yes in twenty fourteen,
Speaker 2: then the answer that twenty twenty four would still be yes.
Speaker 3: That is what they call in the.
Speaker 2: Business a static schoore, And and what we've been finding
Speaker 2: these static scores is that sometimes, like Chris Vannery twenty fourteen,
Speaker 2: ever expelled from DJ, yes, and twenty twenty four No,
Speaker 2: that's a mistake, that's an error. And what conversely what
Speaker 2: happens with that is that you know, you get one
Speaker 2: point for answering yes to if you've been expelled from school,
Speaker 2: and then you know years later if it's no, then
Speaker 2: it's zero points. And as I talked about the amount
Speaker 2: of points matters. The higher the points, the higher the risk.
Speaker 2: And if you mess up on those scores, now, all
Speaker 2: of a sudden, your risk level is getting lower than
Speaker 2: it should, right, And that's what's happening. So you know,
Speaker 2: and you know, lots of times it may be it
Speaker 2: may be relatively inconsequential when we're talking about two points
Speaker 2: or whatever, but sometimes it's so much that suddenly somebody
Speaker 2: who is who is who should be like very high
Speaker 2: or high risk, is now moderate risk or in the
Speaker 2: example that we've talked about last a couple of weeks ago,
Speaker 2: low risk. And that means you're not not getting a
Speaker 2: lot of interaction with your prole officer, you're not being
Speaker 2: drug tested as much. And again, you'd like to think
Speaker 2: that people who are high risk to re offend they're
Speaker 2: getting the most interaction with right role because that means
Speaker 2: that they're checking in on them, are they are they
Speaker 2: noticing maybe they're spirally, maybe they need more care. This
Speaker 2: is when I say I think we've identified a systemic problem.
Speaker 2: I'm convinced of it, because you know, while it doesn't
Speaker 2: mean that the people that we've identified, it doesn't mean
Speaker 2: that that absolutely they would not have murdered somebody had
Speaker 2: they caught this. It just means that as a whole,
Speaker 2: we're not catching people as much as we should in
Speaker 2: terms of assigning their risk level, and it means overall
Speaker 2: we're less inclined as a state to provide the right
Speaker 2: level of care and treatment and supervision to people who
Speaker 2: can be inherently dangerous.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm more I mean, I'm more suspicious than you
Speaker 1: are about about the beginning part of this, and I
Speaker 1: think that that's the part and all of your points
Speaker 1: you made about levels of supervision are spot on. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you have somebody that has a propensity for violence, yeah,
Speaker 1: I want them, if they get out of prison, to
Speaker 1: be carefully monitored, right.
Speaker 3: I want to know that they're.
Speaker 1: Being looked at and being.
Speaker 3: Followed up on.
Speaker 1: But the reality is is that we have kind of
Speaker 1: a significant issue right now, and it's either sloppy record
Speaker 1: keeping or a system that is so cumbersome that it
Speaker 1: lends itself to sloppy record keeping and that in and
Speaker 1: of itself needs to be fixed, or it's someone being
Speaker 1: lazy and not doing a good job that needs to
Speaker 1: be fixed, or it's more malicious.
Speaker 3: You know, the suspicious level.
Speaker 1: In me, I'm like, is it something more malicious where
Speaker 1: you have people that are getting numbers changed because of
Speaker 1: either relationships within the prison or or you know, even
Speaker 1: something more nefarious than that. And I don't want to
Speaker 1: cast dispersions, but I think all of that should be
Speaker 1: the focus of an intense investigation. I think whatever the
Speaker 1: answer is, and it could be something really simple to solve.
Speaker 3: I think that not only we.
Speaker 1: The public, but also the men in prison deserve to
Speaker 1: know that their records as they are are not being
Speaker 1: meddled with, right because how do we know they're not
Speaker 1: being meddled with in the other direction, making low risk prisoners.
Speaker 3: I agree with that.
Speaker 2: I there's a there's a man in the name of
Speaker 2: Brian Lovin's we interviewed in our story recently. He helped
Speaker 2: create the assessment system that Colorado uses, and he was
Speaker 2: a verse of the idea of like actually criticizing Colorado
Speaker 2: because he didn't want to go in that direction. But
Speaker 2: what he did say is this, and I think it's
Speaker 2: really important. He says it is worse to get assessments
Speaker 2: wrong than to not do assessments at all, Meaning if
Speaker 2: you're going to do them, you need to do them
Speaker 2: correctly because you can assign. Let's say, let's say you
Speaker 2: do have somebody who is inherently low risk and they're
Speaker 2: treated as high risk, and you're having too much too
Speaker 2: much resources devoted to a person who is at low
Speaker 2: risk to reoffend. Ideally, what you want to do is
Speaker 2: devote the most amount of resources you can to the
Speaker 2: people who are statistically speaking, most likely to reoffend. This
Speaker 2: is we don't have all the money in the world.
Speaker 2: It's sort of like put towards parole. People on parole.
Speaker 2: Not all of them are going to reoffend, but statistically speaking,
Speaker 2: they're much more likely to reoffend because they've already offended
Speaker 2: in the first place. They're on parole, they've gotten out
Speaker 2: of prison, and so you want to believe that the
Speaker 2: state is doing a good job of saying, Okay.
Speaker 3: Chris fanitmy is high risk.
Speaker 2: We're going to devote like you got to check in
Speaker 2: with your prole officer every two weeks or every week
Speaker 2: because we want to know how you're doing. But if
Speaker 2: Chris Fantamin is low risk, then you don't have to
Speaker 2: give as much resources. I don't have to check in
Speaker 2: as often with the prole office, and we do have
Speaker 2: a problem in this state when it comes to crimes,
Speaker 2: high profile crimes that are admitted by paroles, and there
Speaker 2: are a number of high profile crimes that have been
Speaker 2: committed by people on parole. Next week, we're taking a
Speaker 2: deeper look into a man by the name of Ricky
Speaker 2: Lee Royball Smith who was on parole and he's now
Speaker 2: accused of a double homicide in Aurora on colfax. And
Speaker 2: he's also the main suspect, by the way, in a
Speaker 2: death inside the Denver jail and a death that happened
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 3: This is a guy that is potentially very dangerous and.
Speaker 2: The state did not do a good job of assigning
Speaker 2: his risk level.
Speaker 3: It's clear as day.
Speaker 2: So when it comes down to what needs to happen,
Speaker 2: I think I said these two before when I talked
Speaker 2: to before, like it shouldn't just be up to a
Speaker 2: reporter at nine News to investigate this problem. I openly
Speaker 2: admit there's eight thousand people on parole in the state
Speaker 2: Colorado right now. I cannot single handedly, with the help
Speaker 2: of my team, look into all eight thousand cases and
Speaker 2: see how the state is doing.
Speaker 3: But the state does have the resources and.
Speaker 2: The power to care a little bit more about this
Speaker 2: and actually identify, Okay, what is the extent of the problem.
Speaker 2: And what scares me the most is that we don't
Speaker 2: know the extent of this problem right now.
Speaker 1: And that is significant because we don't know how many
Speaker 1: other paroles are out there probably shouldn't be in the community,
Speaker 1: or I mean, even as I said, it's like, it
Speaker 1: sounds like a silly thing to worry about that someone
Speaker 1: who is a low risk offender would be kept in
Speaker 1: prison right as a member of the population or likewise
Speaker 1: it's still a criminal. But for me that does matter,
Speaker 1: Like I want the people in our justice system to
Speaker 1: be treated the way our justice system is designed to
Speaker 1: treat them wherever they are, right at wherever level they are.
Speaker 1: But have you seen any consistency in the records that
Speaker 1: you have pulled? This seems to be more pervasive in
Speaker 1: one prison or another, or does it seem to be
Speaker 1: consistent across the whole system.
Speaker 2: I think what I've seen so far is that it's
Speaker 2: consistent across the board. And I think what we've just
Speaker 2: started to get into recently, we talked a lot about
Speaker 2: assessments of people on parole, But there's assessments of people.
Speaker 3: That are inmates that are in prison.
Speaker 2: And keep in mind, I'm sure you're well aware of this.
Speaker 2: I think this is surprising for the public is if
Speaker 2: Chris Pannamine is given a twenty year sentence to prison,
Speaker 2: statistically speaking, I'm going to do about ten years of
Speaker 2: that prison sentence and then I'm going to be on
Speaker 2: parole for a certain period of time. A lot of
Speaker 2: parole that happens in the state of Colorado is discretionary parole,
Speaker 2: where the parole board gets to say, yeah, we think
Speaker 2: you're ready to be parolled. And one of the tools
Speaker 2: they're using to decide if somebody should be parolled discretionarily
Speaker 2: early are these assessments. And so if you're getting the assessment,
Speaker 2: we know they're getting these assessments wrong in prison because
Speaker 2: we've found documented cases where they're getting these assessments wrong.
Speaker 2: And it doesn't mean the pro board's going to release
Speaker 2: this person. But if if you're looking at somebody that
Speaker 2: you might may or may not release the prison and
Speaker 2: they're low risk THY offend or modern risk thy offense.
Speaker 3: You may be more inclined to proll.
Speaker 2: That person as opposed to very high risk toy offense.
Speaker 2: That's a problem too.
Speaker 1: Amen to that, Chris. I appreciate the story. I've been
Speaker 1: following along as you add. Every time I see a
Speaker 1: new face on your Twitter feed, I'm like, oh, Chris
Speaker 1: has found another one in his little back of Chris,
Speaker 1: have you spoken to the Attorney General's office about this
Speaker 1: and said, hey, would you guys or.
Speaker 3: Could you guy?
Speaker 1: Or can someone just get to the bottom of this,
Speaker 1: because to your point, the state does should have the
Speaker 1: resources to figure out what the problem is.
Speaker 2: I would I would yes to the AG's office. But
Speaker 2: I think specifically, it is the governor who appoints the
Speaker 2: head of the Department of Corrections. It is the Department
Speaker 2: of Corrections that will not go on camera with us,
Speaker 2: and it is the governor who will not go on
Speaker 2: camera with us to discuss specific questions that we have
Speaker 2: have and I do think the responsibility here lies the governor.
Speaker 2: The governor appoints the executive director of the Priment of Corrections.
Speaker 2: That's the boss of DOC. That's the person that determines
Speaker 2: how this goes. That's the person that determines, Hey, we
Speaker 2: need to look further into this to see if you know,
Speaker 2: does Chris have some wack of doodle idea of what's
Speaker 2: going on in the pro system or is he on
Speaker 2: to something?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: I think I'm onto something, but I think I would
Speaker 2: not sort of like a lot of responsibility here lies
Speaker 2: with Governor Polis one hundred percent.
Speaker 1: Well, you and I are in a similar vote. He
Speaker 1: won't come on my show either, so I can appreciate that.
Speaker 1: But Chris, keep up the good work. We're going to
Speaker 1: keep sharing the story. I think it's a really important story.
Speaker 1: And we've had way too many high not even just
Speaker 1: the high prof We've just had way too many people
Speaker 1: whose lives were destroyed or taken by people who probably
Speaker 1: shouldn't have been walking around. And I think that that's
Speaker 1: significant and something that we should all be concerned about
Speaker 1: as we're trying to move prime in the right to
Speaker 1: direction in Colorado. I think all of this is connected.
Speaker 1: So I appreciate you making this your cause and just
Speaker 1: keeping the digging in and hopefully maybe the Attorney General's
Speaker 1: office and the governor we'll hear some pressure and begin
Speaker 1: to actually say we should probably figure out what's going on.
Speaker 2: You talk about victims of crime, there's a man bit
Speaker 2: of the name of Jesse Schaeffer, who was murdered back
Speaker 2: in late June, allegedly at least according to the Royal
Speaker 2: Police Department, by this Ricky Lee roy Ballsmith. I talked
Speaker 2: to his family not too long ago. They live in Salida.
Speaker 2: Their story we're going to have on Tuesday Night. This
Speaker 2: is devastating. Victims of crime need to be heard and
Speaker 2: they are curious about what we found, and quite frankly,
Speaker 2: I don't blame that that's going to.
Speaker 1: Be on Tuesday Night's nine News. I appreciate your time today,
Speaker 1: Chris very much. That's Chris Vandervein. Thanks Andy, all right,
Speaker 1: have a great day, man,