Adams County Magistrate Michal Lord-Blegen was a school administrator in Aurora when two teenagers killed 13 people and themselves at Columbine High School in 1999. The massacre was a lens through which she viewed her work. later as director and lawyer.

“We have a lot of kids with guns,” Lord-Blegen said earlier this month. “But these kids aren’t shooting themselves in schools. Either they’re not in school or school is actually one of the places they feel safe.”

Lord-Blegen was one of the speakers at an Oct. 16 discussion sponsored by the Colorado Bar Association that extensively covered children’s access to firearms 25 years after the Columbine shooting. Prosecutors and defense attorneys discussed their handling of juvenile gun cases, as well as the various security strategies schools have resorted to.

“I think SROs actually contribute a lot to school safety because they are there for the purpose of building relationships with students,” said Lauren Asher, a prosecutor with the 17th Judicial District Attorney’s Office, referring to the officers. of school resources. “I think the myth is, ‘If we don’t have SROs, the police won’t contact our students.’ That’s just not true.”

As a truancy magistrate, “when I ask children if they have a trusted adult, they often tell me the name of the SRO,” Lord-Blegen added.

Whether school resource officers improve safety or unnecessarily promote the criminalization of children’s behavior has been the subject of multiple studies. Denver Public Schools Board of Education voted to fire police officers during the 2020-2021 school year, but he returned them in 2023 after a shooting at East High School.

Erin Pier, a former school psychologist and executive director of the Colorado Transformative Justice Project, described a case study in which the same student was disciplined on two occasions for making a hole in the wall of his school.

The first time, the principal accompanied the student to the SRO, who issued him a fine for destruction of property. The student was subsequently suspended. The second time, during the following school year, the student entered Pier’s office after damaging the wall. The principal came in and thanked the student for only hitting the wall and not another student, and for seeking help from an adult. The director also suggested that they would devise a plan to help repair the damage.

Pier said the student cried, walked out of her office and hugged the student she had originally gotten angry with. He also apologized to his teacher and helped fix the hole.

“Same child. Same problem,” Pier said. “But the response to that behavior was very different under those different leadership styles.”

Asher, the prosecutor, echoed the concern that administrators should not reflexively convene an SRO because it is “easy.”

“At the DA’s office, we get submissions from an SRO because they have to send them to us,” he said. “And we’ll look at it and say, ‘I don’t want this case. This should have been a school matter. This should have been handled in the school building; restorative justice, potentially. It doesn’t need to be a state matter.’ carry.'”

“I want to draw our attention to the fact that the young people, the children that we are talking about,” Lord-Blegen added, “these are not typically the type of children who are perpetrating the Columbine mass school shootings. We are talking kind of school security right now, the kind of security that we all touch and encounter every day, but it’s actually a little bit different than the Columbine type stuff.”

To that end, Lord-Blegen said it would be “very strange” for her to detain a child if the only charge was possession of a gun. He indicated that a second arrest or an escalating threat would be necessary to jail him.

Panelists noted that students’ learning disabilities or difficulties coping with the COVID-19 pandemic have led to disruption or possibly violence, in some cases, without a clear path for intervention.

“I don’t want to say it’s too late for a 17-year-old,” Asher said, “but if I already know his name because of contact with authorities, we should have been there seven years ago.”

Possible firearms charges for adults

The discussion also addressed ways in which adults can be charged for the use or possession of firearms by children. Recently, a couple from Michigan was convicted and sentenced to prison for his role in facilitating the murder of four students by his teenage son in 2021. Last month, Georgia prosecutors similarly charged a man for allegedly allowing his son’s murder of two students and two teachers through his own actions.

“In Colorado and most states, the parent-child relationship itself does not automatically make parents liable,” said Renée Franchi, a personal injury attorney and former prosecutor. “The true lynchpin of responsibility in these cases is the parents’ knowledge of the potential for harm and their ability to control the child and their actions.”

He added that if a parent provides their child with a firearm and later learns of the potential for violence, they have an obligation to take it away.

“In general, nationwide, courts really put a lot of emphasis on whether the child’s actions were foreseeable to the parents,” Franchi added.

First Deputy Attorney General Robert S. Shapiro reviewed Colorado’s various firearms statutes, which cover illegally providing a gun to a minor, safe gun storage, and failure to report a lost firearm. or stolen, among other things. For an adult to be considered responsible, their actions generally must be conscious or reckless.

“This is not a Second Amendment issue. This is about adults violating their obligation to make society safer,” Shapiro said. “Our job is to make sure law enforcement is adequately aware of these statutes … so they can ask the right questions when developing evidence.”

Denver Handgun Court

Finally, Denver Juvenile Court panelists discussed the “Handgun Intervention Court,” an idea that originated in 2018 and was designed to address the root causes of why children acquire guns. Gun charges among youth in Denver nearly doubled between 2005 and 2022, from 63 to 118, with the increase largely occurring after 2015.

The specialized court, which will begin its 11th group of participants next month, is intended for those accused of possessing a firearm but who do not have a criminal record.

Juvenile defendants who are accepted into the diversion program receive a six-month deferred adjudication with the requirement that they participate in a seven-week program.

“Basically, that means a person pleads guilty to the charge. The guilty plea is not actually on their record; therefore, it is deferred for a period of six months,” said Magistrate Courtney Denson, noting that the boy He will be on probation during that period.

As a former defense attorney, “this is a pretty beneficial deal,” Denson continued. “We not only seek the commitment and participation of young people, but also that of parents.”

When asked about recidivism among program participants, the panelists responded that an analysis is being done.