In her nearly ten years as Denver District Attorney, Beth McCann has never seen a murder defendant as young as the one accused of killing sixty-year-old grandfather Richard Sanchez in January.
"Never that young, no," she says of the thirteen-year-old suspect, who is being tried as a juvenile.
"We had a fourteen-year-old who allegedly committed murder, and that was fairly recent, too," McCann says. "But thirteen is very, very young. Prosecutors don't usually see thirteen-year-olds in murder cases."
On January 27, Sanchez was riding on an RTD bus heading along South Federal Boulevard when the thirteen-year-old defendant got upset that Sanchez was blocking an aisle with his leg. "It appears there was verbal exchange," the Denver Police Department reported in a February 2 statement.
The thirteen-year-old pulled out a handgun and shot Sanchez multiple times, according to investigators; a second victim suffered a minor injury during the mayhem and was treated at the scene.
While the suspects may not be quite so young, similar stories have grabbed headlines across Colorado over the past few years, with district attorneys and other experts telling Westword that even as crime overall is going down, youth violence in the state has reached "crisis levels."
And it's only getting worse.
In Adams County last month, murder charges were filed against sixteen-year-old Devin Padilla, who allegedly shot and killed a nineteen-year-old girl as she was driving by Padilla and another teen in the 1900 block of Sherrelwood Circle in Federal Heights. Padilla, who has been charged as an adult, was reportedly standing in the street and acting as a lookout during a vehicle break-in when the victim "rolled up on them," according to police.
In Aurora, cops arrested four suspects over the past half year — including one nabbed in December — for the August 2023 shooting of a 49-year-old man who was attempting to take back scooters that they reportedly stole from his home. The suspects were all under the age of eighteen at the time of the shooting, according to Aurora Police Department officials; the youngest was fifteen. All four are facing first-degree murder and aggravated robbery charges.
In Denver, a teenager named Remi Cordova — who is accused of killing a woman in February 2021 when he was just fourteen — found out in December that he'd be tried as an adult. "He shot a woman who was driving, a young mother," McCann says. "There was an incident with the car, and he got out of the car with a long rifle, a long gun, and allegedly shot and killed her."
Eighteen-year-old Neshon Johnson was reportedly driving Cordova around when they got in a minor accident on Colfax Avenue with a car driven by 32-year-old Pamela Cabriales. According to prosecutors, both Johnson and Cordova were gang members, and Cordova retaliated by shooting Cabriales. 
"I am literally shocked and frightened by some of the things I'm seeing in terms of what kids are doing," says DA Brian Mason of the 17th Judicial District, which covers Adams and Broomfield counties. "Every single one of these crimes is senseless. Every single one of them. And that's why they're so frightening. There's no way to predict when someone is going to shoot a gun over a ridiculous conflict. Kids are literally killing kids, and they are fighting over the same things that kids have fought over for time immemorial. But they are now bringing guns to the fight. I have filed a homicide case that was about a purse; I have filed a homicide case that was committed over a girl; I have filed a homicide case over a pair of jeans."
According to Mason, younger and younger kids are committing more violent crimes than ever before. "There needs to be a wake-up call to our entire community," he says.
In McCann's opinion, youth violence — particularly with guns — is the most serious issue facing not just Denver, but Colorado as a whole right now. While fentanyl "is the other big one," she says that violent juvenile crime is something that she's grown more and more concerned about over the years.
"We have seen a pretty dramatic increase in juveniles with handguns in particular over the last few years," she says.
Denver's Handgun Intervention Program was rolled out in 2021 to offer second chances to minors convicted of first-time, non-violent firearm offenses. Anyone under the age of eighteen who doesn't have any priors and qualifies is eligible to take part in a six-week educational class and six months of probation, leading to their convictions being expunged.
"What we hear from the kids in this program is that he or she feels they have to carry a gun to feel safe," McCann says. "They feel like they have to carry a gun because everybody else has a gun. So it's an issue that we all need to be concerned about and focused on."
DA John Kellner represents the 18th Judicial District — which covers Arapahoe, Douglas, Elbert and Lincoln counties — and he, too, is calling on people to take notice of this deadly increase.
"Youth violence is at crisis levels," he tells Westword. "It's been trending that direction for several years and went on steroids throughout the COVID era. And what I see nowadays is more kids, more juveniles with guns that they've bought illegally, oftentimes through social media, or that they trade for. They're much more willing and ready to pull the trigger than youths in the past, and they are carrying guns to basically accomplish their crimes more effectively."
Meanwhile, the number of juveniles being detained and held accountable has decreased by 70 percent owing to statewide bed caps and a combination of new laws that have led to limited use of detention services and increased diversion programs, alternative sentences and more lenient parole.
"For my jurisdiction, which has almost 700,000 people, we only have seventeen beds that by law we can use for kids who commit violent crimes," Mason says.
Colorado's Division of Youth Services was forced to reduce its pre-trial detention capacity from 327 to 215 in 2021, following the passage of SB21-071, also known as the "Limit the Detention of Juveniles Act." The bill was sponsored by Senator Janet Buckner, Representative Lindsey Daugherty and Representative Andrew Boesenecker, Democrats who represent Arapahoe, Larimer, Adams and Jefferson counties.
"They have arbitrarily capped the number of beds for each jurisdiction," Mason says. "And so my staff, on a weekly and sometimes daily basis, has to decide which least-violent juvenile to let out of one of those beds in order to create a space for the juvenile who committed a murder the night before."
The CSI study, titled “The Cost of Juvenile Crime and Its Economic Impact on Colorado,” looked at Colorado crime statistics from 2010 to 2023. Researchers found that since 2010, the total cost of juvenile crime in the state was $3.31 billion. The cost of juvenile crime in 2023 alone was equivalent to $566 per Coloradan.
The concentration of juvenile crime in Colorado is highest in Adams, Fremont, Jefferson, Mesa and Boulder counties. Adams, El Paso, Jefferson and Denver counties account for 58 percent of all juvenile crimes, though they only have 44 percent of the state’s population.
But evidence of youth violence and the toll it's having on society can be found all over.
"We haven't been doing enough"
Beverly Kingston, director of the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence at the University of Colorado Boulder, calls the increasing juvenile crime numbers "heartbreaking"; she believes people could be doing more to help.
"The violence is concerning, no question," she says. "But it's also frustrating when we know we haven't been doing enough. We could be doing so much more to prevent violence."
For instance, we could be implementing "prevention infrastructure," which revolves around the idea that youth violence and the reported risk factors can be treated and addressed like infrastructure or health problems.
"Just like we have roads and bridges, we need to have an infrastructure to prevent violence," Kingston explains. "What we mean by that is, it's basically a network of supportive, dependable relationships and focused resources that are aligned toward preventing violence and promoting healthy youth development. What we want to see is that this infrastructure is going to address the root causes of violence. So that means we're going to address those risk and protective factors. We want to decrease the risk and increase the protection. ... Just like for heart disease or for cancer, there are risk factors for violence. And it's very similar in some ways. We can think of violence as sort of a disease."
According to Kingston, prevention infrastructure includes both intervention and prevention tactics. This can be implemented through free programs like Aurora's focused-deterrence SAVE (Standing Against Violence Every Day) initiative or the national Nurse-Family Partnership program, which helps educate low-income women who are having their first child. Each is geared toward stopping youth violence in its tracks at different stages of a person's life, before it's ultimately too late.
"These kids that are all involved in these shootings, they all needed some sort of intervention or prevention," Kingston notes. "For some, they're past prevention at this point. They had firearms, and the fact that they ended it in homicide tells me that there's something extreme going on in the lives of these kids that needed intervention. And when I'm thinking about prevention, it's something you want to do throughout the life course. Some of the best programs that have the strongest effects for preventing future violence start before kids are born, like Nurse-Family Partnership, which works with first-time mothers when they're pregnant, and it works with that mom until the kiddo is two, and ultimately prevents future violence. It's getting that family on track initially, and then you want to continue with programs throughout the life course. You want to have the next one when kids are in preschool, teaching them social and emotional learning skills."
Research shows that many kids in preschool get kicked out for behavior problems and go on to commit violent acts once they're older. "We want to make sure those kids don't just get kicked out of preschool, but that they get the support that they need to get back on track," she says. "But it can't just be through preschool. It has to be throughout elementary school, middle school and high school. And so this is what I'm talking about. We need to build an infrastructure that is getting kids these supports, getting their families the supports."
Aurora Police Department Captain Mike Hanifin, co-director of the SAVE program launched by the city last August, tells Westword that focus deterrence and reaching out to at-risk youths before they wind up behind bars, rather than after, can be vital when it comes to bringing down the youth violence numbers.
"We are focusing our efforts, our partners — law enforcement, social services, the community — we're all focusing on the very small percentage of young people that have the highest rate of recidivism in terms of gun crime and violent crime," Hanifin explains. "Our primary, overarching goal is to keep the young men and women who are most at risk for violence in our community alive, safe and free. And by free, we mean out of prison. So we are trying to stop the next shooting, the next person from pulling the trigger, and the next victim of gun violence."
Under the SAVE program, the APD identifies residents between the ages of fourteen and 25 who might be at risk for violence and inform them of ways they can receive support through various city services.
"Our traditional response to violent crime is, crime happens, and as we respond to it, we investigate, we identify the perpetrator, we make an arrest and cooperate with prosecution," Hanifin says. "This is not that. What this is, truly, is violence intervention and prevention. This program is for community by community. So all of the law enforcement partners, probation officers, parole, the DEA, the U.S. attorney, we are all working together with community partners, social services, health care and mental health providers, etc. We as a group present candidates each week based on four different things: We look at the fatal and non-fatal shootings every week, see who is involved or what groups; [we see] where we can do the intervention; we look at detective referrals, SRO referrals; and also, we compile who's talking about guns, specific group names in CAD calls and reports that are taken. So that's where we look for groups and individuals."
Through the SAVE program, candidates are given a custom notification each week as a way to touch base. "A custom notification is where we go out into the community, meet them where they are, typically at their residence," Hanifin explains. "We introduce ourselves as representatives of the SAVE program, and then we talk about the program and deliver them a letter talking about the program. It's basically a formal letter, but it's individualized. Each one has a little paragraph that's individualized to them and their situation. And we talk to them about why we feel they're at risk for violence."
According to Hanifin, the main message is this: "We know who you are, we know what you're doing, and we're not going to tolerate the violence anymore. If you make us, we will stop you. However, we want to give you an off-ramp, if you'll take it." That's where the social services and needs-assessment offer comes in, he says.
"We do it, but based on a hierarchy of needs," Hanifin adds. "Safety and security is first. And then it's behavioral things. What are the behavioral things that are contributing to this group affiliation or person's behaviors? Are they lacking something? Is it substance abuse? Do you do cognitive behavioral therapy? Any type of specialized counseling? And then it's also housing assistance, food assistance, and it goes down from there to IDs, driver's license, job training, job placement, etc. It's a 360 approach.
"If they will take it, it's voluntary," he continues. "They don't have to take the services. We give them that strong law enforcement message that we know who you are now and we're watching, so if you do commit a crime, there'll be swift consequences. But it's really about trying to get them to take that offer of support and do a needs assessment. We take a family approach. It's not investigatory; we won't talk about any open cases; we can't fix what's happened in the past. It's from that moment going forward."
According to Hanifin, one of the things that has made the SAVE program successful is that it targets the issue of youth violence at its core — by singling out the people who are directly involved or at risk.
"The reason why focus deterrence strategies are so successful — and there's a lot of data and science out there about this — are two things," he explains. "One, you strip away their anonymity. You are now going to them and saying, 'We know who you are and what you're doing. We're watching.' And the second is that you offer concrete services and support."
Still, there's a lot to learn and understand about what young people are going through, not just identifying and finding them.
Adverse childhood experiences
According to experts, one of the best ways to assess and understand youth violence today is by looking at adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs, which are potentially traumatic events that occur during childhood.
"Those adverse childhood experiences put those kids and young people at more risk for violence and also other problem behaviors in the future," Kingston says. "We need to have programs for those that are more at risk."
According to McCann, research shows that if a kid grows up in an environment where he or she is exposed to a lot of violence, it can change the chemistry of their brain.
"They don't have the same empathy or understanding of the value of life," she says. "We see kids, when I read their background materials, we often see kids who have pretty horrific home lives. They've moved many times, father may be in jail, mother may be a drug addict, grandmother's raising the kid. There's just a lot of things that make it really hard for that kid to grow up in a positive way."
If they learn to manage their emotions through proper conflict resolution and have positive relationships, Kingston says, ideally youth conflicts won't escalate into violence.
"Some of it's impulsive and is just going to happen, but I suspect that with some of these young people, other people were concerned about their behavior," Kingston says. "If you start to talk to the school counselor or other people involved, there's going to be a pattern of things in this kiddo's life that other people were concerned about. And so I feel that what we really need is to be able to have other people watching out for the kids."
In the case of the accused RTD bus shooter, Kingston says: "Maybe this thirteen-year-old had a friend who knew that he had a firearm, and that friend might have been concerned about that but didn't know what to do. Didn't know who to tell, how to tell. In Colorado, we've got Safe2Tell. And that's a great system. However, Safe2Tell does go to law enforcement, and in communities of color, we know that that can be a concern. So we're trying to do things to work on that."
Building up systems and programs in Colorado that encourage young people to speak out and also teach them to help younger peers can be done through mentoring programs, McCann says, which are provided through services like Denver's Youth Violence Prevention Center (YVPC-D).
"We're finding that one of the things that will make the most difference for a kid is having at least one engaged adult — one adult that cares about the kid — that the kid can talk to or go to," McCann tells Westword. "So I think those kinds of programs can be very influential."Hearing from the kids themselves
Through the YVPC-D's Game Changers program, high school students Tre’Zurh Kimbrough, Khloe Yizar and Mckiya Johnson have become well equipped with the tools they need to not only feel comfortable addressing issues internally, but also dealing with them around others, even strangers.
"We discuss very hard things and have found community in one another," says Kimbrough, a sixteen-year-old DPS student. "It's been very resourceful and feels gratifying to be able to make a plan and know that as long as I have this info, I am prepared and can help others be prepared and improve the community."
Members of Game Changers range in age from fourteen to 25. The program uses research and a hands-on approach to determine whether youth violence can be reduced by working with people who are not at risk but want to help.
"It gives us the confidence and power to know how we can change things," says Yizar, a fourteen-year-old APS student.
Johnson, a sixteen-year-old DPS student, tells Westword: "It has not only opened my eyes to all the violence that happens and why, but it also has given me a chance to advocate and speak out. I wouldn't have gotten the opportunity to speak about the risk factors we endure as the young people we are."
According to these three, risk factors they've learned about include ACEs and places where people live. "You can look at maps and data and see where the risk factors are higher," Johnson says. "Places like Park Hill, Montbello. There are less opportunities to make it out. So things are more likely to happen because of the higher risk factors we have."
For Kimbrough, the most important thing about Game Changers and YVPC-D as a whole is that she and others in the program have the power to teach other people their age. "By learning something, you're able to have the ability to possibly stop it from happening," she says.
Yizar cites a saying from Nobel Peace Prize winner and South African theologian Desmond Tutu. "There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river," he says. "We need to go upstream and find out why they're falling in."
The original lead art on this story has been replaced. Read why here.
"Never that young, no," she says of the thirteen-year-old suspect, who is being tried as a juvenile.
"We had a fourteen-year-old who allegedly committed murder, and that was fairly recent, too," McCann says. "But thirteen is very, very young. Prosecutors don't usually see thirteen-year-olds in murder cases."
On January 27, Sanchez was riding on an RTD bus heading along South Federal Boulevard when the thirteen-year-old defendant got upset that Sanchez was blocking an aisle with his leg. "It appears there was verbal exchange," the Denver Police Department reported in a February 2 statement.
The thirteen-year-old pulled out a handgun and shot Sanchez multiple times, according to investigators; a second victim suffered a minor injury during the mayhem and was treated at the scene.
While the suspects may not be quite so young, similar stories have grabbed headlines across Colorado over the past few years, with district attorneys and other experts telling Westword that even as crime overall is going down, youth violence in the state has reached "crisis levels."
And it's only getting worse.
In Adams County last month, murder charges were filed against sixteen-year-old Devin Padilla, who allegedly shot and killed a nineteen-year-old girl as she was driving by Padilla and another teen in the 1900 block of Sherrelwood Circle in Federal Heights. Padilla, who has been charged as an adult, was reportedly standing in the street and acting as a lookout during a vehicle break-in when the victim "rolled up on them," according to police.
In Aurora, cops arrested four suspects over the past half year — including one nabbed in December — for the August 2023 shooting of a 49-year-old man who was attempting to take back scooters that they reportedly stole from his home. The suspects were all under the age of eighteen at the time of the shooting, according to Aurora Police Department officials; the youngest was fifteen. All four are facing first-degree murder and aggravated robbery charges.
In Denver, a teenager named Remi Cordova — who is accused of killing a woman in February 2021 when he was just fourteen — found out in December that he'd be tried as an adult. "He shot a woman who was driving, a young mother," McCann says. "There was an incident with the car, and he got out of the car with a long rifle, a long gun, and allegedly shot and killed her."
Eighteen-year-old Neshon Johnson was reportedly driving Cordova around when they got in a minor accident on Colfax Avenue with a car driven by 32-year-old Pamela Cabriales. According to prosecutors, both Johnson and Cordova were gang members, and Cordova retaliated by shooting Cabriales.
Remi Cordova was just fourteen years old when he allegedly shot and killed Pamela Cabriales.
CBS/YouTube
"I am literally shocked and frightened by some of the things I'm seeing in terms of what kids are doing," says DA Brian Mason of the 17th Judicial District, which covers Adams and Broomfield counties. "Every single one of these crimes is senseless. Every single one of them. And that's why they're so frightening. There's no way to predict when someone is going to shoot a gun over a ridiculous conflict. Kids are literally killing kids, and they are fighting over the same things that kids have fought over for time immemorial. But they are now bringing guns to the fight. I have filed a homicide case that was about a purse; I have filed a homicide case that was committed over a girl; I have filed a homicide case over a pair of jeans."
According to Mason, younger and younger kids are committing more violent crimes than ever before. "There needs to be a wake-up call to our entire community," he says.
In McCann's opinion, youth violence — particularly with guns — is the most serious issue facing not just Denver, but Colorado as a whole right now. While fentanyl "is the other big one," she says that violent juvenile crime is something that she's grown more and more concerned about over the years.
"We have seen a pretty dramatic increase in juveniles with handguns in particular over the last few years," she says.
Denver's Handgun Intervention Program was rolled out in 2021 to offer second chances to minors convicted of first-time, non-violent firearm offenses. Anyone under the age of eighteen who doesn't have any priors and qualifies is eligible to take part in a six-week educational class and six months of probation, leading to their convictions being expunged.
"What we hear from the kids in this program is that he or she feels they have to carry a gun to feel safe," McCann says. "They feel like they have to carry a gun because everybody else has a gun. So it's an issue that we all need to be concerned about and focused on."
DA John Kellner represents the 18th Judicial District — which covers Arapahoe, Douglas, Elbert and Lincoln counties — and he, too, is calling on people to take notice of this deadly increase.
"Youth violence is at crisis levels," he tells Westword. "It's been trending that direction for several years and went on steroids throughout the COVID era. And what I see nowadays is more kids, more juveniles with guns that they've bought illegally, oftentimes through social media, or that they trade for. They're much more willing and ready to pull the trigger than youths in the past, and they are carrying guns to basically accomplish their crimes more effectively."
What the data says
What the data says
Since 2010, the juvenile murder rate in Colorado has skyrocketed by 210 percent, according to the Common Sense Institute, a non-partisan research institute that released a study this month focusing on youth crime in the Centennial State. Youth crimes against persons are up by 16.6 percent, violent crimes by 7 percent, robberies by 12 percent, and aggravated assaults by 17 percent.
District Attorney Brian Mason says he's "shocked and frightened" by the crimes he sees kids committing.
Evan Semón
"For my jurisdiction, which has almost 700,000 people, we only have seventeen beds that by law we can use for kids who commit violent crimes," Mason says.
Colorado's Division of Youth Services was forced to reduce its pre-trial detention capacity from 327 to 215 in 2021, following the passage of SB21-071, also known as the "Limit the Detention of Juveniles Act." The bill was sponsored by Senator Janet Buckner, Representative Lindsey Daugherty and Representative Andrew Boesenecker, Democrats who represent Arapahoe, Larimer, Adams and Jefferson counties.
"They have arbitrarily capped the number of beds for each jurisdiction," Mason says. "And so my staff, on a weekly and sometimes daily basis, has to decide which least-violent juvenile to let out of one of those beds in order to create a space for the juvenile who committed a murder the night before."
The CSI study, titled “The Cost of Juvenile Crime and Its Economic Impact on Colorado,” looked at Colorado crime statistics from 2010 to 2023. Researchers found that since 2010, the total cost of juvenile crime in the state was $3.31 billion. The cost of juvenile crime in 2023 alone was equivalent to $566 per Coloradan.
The concentration of juvenile crime in Colorado is highest in Adams, Fremont, Jefferson, Mesa and Boulder counties. Adams, El Paso, Jefferson and Denver counties account for 58 percent of all juvenile crimes, though they only have 44 percent of the state’s population.
But evidence of youth violence and the toll it's having on society can be found all over.
"We haven't been doing enough"
Beverly Kingston, director of the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence at the University of Colorado Boulder, calls the increasing juvenile crime numbers "heartbreaking"; she believes people could be doing more to help. "The violence is concerning, no question," she says. "But it's also frustrating when we know we haven't been doing enough. We could be doing so much more to prevent violence."
For instance, we could be implementing "prevention infrastructure," which revolves around the idea that youth violence and the reported risk factors can be treated and addressed like infrastructure or health problems.
"Just like we have roads and bridges, we need to have an infrastructure to prevent violence," Kingston explains. "What we mean by that is, it's basically a network of supportive, dependable relationships and focused resources that are aligned toward preventing violence and promoting healthy youth development. What we want to see is that this infrastructure is going to address the root causes of violence. So that means we're going to address those risk and protective factors. We want to decrease the risk and increase the protection. ... Just like for heart disease or for cancer, there are risk factors for violence. And it's very similar in some ways. We can think of violence as sort of a disease."
According to Kingston, prevention infrastructure includes both intervention and prevention tactics. This can be implemented through free programs like Aurora's focused-deterrence SAVE (Standing Against Violence Every Day) initiative or the national Nurse-Family Partnership program, which helps educate low-income women who are having their first child. Each is geared toward stopping youth violence in its tracks at different stages of a person's life, before it's ultimately too late.
"These kids that are all involved in these shootings, they all needed some sort of intervention or prevention," Kingston notes. "For some, they're past prevention at this point. They had firearms, and the fact that they ended it in homicide tells me that there's something extreme going on in the lives of these kids that needed intervention. And when I'm thinking about prevention, it's something you want to do throughout the life course. Some of the best programs that have the strongest effects for preventing future violence start before kids are born, like Nurse-Family Partnership, which works with first-time mothers when they're pregnant, and it works with that mom until the kiddo is two, and ultimately prevents future violence. It's getting that family on track initially, and then you want to continue with programs throughout the life course. You want to have the next one when kids are in preschool, teaching them social and emotional learning skills."
Research shows that many kids in preschool get kicked out for behavior problems and go on to commit violent acts once they're older. "We want to make sure those kids don't just get kicked out of preschool, but that they get the support that they need to get back on track," she says. "But it can't just be through preschool. It has to be throughout elementary school, middle school and high school. And so this is what I'm talking about. We need to build an infrastructure that is getting kids these supports, getting their families the supports."
Aurora Police Department Captain Mike Hanifin, co-director of the SAVE program launched by the city last August, tells Westword that focus deterrence and reaching out to at-risk youths before they wind up behind bars, rather than after, can be vital when it comes to bringing down the youth violence numbers.
"We are focusing our efforts, our partners — law enforcement, social services, the community — we're all focusing on the very small percentage of young people that have the highest rate of recidivism in terms of gun crime and violent crime," Hanifin explains. "Our primary, overarching goal is to keep the young men and women who are most at risk for violence in our community alive, safe and free. And by free, we mean out of prison. So we are trying to stop the next shooting, the next person from pulling the trigger, and the next victim of gun violence."
Under the SAVE program, the APD identifies residents between the ages of fourteen and 25 who might be at risk for violence and inform them of ways they can receive support through various city services.
"Our traditional response to violent crime is, crime happens, and as we respond to it, we investigate, we identify the perpetrator, we make an arrest and cooperate with prosecution," Hanifin says. "This is not that. What this is, truly, is violence intervention and prevention. This program is for community by community. So all of the law enforcement partners, probation officers, parole, the DEA, the U.S. attorney, we are all working together with community partners, social services, health care and mental health providers, etc. We as a group present candidates each week based on four different things: We look at the fatal and non-fatal shootings every week, see who is involved or what groups; [we see] where we can do the intervention; we look at detective referrals, SRO referrals; and also, we compile who's talking about guns, specific group names in CAD calls and reports that are taken. So that's where we look for groups and individuals."
Through the SAVE program, candidates are given a custom notification each week as a way to touch base. "A custom notification is where we go out into the community, meet them where they are, typically at their residence," Hanifin explains. "We introduce ourselves as representatives of the SAVE program, and then we talk about the program and deliver them a letter talking about the program. It's basically a formal letter, but it's individualized. Each one has a little paragraph that's individualized to them and their situation. And we talk to them about why we feel they're at risk for violence."
According to Hanifin, the main message is this: "We know who you are, we know what you're doing, and we're not going to tolerate the violence anymore. If you make us, we will stop you. However, we want to give you an off-ramp, if you'll take it." That's where the social services and needs-assessment offer comes in, he says.
"We do it, but based on a hierarchy of needs," Hanifin adds. "Safety and security is first. And then it's behavioral things. What are the behavioral things that are contributing to this group affiliation or person's behaviors? Are they lacking something? Is it substance abuse? Do you do cognitive behavioral therapy? Any type of specialized counseling? And then it's also housing assistance, food assistance, and it goes down from there to IDs, driver's license, job training, job placement, etc. It's a 360 approach.
"If they will take it, it's voluntary," he continues. "They don't have to take the services. We give them that strong law enforcement message that we know who you are now and we're watching, so if you do commit a crime, there'll be swift consequences. But it's really about trying to get them to take that offer of support and do a needs assessment. We take a family approach. It's not investigatory; we won't talk about any open cases; we can't fix what's happened in the past. It's from that moment going forward."
According to Hanifin, one of the things that has made the SAVE program successful is that it targets the issue of youth violence at its core — by singling out the people who are directly involved or at risk.
"The reason why focus deterrence strategies are so successful — and there's a lot of data and science out there about this — are two things," he explains. "One, you strip away their anonymity. You are now going to them and saying, 'We know who you are and what you're doing. We're watching.' And the second is that you offer concrete services and support."
Still, there's a lot to learn and understand about what young people are going through, not just identifying and finding them.
Adverse childhood experiences
According to experts, one of the best ways to assess and understand youth violence today is by looking at adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs, which are potentially traumatic events that occur during childhood."Those adverse childhood experiences put those kids and young people at more risk for violence and also other problem behaviors in the future," Kingston says. "We need to have programs for those that are more at risk."
According to McCann, research shows that if a kid grows up in an environment where he or she is exposed to a lot of violence, it can change the chemistry of their brain.
"They don't have the same empathy or understanding of the value of life," she says. "We see kids, when I read their background materials, we often see kids who have pretty horrific home lives. They've moved many times, father may be in jail, mother may be a drug addict, grandmother's raising the kid. There's just a lot of things that make it really hard for that kid to grow up in a positive way."
If they learn to manage their emotions through proper conflict resolution and have positive relationships, Kingston says, ideally youth conflicts won't escalate into violence.
"Some of it's impulsive and is just going to happen, but I suspect that with some of these young people, other people were concerned about their behavior," Kingston says. "If you start to talk to the school counselor or other people involved, there's going to be a pattern of things in this kiddo's life that other people were concerned about. And so I feel that what we really need is to be able to have other people watching out for the kids."
In the case of the accused RTD bus shooter, Kingston says: "Maybe this thirteen-year-old had a friend who knew that he had a firearm, and that friend might have been concerned about that but didn't know what to do. Didn't know who to tell, how to tell. In Colorado, we've got Safe2Tell. And that's a great system. However, Safe2Tell does go to law enforcement, and in communities of color, we know that that can be a concern. So we're trying to do things to work on that."
Building up systems and programs in Colorado that encourage young people to speak out and also teach them to help younger peers can be done through mentoring programs, McCann says, which are provided through services like Denver's Youth Violence Prevention Center (YVPC-D).
"We're finding that one of the things that will make the most difference for a kid is having at least one engaged adult — one adult that cares about the kid — that the kid can talk to or go to," McCann tells Westword. "So I think those kinds of programs can be very influential."
Hearing from the kids themselves
Through the YVPC-D's Game Changers program, high school students Tre’Zurh Kimbrough, Khloe Yizar and Mckiya Johnson have become well equipped with the tools they need to not only feel comfortable addressing issues internally, but also dealing with them around others, even strangers. "We discuss very hard things and have found community in one another," says Kimbrough, a sixteen-year-old DPS student. "It's been very resourceful and feels gratifying to be able to make a plan and know that as long as I have this info, I am prepared and can help others be prepared and improve the community."
Members of Game Changers range in age from fourteen to 25. The program uses research and a hands-on approach to determine whether youth violence can be reduced by working with people who are not at risk but want to help.
"It gives us the confidence and power to know how we can change things," says Yizar, a fourteen-year-old APS student.
Johnson, a sixteen-year-old DPS student, tells Westword: "It has not only opened my eyes to all the violence that happens and why, but it also has given me a chance to advocate and speak out. I wouldn't have gotten the opportunity to speak about the risk factors we endure as the young people we are."
According to these three, risk factors they've learned about include ACEs and places where people live. "You can look at maps and data and see where the risk factors are higher," Johnson says. "Places like Park Hill, Montbello. There are less opportunities to make it out. So things are more likely to happen because of the higher risk factors we have."
For Kimbrough, the most important thing about Game Changers and YVPC-D as a whole is that she and others in the program have the power to teach other people their age. "By learning something, you're able to have the ability to possibly stop it from happening," she says.
Yizar cites a saying from Nobel Peace Prize winner and South African theologian Desmond Tutu. "There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river," he says. "We need to go upstream and find out why they're falling in."
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