Community Safety

In November 2021, CW Sawyer and City of Aurora At-Large Councilmember Curtis Gardner announced a Joint Community Gun Buyback Program that launched in 2022 to help reduce the incidence of gun violence in both cities. RAWtools, a Colorado Springs-based non-profit organization that works with municipalities and faith-based community partners, hosted monthly drive-through gun buyback events. The Denver Broncos partnered with us on our kick off event on March 19th! RAWtools, Inc., was recognized as a recipient of the 2022 Denver Broncos Inspire Change Program and was awarded $35,000.00 thru the teams Social Justice Fund. 

Residents can anonymously turn in firearms for destruction. Trained volunteers then destroy recovered firearms to ATF standards and convert them into garden tools and jewelry. While we know that individuals participating in criminal activity will not typically turn in their firearms at a buyback event, working to reduce the number of available guns in our communities is part of an overall strategy to address gun violence.

In 2022, 906 weapons were taken off the street. 57% of those were classified as semi-automatic or automatic; 51 of them were assault-style; and attendees from all across the state traveled to turn in weapons. That's harm reduction in action. Click here to view the detailed report from each event.(PDF, 95KB) 

The Denver Broncos won ESPN's 2022 Sports Humanitarian Award for their work in the community, including our gun buyback program. Click here to read the Broncos' excellent wrap-up article.

You can watch our presentation on this program in the Safety, Housing, Education, and Homelessness Committee here (starting at 1:18:00 of the recording)!

It is no secret that our crime rates have gone up dramatically. We have seen a 145% rise in property crime, particularly in package theft and auto theft. No District neighborhood has been more impacted by this increase in crime than East Colfax, where residents have seen a 163% rise in violent person-on-person crime in addition to the property crime. To help support the community, our office partnered with DPD and local neighborhood organizations to write a grant application that will pay for staffing for a pilot community policing program along East Colfax from Monaco to Yosemite, and from 11th Ave. to 17th Ave.

We are pleased to announce that the State has awarded us over $260,000 for implementation of this program. The overwhelming support of the District 5 Community – including more than 28 letters and hundreds of petition signatures – put our application over the top. Thank you to all who participated in the process.

Did you know that brighter lighting can enhance community safety? We proved it in 2020 with a lighting study done in East Colfax in partnership with Xcel Energy, DOTI, and the Denver Police Department. We added brighter lighting in a pilot area and were able to reduce crime by almost 30% in that area. To address safety issues in Montclair, our office asked Xcel to donate two lightbulbs to every house in Montclair to help residents light up the neighborhood. Thank you for partnering with us to help stop crime in our neighborhoods! 

In addition to that, our office has partnered with Denver Police Districts 2 and 3 to do a peer-reviewed lighting and crime study of each statistical neighborhood in District 5. Those lighting studies can be viewed in their entirety below:

• Bellevue-Hale(PDF, 302KB)
• Cherry Creek(PDF, 1MB)
• Country Club(PDF, 1MB)
• Hilltop(PDF, 1MB)
• Lowry(PDF, 3MB)
• Montclair(PDF, 1MB)
• Washington Virginia Vale(PDF, 1MB)
• Windsor(PDF, 1MB)

In response to small business concerns about crime and the results of the CPTED study completed for our community policing grant, our office is working to find ways to implement CPTED recommendations. You can download the presentation here.(PPTX, 2MB)

The Department of Safety has funded a pilot program to upgrade 20 small businesses in East Colfax throughout the course of 2023.