Denver Post

Cuts erode public safety

Friday, July 11, 2003 - The death of 15-year-old Paul Childs, a developmentally disabled teen shot Saturday by a Denver policeman, is tragedy enough without contemplating the possibility that the officer might not even have been present but for budgetary shortfalls.

As it is, we have questions enough about the death of Childs, whose family called the police in the hope that they could calm him down after the agitated youth threatened to stab his mom. Instead of calming him, a Denver cop shot the boy four times.

On Wednesday, it was learned that Officer James Turney, the reported shooter, had been accused of threatening the life of a woman over the phone on Friday. The woman - identified as Turney's former mother-in- law - was transferred to a voice mail line in the internal affairs division.

Instead of talking to a human being, the woman had to make her complaint to a machine. Internal affairs didn't learn until Monday that Turney allegedly had threatened to shoot the woman.

At that point, Turney was pulled off duty pending investigation of the phone case.

We wonder: Had there been a human on duty at internal affairs, would Turney even have been on the streets on Saturday?

Friday - the nation's birthday - was a holiday, which means double overtime, an impossibility given Denver's budget woes and severe cost-cutting measures. So Turney's ex-mother- in-law talked to a machine instead of a flesh-and-blood police officer.

But what's caused the budgetary crisis for Denver and, indeed, the entire state of Colorado, is the unintended interaction of the 1982 Gallagher Amendment to limit residential property taxes; the 1992 Taxpayer's Bill of Rights and Amendment 23, the 2000 ballot measure that mandates never- ending increases in public-school funding no matter how much other programs must be slashed. Together, this toxic combination of ingredients adds up to a poison pill for effective government.

Because the modern world is a far more complex place, people have to rely more and more on government to provide certain indispensable services, not the least of which is public safety. Whether tax-fighters like it or not, protecting the people (with armies from external threats and with cops from the criminals among us) tops the list of important government functions.

We'll never know if the outcome at the Childs home on East Thrill Place would have been different but for the fact that Turney was there.

Three other officers, including one who had received crisis intervention training also were on the scene. In addition, two Tasers - non-lethal weapons that can incapacitate but not kill a person - were available but not used. The Denver cops also have added other less-deadly weapons to their arsenal, including bean-bag shotguns.

We still wonder why four trained cops couldn't disarm a confused, disabled teen-age boy without killing him. And we also wonder if Paul Childs died in part because of the penury and shortsightedness of those who have imposed unworkable fiscal restraints on Colorado government.