By Kaitlin Durbin
The Gazette
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Colorado Springs Police Officer Jessica Kuhn’s first call on a recent shift was for an irate 7-year-old who threw desks and destroyed school property.
The boy was determined not to cooperate with authority figures, but when Kuhn sat next to him and asked about his family, favorite video games and his alleged superpowers, he caved.
He was upset and stressed, he told her: His parents split, he had to move to this new school, and his grandmother was losing their house.
“I see a lot of fights at home and learn a lot of bad words,” the child told her.
Later, the Gold Hill division officer gave a ride home to an elderly woman who was confused about where she was and had been dropped off at the fire department.
The interactions were witnessed during The Gazette’s recent ride along with officers. The snapshots of policing in each of the city’s four divisions revealed a similar cadence: minor domestic disputes, warrant arrests, welfare checks and mediation. During the Gazette’s 20 hours shadowing, officers never drew their guns.
The experience was contrary to a recent narrative in Colorado Springs - and nationwide - that officers are overloaded with dangerous calls.
The city mourned two mass shootings last year; this year, there have been 17 homicides; officers have had to shoot, and in some cases kill, armed suspects; and Police Chief Peter Carey announced an immediate reorganization to mend a “critical” staffing shortage that he said put citizens and officers at risk.
To compound issues, police routinely report only their most exciting calls, usually those that involve weapons, violence or an important arrest.
The perception is that all day, every day, officers are responding to life-threatening calls in a city filled with criminals. In reality, those calls are the smallest portion of what city police do.
The truth is, officers never know when a call might turn violent, but from the passenger side of a police cruiser, it appears they’re more likely to help citizens than be threatened by them.
“Nothing is ever the way that it seems,” Kuhn said.
During the rides, officers did make five arrests in four separate incidents.
In Sand Creek, two people were arrested, one for driving with an expired license and the other on an outstanding warrant.
Falcon Division Officer Phil Strevett spent nearly a third of his 10-hour shift sorting out a domestic dispute that resulted in a double arrest. The woman punched a man she was letting live in her storage unit and he keyed her car.
The fifth arrest stemmed from a child custody dispute in Stetson Hills. The initial call was that a man threatened the mother of his child with a gun. When police arrived, they found no weapon and arrested the mother on suspicion of trespassing into the man’s home to take back her son.
Any one of those calls could have turned dangerous, Sand Creek Officer Brady Mitts said.
He recalled being watched by a suspicious vehicle during a routine traffic stop. When he caught up with the driver to ask what was going on, a baseball bat was lying in the passenger seat. The driver told Mitts he was watching him because a white cop had pulled over a black driver.
Offenders being arrested on warrants they had long been able to avoid also can put up a fight if police aren’t ready, Mitts said. That’s why they try to have “more cops than suspects” at the scene “to control the situation and increase safety.”
Lately, that hasn’t always been possible with the city fighting staffing issues, Mitts admitted, but it’s a reality of the job, he said.
“It’s not unusual that we have no backup,” Mitts said. “That can happen even with 100-plus extra officers, because we can get tied up on calls.”
The five arrests, for example, collectively tied up at least 11 hours of police time in vetting witnesses, writing up arrest papers and driving suspects to jail. It’s a long process that can quickly eat up an officer’s shift, Stetson Hills Officer Rachel Cruz-Rodgers agreed.
“People don’t realize we have to document everything and document it well,” Cruz-Rodgers said.
For most officers’ duties, though, handcuffs aren’t required and threats are minimal.
In Sand Creek, Mitts gave an elderly woman directions to a health center and worked with a deaf man to retrieve a stolen Xbox.
Strevett in Falcon stopped to help a driver whose car was smoking at a stoplight and gave a warning to a driver who tried to make the yellow light.
Cruz-Rodgers listened to custody disputes, resolved a mistaken “prowler” call involving an upset landlord and a neighbor who didn’t want to let Comcast on her property to set up Internet, and helped settle an argument between brothers.
Kuhn checked a vacant house for drug activity and assisted on two minor traffic crashes.
None of the officers had to use force under The Gazette’s watch. None even raised their voices or handled violent offenders accused of serious crimes.
Neither did their counterparts, who were heard on the scanner responding to suspected suicides, cold burglaries, traffic crashes and welfare checks.
Before sending the now calm 7-year-old boy home with his dad, Kuhn “raced” him to her car and flashed her red and blue lights. She hadn’t made a big arrest that rounded up dangerous criminals and it did nothing to impact drug issues in the city, but policing also means being there for a boy on a tough day, she said.
“This is what people never get to see,” Kuhn said.