policing

Last month, the Montezuma County Board of Commissioners voted to cut 10 positions from the Sheriff’s Office. In response, employees have petitioned the state of Colorado to begin the process of collective bargaining in the new year. Allen Phelps is a detective at the Montezuma County Sheriff’s Office and the president of Mesa Verde Lodge 74 Fraternal Order of Police. Without proper staffing levels, Phelps says the office is unable to adequately deal with the number of homicides, sexual assaults and property crimes that occur in the county. Phelps says 70 of 72 employees at the office signed petitions in favor of collective bargaining, which will now initiate a ballot election. And a plane crash in a forest north of Dolores resulted in two deaths this past weekend.

A bill aiming to prevent fentanyl overdoses barely survived its first test in the Colorado Senate. And Colorado health officials say a person working on a farm with infected poultry tested positive for avian influenza this week, but officials also say there is little risk to public health.

America’s largest homebuilder is buying a water resources company with holdings throughout the Colorado River Basin. And the city of Moab has hired a new police chief after eight tumultuous months.

A 2018 murder shocked a small Navajo community just south of Bluff, Utah. Federal agents arrested a suspect later that year. But since then the victim’s family has lived without closure. And in fear.

The Navajo Nation has around 250 police officers for some 27,000 square miles. That’s an area just larger than West Virginia. Throw jurisdictional constraints for county police in the mix and it means many on the reservation can’t depend on a speedy response to crime.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis is throwing his support behind a package of bills he says will help the state become one of the top ten safest states in the country. And the Montezuma-Cortez RE-1 School District is considering a new schedule for the next academic year, and is looking for community input.

The fate of a Boulder apartment complex police once labeled as a “haven for criminal activity” could soon be altered by a police chief with more faith in data than patrols, a mother tired of living in fear when the sun goes down and a Hispanic officer who says his heritage is helping him gain the trust of residents.

An investigation by NPR and the Mountain West News Bureau found at least 19 people have died since 2016 in tribal detention centers overseen by the Interior Department's Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Tribal forces can investigate and hold non-Native Americans while waiting for back up from state police or federal officers, but they can't arrest them. Tribes say that means criminals going free.