DENVER – In a letter sent this morning, the ACLU of Colorado demanded that the Denver Parks Department stop enforcement of an unconstitutional and ineffective temporary directive authorizing police to banish people from city parks, without a hearing, conviction, or other due process, based on mere suspicion of illegal drug activity.

“Denver’s program of expelling persons from public parks is an end run around constitutional protections,” said ACLU of Colorado Legal Director Mark Silverstein. “Now that we have seen the program in operation, we also know that it has failed to target the dangerous and threatening behaviors that City officials cited to justify this drastic measure.”

The six-month program was initiated by the Parks Department without an ordinance or vote of the City Council on September 1, 2016. Although the temporary directive authorizing the program is set to expire at the end of February, the Parks Director stated it might then be adopted as a permanent rule.

The program gives police officers unilateral authority to ban persons suspected of “illegal drug activity” from city parks.  According to the directive, a person “need not be charged, tried or convicted of any crime, infraction, or administrative citation” for a suspension notice to be issued or effective. A ban lasts for 90 days and re-entry is punishable by up to a year in jail.

Denver officials justified the banishment program as necessary to combat what they characterized as a “huge epidemic of heroin use” and associated violent behavior in the parks, but an ACLU review of every suspension notice issued pursuant to the Directive shows that expulsions have primarily targeted persons experiencing homelessness who are suspected of simple consumption or possession of marijuana.

In fact, the majority of the 39 suspension notices have been for marijuana-related activities, while only 6 have been for suspected heroin use.  This despite a pledge in writing from the Denver City Attorney’s office to the ACLU that the “illegal drug activity” targeted by the program would not include marijuana.

The ACLU letter asserts that neither the Denver Charter nor Denver ordinances grant the Parks Department the legal authority to expel specific persons from public parks.  Even if the Department has such authority, the letter argues, banishment from public parks violates fundamental constitutional rights.  The ACLU also argues that expelling persons based on a police officer’s suspicion, without a hearing, violates due process.

Finally, the ACLU argues that the program “doesn’t come close to meeting the announced goal of expelling injection drug users or persons responsible for assaults and threatening behavior” and that “enforcement of the directive is consistent with a long line of efforts by the City to use aggressive policing to drive people experiencing homelessness – those who have nowhere else to go – out of public spaces in Denver.”

“These efforts are not only cruel, they are also ineffective.  For houseless park patrons, including those with drug addiction, banishment does absolutely nothing to address the underlying problem of homelessness or addiction.  Instead, banishment from a single City park simply shuffles people experiencing homelessness, and any drug use, from one public space to another.  Thus, enforcement of the Directive has trampled the fundamental rights of park goers to occupy public spaces without meaningfully advancing the City’s interest in increasing the safety and usability of its parks,” wrote Silverstein and ACLU of Colorado Staff Attorney Rebecca Wallace.

The ACLU is calling on Denver to immediately suspend enforcement of the directive, revoke any suspension notices currently in effect, and abandon any efforts to make the banishment program permanent in February.

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DENVER – The City of Aurora has agreed to cancel hundreds of dollars of debt and reimburse nearly $800 in overpayments that James Fisher made to the Aurora Municipal Court while he attempted to resolve rapidly-ballooning fees that he could not afford to pay, according to a settlement announced today by the ACLU of Colorado.

"James Fisher was trapped in a cycle of debt that is all too familiar to thousands of low-income Coloradans ticketed for minor ordinance violations.  He made payment after payment to the court, but his debt continued to grow.  Although Mr. Fisher eventually paid more than double his original fines, the Aurora Municipal Court kept coming back for more, issuing warrants when he missed a payment,” said ACLU of Colorado Legal Director Mark Silverstein. “With this settlement, Mr. Fisher can finally put this nightmare behind him and move on with his life.”

In 2012, Fisher was sentenced to pay $678 in fines for three municipal ordinance violations – two open container tickets issued on the same night and a citation for driving without proof of insurance.

Over the next four years, while Fisher struggled with homelessness and unsteady work as a day laborer, he nonetheless made 19 separate payments to the Court totaling $1498 – more than twice his original fines. Yet, he still owed the court $860. The Court imposed payment schedules that Fisher could not meet, made each of his due dates a court appearance, and then issued “failure to appear” warrants when he could not make a payment.  Municipal courts across Colorado often used these “failure to appear” warrants to coerce payment after the state legislature in 2014 outlawed “failure to pay” warrants in ACLU-backed legislation aimed at curbing debtors’ prisons.

In total, 13 arrest warrants were issued for Mr. Fisher when he was unable to make steady payments.  Each new warrant tacked at least $100 in additional fees onto Fisher’s debt.  On several occasions, the court assessed fees simultaneously across Fisher’s three cases following a single missed payment.  For example, in one instance, Fisher missed a $70 payment that was scheduled in a single case.  Aurora assessed a $25 “Failure to Appear Fee” and a $75 “Warrant Fee” in each of his three active cases, totaling $300 for a single missed payment date.

In 2016, Fisher joined the ACLU of Colorado in testifying before the state legislature in support of a new law to stop Colorado municipal courts from using “failure to appear” warrants to collect payment from indigent defendants who cannot afford to pay.  House Bill 16-1311 passed with strong bipartisan majorities and was signed into law by Governor Hickenlooper last June.

Subsequently, the City of Aurora voluntarily vacated 2,859 warrants that had been issued for non-payment of outstanding debts.  In Fisher’s case, after a negotiation with the ACLU of Colorado, the City further agreed to cancel all of his remaining debt and to reimburse $790 in payments that he had made in excess of his original fines.

“On one hand, I feel like a weight has been lifted off of me. I also feel a sense of pride that I hung in there and fought a good fight,” said Fisher. “I hope this settlement sends a message to the courts and to the community that the ACLU will stand up for people, and that the fight for economic and social justice isn’t over - it’s just getting started.”

“We are thrilled that Mr. Fisher is finally free of the debt cycle that the Aurora Municipal Court had trapped him in for four years,” said ACLU of Colorado Staff Attorney Rebecca Wallace. “But there are still thousands of impoverished Coloradoans who need relief from excessive court debt.  Municipal courts across the state, including Aurora, should be revising their debt collection practices to prevent the continuation of the current two-tiered system of justice – one in which wealthy defendants who commit minor violations quickly pay their fines and move on with their lives, while poor defendants remain indebted and tied to the criminal justice system for years, often paying the court significantly more money than their wealthier counterparts to resolve their case."

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As Donald Trump takes the Oath of Office as President, the American Civil Liberties Union invites you to take your own oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States.  Whatever challenges we may face to principles of due process, privacy, equal protection and freedom from cruelty, the ACLU will stand firm.  The ACLU is ready to defend First Amendment rights of press, protest, speech, and religious freedom for all people.  We will not ignore threats to the rights of immigrants, women, people of color, religious minorities, LGBTQ communities, people with disabilities, people experiencing poverty or homelessness, or anyone else.  What constitutional rights and freedoms are you most committed to upholding and defending?  What do you want to promise in your own People’s Oath?
Starting today, our responses will be to the actions and policies of Trump's administration, not merely to his words or tweets.   Today the ACLU took its first legal action against the Trump Administration. On behalf of the American public, the ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Office of Government Ethics and three other government offices demanding access to key documents concerning Trump’s conflicts of interest.
The ACLU of Colorado will participate in national struggles for freedom and justice while seeking to make Colorado a Civil Liberties Safe Zone, protecting our rights in this state no matter what happens nationally.  Colorado’s legislative session is already underway, including bills that we support to improve police practices, end the death penalty, and stop criminalization of homelessness, and bills we will fight that would allow discrimination in the name of religion or undermine abortion rights in Colorado.  The ACLU of Colorado keeps track of more than a hundred bills each year. To follow what we are doing this year, track our legislative database.
I am awed by and grateful for the outpouring of new members, volunteers and supporters for the ACLU in the last two months—it is what most gives me hope.  Using that support, we are building our capacity for public policy, litigation, education and communication, all in order to protect and advance civil rights and civil liberties in this new political environment. We will protect dissenters if they are silenced, activists if they are spied upon, women who could lose their reproductive rights, immigrant families that could be ripped apart, youth who have been caught up in the criminal justice system, people who can’t afford bail or bond, and anyone vulnerable to having their rights denied.
The ACLU of Colorado will need your support not just today, but throughout the next four years and beyond.  We work in coalition with dozens of partner organizations, and they will need your support as well.  We have an incredible community of people and organizations in this state committed to the basic principles of democracy and the Constitution, and we all need each other now.   Ultimately, the promises of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are for everyone, so no matter who you are or who you voted for, the ACLU is defending your rights, too.  What better way to express those rights than to take your own Oath of Office as an American today?