Gov. Jared Polis on Sunday suggested law enforcers in El Paso County or the mother of the suspect of the Club Q shooting should have pursued a red flag law order, arguing signs existed of a troubled life that warranted such an action.
"So, right now, in Colorado, you could have parents or family members go for an extreme risk protection order or red flag law. That's fairly common," Gov. Jared Polis said on "Face the Nation" on Sunday. "It wasn't pursued in this instance by the mother. You can also have a local sheriff agency do it. In this case, it wasn't pursued by the local sheriff agency."
He added: "I'm sure what will be looked into is why wasn't it pursued."
Colorado's red flag law, which the state legislature passed in 2019 and went into effect on Jan. 1, 2020, allows family or household members or law enforcement officers to petition the court for a temporary Extreme Risk Protection Order against a person who poses an imminent threat to themselves or others "by having in his or her custody or control a firearm or by purchasing, possessing, or receiving a firearm."
Hundreds of such orders had been sought since the law took effect, but the law's use has been uneven, with some jurisdictions refusing to deploy it. The El Paso County Sheriff's Office has never used it, and the Colorado Springs Police Department has used it twice since it went into effect nearly three years ago.
Polis raised the same points in a separate appearance at NBC News' Meet the Press, where he hinted that Aldrich's case was exactly the kind of case where a red flag order should have been pursued.
"This looks like this would have been a good instance for the use of Colorado's new red flag law, which has been used several hundred times but could have been used even more to prevent these kinds of tragic events or more often to prevent self-harm or suicide," Polis told host Chuck Todd.
"And there were signs in this troubled person's past that he would have been the threat. It could have instigated a red flag law to remove him from having custody over his weapons, while he's experiencing a mental health crisis," Polis added.
The governor was likely referring to the arrest last year of Anderson Lee Aldrich over a bomb threat that forced residents in a Lorson Ranch neighborhood in southeast Colorado Springs to evacuate from their homes for about three hours. Aldrich's mother, Laura Voepel, reported the bomb threat to law enforcement, saying her son had made threats from within the house shown in the video with a homemade bomb, several weapons and ammunition, the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office said in a press release at the time.
No formal charges were pursued in that case, and the records had been sealed, likely as a result of the state law that automatically prevents the retrieval of criminal records under specific conditions, notably when a case is entirely dismissed. The law also adds a caveat that, if the record isn't automatically sealed, the defendant can petition the court to do so.
Because the records are sealed, more details about the 2021 case aren't available.
The lack of more detailed information prompted George Brauchler, a former district attorney for the 18th Judicial District, to argue against assigning blame to law enforcement or the district attorney in charge of Colorado Springs.
"When and how the case may have been dismissed is of importance to any analysis here. If the DA dismissed it, when did they and why? Was it a recanting or uncooperative victim (mother)? A conclusion that they could not prevail at trial? If the case followed the normal course and was set for a motions hearing and trial, did an unfavorable ruling on evidence cause a dismissal by the DA? Or, perhaps, the judge dismissed the case. If so, why? That same judge would have also sealed the case regardless of how it was dismissed," Brauchler said in his most recent opinion piece for Colorado Politics.
Brauchler added: "Until we know these answers, it is reckless and unfair speculation to suggest law enforcement failed the public in Colorado Springs."
The former DA also called it "pure speculation" to say that, had a red flag order existed, it would have prevented in any way the suspect from obtaining the weapons he used to kill five people and injure many others at Club Q.
"A red flag order only — and I emphasize only — prevents someone from LEGALLY purchasing or acquiring a firearm. If one or both of the parties to a firearm transaction is willing to violate the law, the ERPO is worthless," he said. "In this case, we — the public — do not know how the mass murderer got the instruments he used for evil. If the killer got the gun from a friend, relative, stranger, gun thief, ghost gun maker or non-federally licensed firearms dealer, then no background check would have been run and the red flag order would have stopped nothing."
In his Meet the Press interview, Polis said he and other policymakers will certainly take a "hard look at why the red flag law wasn't used in this case, [and] in the case of the King Sooper's shooter."
An officer and nine other people died when a gunman opened fire at the Table Mesa King Soopers in Boulder County on March 22 last year.
Polis said he's open to tweaking the red flag law and suggested adding new groups of people who can seek an Extreme Risk Protection Order.
"What can be used to better publicize, make available, add different parties to make sure that it's used when it should be used?" he said.
Polis mentioned expanding that ability to one particular group — district attorneys.
"No, it's never comfortable," Polis said of the act of intervening to pursue a red flag order. "And that's why you want to look at the ability of law enforcement, potentially expanding that to the DAs, to be able to do this, too. But it's certainly better than the alternative of doing nothing or having no tools and watching somebody at risk sadly take their own life or the life of others."
In Colorado, it's limited to law enforcement and family or household members, including former partners. In some states, only law enforcement can seek the order. In others, however, the list is much longer, including medical professionals in Hawaii, Connecticut and New York; mental health professionals in Maryland; employers in California, and district attorneys in Virginia and New York.
Massachusetts allows gun licensing professionals to apply for the protection orders. Vermont allows its state's attorney general to seek ERPOs.
New York recently tweaked its 2019 law to allow health-care professionals to join law enforcement, family members and schools in the ability to seek a red flag order.
Citing media reports, Polis also said that the suspect had two guns, one of which might have been a "ghost gun" — a weapon assembled at home and which therefore bore no serial number.
Polis said while the focus on gun policy is appropriate, he urged policymakers to include mental health as they look for ways to reduce gun violence and to also be mindful of their rhetoric in the public square.
"We know that when you're saying incendiary things, somebody who's not well-balanced can hear those things and think that what they're doing is heroic, when it's actually horrific crime that kills innocent people. So, we really need to be mindful of the rhetoric, try to heal people, bring people together, and never cast one group of Americans against another."
