Kind of? We
definitely have history of LE refusing to follow our Extreme Risk Protection Orders (EPRO) Law, which is the law that allows a judge to sign an order to remove weapons from someone they deem a risk to themselves or others and domestic offenders. I'm just not sure about the family members part specifically. After we passed the ERPO, a lot of so-called "constitutional sheriffs" refused to enforce the law. In fact, the first time the bill was introduced, it didn't pass (this was before I was involved in policy) because sheriffs didn't support it, which was extremely disappointing because a big goal of the bill was to
protect LE after a man who was known to have made theats against LE ambushed police in Douglas County, murdering a young deputy named Zachari Parrish.
en.wikipedia.org
The second time we ran it, it passed into law, supported vocally by the sheriff who was Dep. Parrish's supervisor. But multiple other sheriffs said they would not enforce.
Some sheriffs have said they will not enforce the state's new so-called red flag law. These vows have introduced the prospect of uneven access to gun laws depending on where residents live.
www.kunc.org
After a while, the sheriffs stopped vocally opposing the law, but it was pretty clear they weren't enforcing it either. This was an urgent problem for those of us in domestic violence policy because our survivors were filing for ERPOs and regular protection orders (which in CO also require the restrained party to relinquish their guns) and the guns weren't getting taken away. Sheriffs were saying that they didn't know how to seize, secure, and store the guns in a constitutional way--to be fair, even though the original bill explained this pretty well, Colorado does have some extra requirements in our State Constitution protecting firearm ownership. So an excellent policy director in the field wrote a bill laying out procedures for them and a group of DV champion legislators introduced it in 2020.
leg.colorado.gov
The final public hearing was just a couple days before we had to close our Capitol and our legislative session due to COVID! Several of my colleagues and I actually caught COVID testifying. Fortunately, when the legislature reconvened for an emergency session during the summer, they were able to pass this lifesaving bill!
Anyway, two people I will never forget were among the small group testifying against us. This guy, who actually reminds me a bit of ALA in terms of MO:
One of the pipe bombs Bunn told the FBI he made. On May 1, the FBI arrested a Loveland man who was armed with pipe bombs and planning to stage...
coloradotimesrecorder.com
And then there was Janet Huffor, representing the El Paso County Sheriff's Office and the County Sheriffs of Colorado. El Paso County is the location of Colorado Springs. She went on a nonsensical rant that pointed out zero flaws with bill, and basically spent the whole time bragging about how the typical El Paso resident owns dozens of guns (no proof) and about some guy called the Dragon Man who owns an arsenal museum?
So yeah. Colorado has laws that would have prevented this and should have been enforced. We also have (a select few) sheriffs more interested in pandering to the violent fringe than protecting our citizens. Frankly, I hope the victims' families sue them for failing to deal with ALA as the law prescribes.
