A precipitous escalation in adversarial rhetoric between city of Durango and La Plata County officials has seemingly caught both local governments off guard as their chief law enforcement officers fire off letters back and forth.
Sheriff Sean Smith informed the city Aug. 1 that the La Plata County Jail would stop accepting new inmates on municipal charges beginning Aug. 15.
The letter informing the police chiefs of the county’s three municipalities – Ignacio, Bayfield and Durango – of his decision cited the lack of intergovernmental agreements and an acute “explosion” in the jail population as the rationale.
The decision impacts only low-level offenders who blew off court hearings for petty crimes like illegal camping and trespassing.
In a near-immediate response to the sheriff’s letter, Durango City Council convened an executive session. And in a letter to the sheriff dated Aug. 12, Durango Chief of Police Brice Current wrote that the city attorney’s office has been authorized and is prepared to pursue legal action “the moment you refuse a municipal offender.”
Although the jail population was at 173 inmates Wednesday – just above the target population of 170 – Smith said he would continue to accept municipal inmates from Durango, the only municipality that uses the jail, through the end of the week.
The sheriff was in Washington, D.C., at a conference all week and said he wanted to hold more conversations, but was not afraid to refuse inmates if necessary.
“My attorneys feel like we stand on very stable ground legally,” he said.
But Current and Smith told The Durango Herald they have no interest in litigation.
Smith described it as “not what I’ve been asking for since this started,” and Current said he is “not used to firing letters back and forth. I’m used to just having relationships of trust and being able to sit down.”
Nonetheless, the void between the two law enforcement officials is clouded in confusion about why the jail cannot, or will not, accept municipal offenders And at the core of it all is the question of how many beds must the sheriff keep open in the jail and who is entitled to them.
Part of the disconnect seems to be a fundamental lack of understanding about why Smith sent his letter in the first place.
The two-page document lays out a pair of separate concerns, one acute and one long-term.
First, it addresses an immediate capacity issue. In late July, the jail population hit 207, surpassing its operating capacity of 195 inmates.
Although municipal offenders constitute a small portion of the jail’s full capacity – somewhere around 130 jail-bed days in the last seven months, which is less than 1% of the total annual population – Smith said that number needed to come down.
The letter also addressed a long-term issue: County officials were not aware of an intergovernmental agreement between the city and the county addressing the use of the jail. County officials said this left the county vulnerable to expenses incurred through city inmates and meant the county was not being reimbursed at the real cost of housing municipal inmates.
The city eventually produced a 1994 IGA, of which county officials had no knowledge, that appears to remain in effect, although Smith maintains it needs to be updated.
Neither government has expressed resistance around negotiating a new IGA.
After city officials produced the IGA, Smith sent a second letter on Aug. 8 that reiterated capacity concerns.
Given the small number of municipal inmates, which has risen more than tenfold this year but remains small in the scope of total jail beds, Current said he does not understand why the city must bear the consequences of long-term capacity issues.
“I’m just confused as to what we’re discussing here and what the issue is, because if we’re talking capacity, the numbers don’t support that,” Current said.
Smith sees it differently, at least somewhat.
“If you’re already over your number, and you add one or two to it, you’re that much further over,” he said.
He later added that “it’s not just ‘Hey, your two inmates a day are killing us. It’s, ‘We’re trying to manage what we have.’”
Both Smith and Current acknowledged a two-hour conversation that took place before Smith delivered his letter. Smith said the conversation covered the things that are causing confusion, while Current said the conversation touched on the lack of an IGA, but not capacity issues.
The disconnect was not resolved as of Thursday.
Per Smith’s Aug. 1 letter, the La Plata County Detention Center has 311 physical beds. But 30 are considered not usable because they are in a minimum security dormitory-style setting where higher security inmates cannot be held. Another 21 beds are not usable “because of a number of factors,” he wrote, leaving “260 beds that are physically usable in the facility before jail classification standards are considered.”
“This includes parts of the facility that no longer meet American Jail Association (AJA) standards,” he noted.
To ensure beds are always available when needed – and that those beds can meet the security and gender-segregation needs of any inmates who might be brought in – Smith said he considers the jail “full” when it is at 75% capacity, or 190 inmates.
An administrative order issued during the COVID-19 pandemic allowed the sheriff to release certain types of inmates with the intention of keeping the jail population under 170 inmates. According to statistics reported to the state’s Division of Criminal Justice, the county jail had fewer than 170 inmates in quarterly snapshots beginning in the second quarter of 2020 through the first quarter of 2024 (more recent statistics were not available through the state).
Although the jail does have capacity for 195 inmates, Smith negotiated an advantageous health care contract based on a population below 170, and must pay an addition fee (he could not recall how much but said it was “something like a couple dollars a day per person”).
An updated IGA would resolve the cost-per-inmate concerns that Smith has around health care, food and other basic operations expenses.
In the meantime, Smith has said he will reconsider his decision should the inmate population fall below 170 – a number Current can’t fully wrap is head around.
“My budget currently is set at 170 inmates” Smith said. “… I also have an obligation to try to stay within my budgetary limits, by statute. I’m not allowed to just blow my budget.”
There are inmates under the jurisdiction of four entities in the La Plata County Jail.
A small minority are there on municipal charges; the bulk of the population is there on county or state charges; about 20 beds per day area occupied by federal inmates in the custody of the U.S. Marshals.
Smith must hold county and state inmates according to the law. If any inmate has been sentenced to more than 90 days of incarceration under state law, the Department of Corrections is supposed to transport that inmate to a state facility within 48 hours.
But, frustratingly to Smith and his peers across the state, that does not always happen.
Last year, the county held inmates for a total of 1,991 jail-bed days beyond the 48-hour mark.
“It always has been a part of the problem,” Smith said.
Although he has been a part of lobbying efforts to try to fix the state DOC backlog, ultimately, Smith only has discretion over whether to house federal and municipal inmates.
Serious crimes committed on tribal lands are prosecuted by the federal government. Smith said he will not cancel his contract with the U.S. Marshals because it would unduly impact the victims, witnesses and accused in federal cases from the reservation.
“That was to support local victims, local witnesses in those serious crimes, being able to hold court here instead of having to travel to Grand Junction or Denver or something like that in those federal cases,” he said.
The way Smith sees it, that leaves municipal offenders as the only category he can cut.
Although they are just a small part of the jail population, Current maintains that having the jail in the municipal court ecosystem is critical to keeping it balanced.
“Just because something’s not statutorily obligated, doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t do it, and it’s not the right thing to do for the citizens,” he said.
Without the threat of jail, municipal offenders would often ignore citations, he said.
The city recently breathed life back into the municipal court system, which could also be to blame for a sudden spike in the number of low-level offenders ending up in jail.
“The word’s getting out, and they’re showing up to court,” Current said.
Although neither party is inclined to acknowledge it, the issue reopens an old wound in the city-county relationship.
For years, the two sparred over who was responsible for addressing a growing population of houseless people. The county’s decision in 2022 to clear an unsanctioned homeless camp at Purple Cliffs did not sit well with city officials.
The city’s effort to ramp up enforcement of municipal code violations – which often include charges for illegal camping – can be seen as a way to foist the problem back on the county.
However, both Current and Smith say this is not the case – at least in terms of their personal motivations.
“I’m not trying to remove this tool, but I am trying to manage the jail population,” Smith said.
Current said homelessness is just one way in which Durango is a small city with big-city problems.
“If we’re going to prevent crime, we have to have a deterrent,” he said. “… If people never show up to court and there’s no deterrent of a warrant or possible jail time, then you don’t have a court.”
rschafir@durangoherald.com
