NOTE: The interviewer s questions and comments appear in parentheses. Added material appears in brackets.

Transcription

1 JOE PELLE. TRANSCRIPT of OH 1910 This interview was recorded on December 10, 2013, for the KGNU radio program A Public Affair, and later archived with the Maria Rogers Oral History Program. The interviewer is Richard Kiefer. The interview was transcribed by Mistia Zuckerman. ABSTRACT: Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle talks about some of the events and issues that present challenges for the sheriff s, including the Flood of 2013 and its aftermath, gun control laws, the use of drones for search and rescue operations, the legalization of marijuana, and the use of alternative sentencing for managing the county jail population. NOTE: The interviewer s questions and comments appear in parentheses. Added material appears in brackets. [A]. 00:00 (I m Richard Keifer and with me today is Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle. He is the Chief Law Enforcement Officer for Boulder County and deals with a wide variety of issues from criminal activity to forest fires to floods. He has been a peace officer in Boulder County since 1980 and assumed the job of sheriff in He also holds a master s degree in criminal justice from the University of Colorado. Joe Pelle is here to talk about a wide variety of issues regarding law enforcement and public safety in Boulder County. Sheriff Joe Pelle, welcome to the program.) Thank you, it is always good to be here. (It s been, what, two-and-a-half months or so since the Great Flood of 2013?) Yes, I think maybe the Great Flood of All Time, we can call it. (Yeah, so far anyway. How are things going in terms of the recovery from the standpoint of the sheriff s department?) I like to tell people that I think the emergency is over but the crisis continues. This is the difficult part now. It s about money and the lack thereof. It s about some arduous, longterm issues, but I would say I m very proud of our response. A crisis like this can make you or break you as an organization. (You mean, this type of a crisis? Something of this magnitude?) Yeah, something of this magnitude can bring an organization to its knees. They can not handle it very well. I m very proud of the way we handled it. We threw everything had at OH 1910, transcript of interview with Joe Pelle, page 1 of 11

2 it, and I have to say that partnership with the cities, towns, the state, and the federal government on at least the response piece was excellent. (So, there were adequate resources?) Yeah, I had requested National Guard assistance right away, because we didn t have any roads to get to the mountains. We had a lot of people stranded. Then the magnitude or scope of this was so wide that even the National Guard didn t have enough resources. By the end of the day, we had the regular Army involved. We had helicopters (From Fort Carson?) From Fort Carson, with hoist capacity. We ended up hoist-lifting over 25 people off of their rooftops or out of the forest, that kind of thing. It was remarkable, and the minute we were able to fly, they were in the air. It was very well organized on the ground as people returned. We were accounting for them, we were loading them on buses, we were getting them to shelters. That was also extremely helpful because we had over 800 people reported missing from various loved ones and friends. Through that whole process of evacuation and registration, we were able to track them all down. (So you mentioned money. This thing had to be pretty expensive. Where is the money all coming from?) Well, the way it works primarily is, um (You had lots of overtime ) Oh yeah, we spent about 3.5 million dollars that I didn t have. I mean, what choice do you have? We have to pay the bills up front. The county has emergency contingency funds which are being rapidly spent away. We are going to receive 75 percent of eligible, reimbursable funds back from the federal government, from FEMA. We are also going 12.5 percent back from the state and the county will have about 12.5 percent to bear themselves. I think what that means is that some of this work has to be delayed and spread out over a period of time. The county s going to have a cash-flow issue for a while. (You are referring to road construction, for example?) Yeah, and parks and bike paths and ( the infrastructure that was destroyed.) Right, and so they have to make priorities about what is restored and when and then make sure they are operating in the black. I think we re going to be in good shape. I think we re going to recover. People are looking forward to building things better and OH 1910, transcript of interview with Joe Pelle, page 2 of 11

3 stronger, and that is very good news. The problem is that it s not all going to happen at once. (What s the status in the mountains right now? I mean, law enforcement and emergency services are available in the mountains, I believe, right?) Yeah, the highways have been restored to at least a temporary state. (Which means a dirt road in some cases.) Well, the highways have actually been paved, but they are not permanent improvements. You can drive on them now and you can tell they are just not they dip, they go around, they curve sharply, there are slow speeds in some places. The county roads are coming into place Lefthand Canyon, James Canyon the contractors are working hard but the best they ll have is a dirt road access by mid-winter. What will be difficult is the big, major, reconstruction efforts are going to be on-going during the summertime for a number of years and mountain travel will be delayed. That will try a lot of people s patience. (Yeah. Motorcyclists, bicyclists, everyone else who uses those roads.) Yeah. (Have there been any enforcement problems from your standpoint?) Not really, for the most part, people are pretty understanding. We have conflicts again with cyclists and motorists that sort of thing but the vast majority of people understand the gravity of the situation and are being patient and kind about it. 05:07 (Where were you when the flood started?) We started getting notifications from the National Weather Service on September 9 that we were going to be in for a bad week. If you recall, it rained for three days, and on September 11, Mike Chard and the people in the office of emergency management were on-site and monitoring stream gauges, talking to the National Weather Service, and looking at color radar. Mike called me at home and said that we were going to have a bad night and that I better get in there. (That water was rising, basically?) Right. So, I had not been to bed yet, went back to work at 10 p.m. that night, and we were there for the long haul. OH 1910, transcript of interview with Joe Pelle, page 3 of 11

4 (What were you doing at that point? Were you activating various services or people or?) My role largely becomes administrative oversight and financial. They re ordering resources beyond anybody s capacity to pay for, so there is an immediate need to get emergency declarations done, to get commissioners to sign declarations of disaster, to get the governor s office involved, the state Office of Emergency Management, that kind of thing. Those are all the calls and conversations that I have while a lot of really good people are making decisions on the ground about what needs to be closed, and who can be evacuated and who can t, and that kind of thing. (Got to handle the emergency itself.) Right. I also got involved to a great extent with sheltering and some of the needs we had in the community that couldn t be met by our regular resources like Red Cross. Red Cross became so overwhelmed because this was impacting Boulder County, Larimer County, Weld County, and the roads were closed, so they weren t able to respond and provide shelter and that kind of thing. I, you know, am fortunate enough to be in the community a long time and know a lot of people. I was actually making calling calls to church pastors and school principals (People you knew who had resources to apply to the problem.) Right, yeah. Life Bridge Church sheltered 3,400 people over that period of time and provided food and blankets and that kind of thing. That was all done based on a cell phone call to my friend, the pastor of the church, who enlisted volunteers and opened that as a shelter without any support initially from the Red Cross. (Did you use reverse 911 at all?) Oh yeah, extensively. There were (To warn people that water was coming up?) To warn people that flash flooding was imminent or flash flooding was occurring and they needed to climb to safety. You know, we had done a lot of education for people, particularly in the Four Mile drainage after the fire. (Near Salina, for example?) Yeah. We knew we were going to have a flood. The handwriting was on the wall. So, the sheriff s office, office of emergency management, and the local fire districts have been working together for a long time to develop plans and also to educate residents about what to do. I read a statistic one time, I believe it s over 80 percent of the people that are killed in a flood are actually killed in their car. If you re going to survive this, you got to have a way to climb to safety and climb out of the flood zone. The residents OH 1910, transcript of interview with Joe Pelle, page 4 of 11

5 actually had plans in place I saw homes in Fourmile Canyon prior to this that rope lines from the rear of the house up to safe areas on the side of the mountain. They were ready. Then the use of weather spotters with radios we trained a bunch of people in the community and activated them early in the morning on September 12, actually late in the evening on September 11. And they were out spotting stream depths and debris flow for us and giving us that information, so we actually had eyes on the situation in the community. We were able to alert people early on. People were ready for it and, you know, I think that s a credit to the fact that there were only four deaths out of this. (During the entire three or four days.) Right. (So, you re recommendation for these kinds of events just like fires is that people have a plan in advance if they are in a flood-prone area of some kind.) Right. We can t get to you, unfortunately. There s very little that law enforcement or police safety can do to get to some of these places once the roads are gone and they re inaccessible, and there s mudslides occurring, and rushing water. People have to have a plan. They have to hunker down and once things settle down, we will come. And we did. We came in force with a lot of resources, but that s part of the reality of living in the mountains there are going to be times when we can t help you, and you re going to have to help yourself. (So in this case what was it, within a day or so of the beginning of the heavy rain, the roads were gone, and you were really unable to get up there?) Yeah, exactly. We had deputies stranded in communities. 10:00 (Because some of them live in the mountains, right?) (Yeah, and some of them were dispatched. For instance, to Lyons, we had four deputies and a number of firefighters in Lyons working in the community when all the roads were washed away and then they became an island. They were there, you know, 24/7 for three days until the water went down and we could get the high-clearance vehicles into them. (So what are the big challenges going forward right now besides paying for all this?) You want to be able to provide a level of service and respond immediately to needs and that kind of thing. You know, there are places where our response times are delayed. There are continuing issues with fire service. A lot of firefighters were displaced. They re volunteers, they live up there, so they re not in their homes, and they are OH 1910, transcript of interview with Joe Pelle, page 5 of 11

6 sometimes not roads to the areas we need to go check a smoke report, that kind of thing. (So come springtime, that could be problematic?) Yeah, you know, it gets better every day. By springtime, it will be better, but we still have to have alternative plans. And we know the areas where we re vulnerable and we ve got some plans for air support, we ve got plans for all-terrain vehicles and that kind of thing that we use. (To get to spot fires, for example?) Yeah, or to do a rescue, get someone out. (So, the provision of services is getting better. There s still some problems but, you re thinking by next summer things might be reasonable, I suppose, right?) Yeah, I think they re going to get better, continue to get better. (We re talking with Boulder County sheriff Joe Pelle. Regarding firearms, as you probably know, there have been a couple of our legislators who have been recalled because they voted for the banning of high-capacity magazines. What s your position on the firearms issue and gun control at this point?) Well, there were two pieces of legislation, I think, that caused a lot of people to be disgruntled the recall effort and that kind of thing. One had to do with high capacity magazines and the other was the background checks. I ve been supportive of background checks; always have been. People continue to say we need to do more to keep guns out of the hands of people who shouldn t have them. I don t know how you do that without a background check. I think it s a very difficult thing to enforce when it comes to private sales between individuals, and there probably won t be a lot of police-type investigation and enforcement. However, I also think that law-abiding citizens, knowing that this is the law, are going to ask for the ten dollar piece of paper before they sell someone a gun. And I think in that way, it will self-regulate and be helpful. I m a little ambivalent about the high-capacity magazine thing. I m not sure it s going to do any good. They re everywhere; all these rifles come with (They re a lot of them out there.) Yeah, they all come with 30-round magazines and its really difficult to control sales between private individuals. The way I look at it though, is this a lot of sheriffs are very much against this and in fact, filed a lawsuit against the state (I notice you are not a party to that lawsuit.) OH 1910, transcript of interview with Joe Pelle, page 6 of 11

7 Correct. They believe it is a violation of the second amendment. Some of them have said that they re not going to enforce these laws, and they claim constitutional privilege, so their interpretation of the second amendment and how it applies to these statutes. The difficulty I have with that is the constitution also establishes three arms of our government executive, legislative, and judicial and we re not supposed to interfere with each other. The constitution says that. [Chuckles.] So, you know, I m a law enforcement officer. I raise the point that I swore an oath to uphold the constitution and to enforce the laws. It s not my call to decide what I think is constitutional and what is not. Those are judicial and legislative issues. It think it s dangerous for sheriffs or any law enforcement officer to start making judgments about that, and in my opinion, drive outside of our lane. So, I try to drive in my lane. (So, you re going to enforce those laws then?) You know, I would. And I will tell you, if you sell your neighbor a magazine, I have no way of knowing when or how that occurred, and there probably wouldn t be much I could do about it. But I m also not going to let somebody set up a booth at the county fair and start selling 60-round magazines. (How many concealed-carry permits do we have now in Boulder County?) Approximately 6,000. (And those are issued by your office, right?) Right. (Do you have any guess as to how many of those people actually carry firearms?) You know, it s a fairly small percentage that carry firearms all the time. (So, there aren t 6,000 people out there walking around Boulder County carrying firearms.) Correct. But there are 6,000 people walking around Boulder County with the right to carry ( with the right to do it, with a permit to do it ) to do it. You know, a lot of these people I talk to friends, acquaintances it is the exercise of that right or the ability to have that that they re after and not necessarily the inconvenience of carrying a firearm that they re after. 15:04 OH 1910, transcript of interview with Joe Pelle, page 7 of 11

8 (So, it s the concept that they re interested in more really than carrying the firearm itself.) I think so. (It seems like carrying a firearm imposes a serious responsibility. Doesn t it?) You know, I have done so now for 34 years, and I will tell you it s a hassle. It s an inconvenient thing. It s difficult to dress properly. It s difficult to, you know, you can t go to a restaurant and have a drink. I mean, there s just a lot of cumbersome things that come with it, you know. (Well, there s also, it seems, a serious decision to make whenever one considers using it.) Oh yeah, absolutely. (Right? And that s probably not an easy decision in most circumstances.) Well, I think it s a decision that people have to think through before they make the decision to carry, which is one of the reasons our statutes require a training class and familiarity with the laws and the responsibilities that come with it. (On another subject, the FAA has just put out a road map for integrating drones into the national airspace, and some rules which fast track law enforcement and first responder use are probably going to follow fairly soon. Are you planning to use drones in Boulder County?) I do have an interest, and we ve actually looked at some. And we used one during the Jessica Ridgeway search. Jessica Ridgeway was the young lady that was killed in Westminster and her backpack was found in Superior in our jurisdiction. So, we launched a large-scale search around that area and there are a lot of open fields and open space and we used an aerial drone to help us with that search. My intent would be to use them for search and rescue purposes. I think in this community, people probably would have a difficult time with the concept of, you know, spy drones, law enforcement drones. (Drones flying over my house while I m sunbathing in my backyard or something.) Right. But on the other hand, we ve launched searches all the time from trailheads where we re looking for a lost hiker and their car is in the parking lot and we can t find them. You could do a fairly rapid search with (Aerial survey.) Yeah, and some of these drone, theys have a tremendous amount of capacity. They re also very expensive. Not in my budget right now. OH 1910, transcript of interview with Joe Pelle, page 8 of 11

9 (And you would have to have someone trained in the department who knew how to run it, I suppose fly it.) Right, or else contract with someone like we did when we did the Ridgeway search. (So that s something that may be in the future but not necessarily going to happen next summer, probably.) You know, if next summer we had another Jessica Ridgeway situation, I would contact these people and do it again. You know, we were using the drone in open fields, open areas and roadways, to search for a victim. I don t think anybody in this community would have an issue with that. At a policy level, that s where we would keep it, for that kind of purpose. And we won t fly over Deer Trail. I hear they shoot them down out there. [Laughs.] (But you need a permit.) You do have to have a permit, yeah. [Laughing.] (We re talking with Boulder County sheriff Joe Pelle. Let s talk about marijuana for a minute. As of January 1, retail marijuana becomes available in Colorado. Do you anticipate this is going to present an additional law enforcement problem?) I do. I think part of the issue we are facing now we just had this, you know, instance in our county where the legalized marijuana industry can and will be used as a front for importation and exportation and involvement of people from other countries, money laundering there s a number of issues that go along with this. (You are referring to the raid that happened north of town about two or three weeks ago?) Yeah. It actually happened all over the metro area but there was (It was a simultaneous event, yeah. What was that all about? I m not sure it was--) The allegations are It is a federal case, first of all, so I don t have a lot of information other than I was given a briefing when they asked for our help. (So the Feds conducted the raid.) Right. We provided security for them while they did that. But the allegations are that this operation is part of a Columbian operation, and that there s money laundering and exportation and a number of issues. (So, the presence of more marijuana may require the presence of more officers, more resources from your department, potentially over time?) OH 1910, transcript of interview with Joe Pelle, page 9 of 11

10 We really have not cared for a long time about somebody smoking pot in the privacy of their own home or in their backyard or growing six plants on their deck. That s not an issue for us and hasn t been. What I m talking about is multi-million dollar interstate organizations that require accounting, accountants, forensic accounting, long-term investigations, that king of thing. I think the majority of those things will probably be federal and we will be called upon once in a while to assist where necessary. Again, we are not an agency that has cared about or enforced actively recreational use at home, that kind of thing. 20:16 (How are you going to decide if somebody is driving under the influence of marijuana. Is there a test for that? You can use a Breathalyzer and blood alcohol test if it is alcohol.) Right. There s of course a with all these things there s odor, there s discoloration of the tongue and teeth and skin, there s glassy-eyed, there s the inability to perform roadside maneuvers, all those things--but the bottom line is we need a bright line test. We need to be able to test someone s blood or urine and determine how much THC is in there. We need a piece of legislation that tells us that they ve crossed the line. And I think that s happening now under these new laws. I think we re going to have, probably, a bright line test signed, I would guess, into legislation. (We re talking with Boulder County sheriff Joe Pelle. Regarding the jail, how are things going at the jail right now? Is the jail overcrowded at this point or not?) We are in the middle of winter, which is normally our slowest season. So, we are between 350 and 400 inmates, which is a great number for us. Our capacity is about 500. We get to that every spring and we exceed it every summer. One of the things that is impacting the jail right now is all of our alternative programs are backlogged so we re (Such as?) Work release, home detention, that kind of thing. We want to build capacity. For instance, the work release program: if you re convicted of a crime and sentenced to work release, there s up to a three-month waiting period to get into the program. We don t have any more beds. We don t have any more capacity. Well, that causes a backlog in the jail. If we could build more capacity for alternative sentencing, we could ease the backlog in the jail. And that s been (You could basically move people out of the jail to these other programs ) into another facility or into another program. And then we could expand the beds in the jail, we could expand capacity in the jail with the same footprint. Without increasing the physical size of the jail, we d have more capacity. So that s the road we re headed down, and we were actively working on that and trying to move ahead, and then we got hit with the flood, so I have a feeling OH 1910, transcript of interview with Joe Pelle, page 10 of 11

11 (Which has a budget impact regarding all these other things you would like to do?) Right. So I have a feeling my plans are probably delayed a year. (You have also announced that you re going to run for reelection next year. Are you sure you want this job again [laughing] with floods, fires, and everything else you ve had to deal with?) Yeah. It can be stressful, but I m 54 years old. I like what I do. I get up every morning, and I look forward to going to work. I feel like I ve had a good impact. We ve done a lot of good things at the sheriff s office and, for the most part, people in this community are very supportive. You know, we just finished a strategic planning process where we sent out surveys to the community 4,000 of them and the response from the community is very supportive of what we ve done, who we ve become, that kind of thing. So, I look forward to it. I also look forward to a final term. I look forward to someday not carrying a pager and not coming into work in the middle of the night and not having the stress of 400 employees and the budget issues and all that kind of stuff. But for now, I feel like I m where I m supposed to be, doing what I m supposed to be doing. And so, another term at this point seems like the thing to do, and I m looking forward to it. 23:55 [End of interview] OH 1910, transcript of interview with Joe Pelle, page 11 of 11