Kyle Aber
What is your top priority if elected District Attorney?
My top priority as District Attorney will be improving community safety for Puebloans. I know there is a lot of work to be done, but I am committed to bringing a comprehensive approach to making Pueblo safer through building a coalition of individuals and organizations. Together, we will work to explore all avenues to address crime before, during, and after it happens. Throughout the campaign, I have talked to people from all over the county who are doing important work to keep people out of the criminal justice system. We can always go farther together than we can apart, so I want to tap into that energy and those ideas that are already being explored across the community to help grow those efforts and maximize their impact.
Of course, we cannot stop there, as even our best efforts cannot eliminate crime entirely. There will always be a need for experienced, well-resourced, first responders and prosecutors to ensure criminals face appropriate consequences for their actions. Just like our police and sheriff departments, the DA's office is understaffed and under-resourced, which impacts our community’s safety. Over the last four years, I have worked to bring more attorneys and other professionals to Pueblo County to help address this issue. As DA, I will bring that experience, along with utilizing existing programs, to the DA's office so we have the prosecutors in place to address crimes once they have been committed. When we have a staff that is cared for, and has an opportunity to grow and get better every day, we will build a team that can do the important work to make Pueblo safer.
What is your approach to fighting crime through the courts?
Successfully fighting crime through the courts starts long before the offender steps foot in a courtroom. As soon as a crime is committed, we need to work to build a strong case that will result in guilty pleas and verdicts. This means working closely with victims, witnesses, and law enforcement to ensure we have the evidence and support to successfully prosecute the case. One proposal I will bring to the office is creating a position for an investigative attorney. This will be an experienced prosecutor who works with law enforcement to build airtight cases that don't allow the perpetrator any room to escape on a technicality. Our law enforcement in Pueblo works every day to investigate crimes and refer complete cases to the DA’s office, however, these investigations will benefit greatly from a prosecutor who recognizes how the court case will play out after the investigation is completed.
Across the community, Puebloans have told me that "it feels like offenders have more rights than the rest of us." Courts and defense attorneys have become very good at watching out for the rights of offenders. It is up to the DA to push back against the courts when they put the rights of the defendant above the rights of the victim and the people of Pueblo. Bad decisions and mistakes must be appealed and the DA should hold the judiciary to the highest standard. The DA must also fight for sentences that address the issues that caused the criminal act in the first place, restore the victim to the position they were in before the crime, and send a message to potential future offenders that crime does not pay. The DA has to focus on all of these things simultaneously because if we do not succeed on all of these fronts, the sentence is not effective and we will have missed an opportunity to solve a problem in the long term.
The amount of juveniles committing crimes is on the rise. How do you plan to combat that?
Today’s youth are growing up in a world, unlike anything we have seen or experienced in the past. We cannot expect solutions that were effective in the past to be effective now and in the future. I often pose the question to juveniles, "Would you rather spend the night in jail, or a week without your cell phone?" I have yet to hear any teenager opt to give up their phone. This is why it is so important that we impose appropriate consequences. For example, if a juvenile offender is going to feel a greater impact from losing their phone than they will from a jail sentence then we need to leverage that consequence to have the greatest impact. All crime, whether it is committed by adults or juveniles stems from an underlying issue. The DA needs to fight for the most effective consequence that addresses that underlying issue, so we do not see offenders rotating in and out of the criminal justice system with no long-term improvement.
This connects back to building a large coalition from across the county. There are dozens of individuals and organizations who are working to get our youth involved in appropriate, pro-social activities, working to bring our youth the resources they need to address the underlying issues in their life that lead to criminal activity, and helping our youth who have ended up on the wrong side of the law get back on track. The DA’s office has to be a hub for these groups, so they can share resources, ideas, and energy allowing them to be more successful while expending fewer resources. The next step is to make sure our kids are aware of these programs and services. Every child in Pueblo should know what pro-social activities are available to them. Connecting a child into the community and encouraging them to pursue their lawful ambitions is the most effective strategy we have to keep juveniles out of the criminal justice system.
Violent criminals are often released and commit other violent crimes while out on bail/ probation/ parole. What will you do to help reduce this?
At its core, the issue of people re-offending while out on bail/probation/parole is due to a lack of resources. There are simply not enough resources to hold every person who has been charged with a crime or convicted of crime in prison, which leads us back to appropriate consequences. For every low-level or non-violent offender we incarcerate, we have one less bed for a violent offender. DAs have to be problem solvers, and every sentence and consequence should be focused on solving the problem that caused the crime in the first place. It is critical to address problems in the community when they can still be addressed in the community. We have to save space in jails and prisons for those that truly pose a threat to the community and who cannot be rehabilitated in a community setting.
The courts who set the bond, the probation department that supervises offenders on probation, and the parole board who makes the decision to release offenders back into the community have to recognize when their decisions put the people of Pueblo in danger. It is the DA's job to remind them of their responsibility to keep Pueblo safe every day. We must address each case individually, and cannot let algorithms and questionnaires decide what is an appropriate bail or sentence. Crime and its underlying causes are complex and cannot all be addressed in the same way. Every action taken to address a crime after it happens has to focus on preventing re-offending. As always, the details make the difference, and it is the DA’s job to bring those details to the court/probation/parole board and hold them responsible for reviewing them and making the right decisions to protect our community.
