Go to the mobile version of this Web site.

Login | Contact Us | Site Map | Paid archives | Electronic edition | Subscription Questions | Extras

What Ritter said - and meant

No softie on crime

Published August 26, 2006 at midnight

Text size  

More Editorials

More stories »

Locating Bill Ritter's pre-campaign views on some issues can be as difficult as finding a buried chest on an isle of sand. The Democratic nominee for governor spent his professional career as Denver district attorney and was rarely quoted on economic policy, regulation, the environment or numerous other matters.

But of course Ritter was interviewed regularly on crime and punishment. There is not a great deal of mystery on his attitude toward law enforcement or criminal justice issues - or at least there shouldn't be.

Hence our surprise to read the following paragraph in a press release from the campaign of Bob Beauprez, Ritter's Republican opponent: " 'A guy's got to work at getting jail time in Denver. He's got to do something very bad, or keep doing something fairly bad over and over again,' said Bill Ritter, as reported in the Rocky Mountain News, May 3, 1998." The obvious point: Ritter's soft on crime.

To begin with, those are not Ritter's exact words. They are the gist of what Ritter told this paper's editorial page editor - a paraphrase, in other words. Nor do they appear within quotation marks in the column from which they were taken.

But secondly, and far more importantly, Ritter had made the point not as a boast but as a complaint. The DA was irritated with the report of two consultants who claimed that overcrowding in the Denver jail could be alleviated by releasing apparently harmless traffic and drug offenders - and he was doubly irritated with an editorial that praised the conclusion.

What harmless offenders, Ritter had demanded to know. Virtually everyone in the jail is a serial troublemaker, he said, and if someone won't stop breaking the law - even minor laws - it's the DA's job to crack down. "We do alternatives (to jail)," Ritter had said. "But there comes a time when an alternative just isn't right, when 'punishment' shouldn't be sitting at home watching TV and drinking beer."

Meanwhile, Ritter ridiculed the consultants' complaint that the jail population was surging at a time of decreasing crime. Of course it is, Ritter said, because the two are related. In fact, he added, there are people who should be in jail but who aren't because judges are reluctant to exacerbate overcrowding.

In short, the Beauprez campaign lifted a Ritter assertion - not a quotation - in which he was taking a hard line against criminals and twisted it to make him sound like a crime-indulging wimp. The Trailhead Group, an independent outfit supporting Republicans, did the same thing in an earlier press release.

We can understand the frustration among Republicans trying to build a case against Ritter given the maddeningly narrow focus of his public comments over the years. But that's no excuse for the altogether sleazy misuse of what the candidate actually has said.