WEEK OF OCTOBER 31, 2024
VOLUME 37 | ISSUE 48
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How does Colorado keep noncitizens and dead people from voting? Protections involve everything from the DMV database to what’s known as the ‘death list’ BY CAITLYN KIM CPR NEWS
security director, Grusing led lectures on pathways to violence at schools in Douglas County, identifying warning signs of how an individual can escalate to violence and how to stop violence before it happens. “(Students’) brains are still developing and so they are subject to grooming,” said Michalek. “They’re subject to extremist views.” Violent extremism is on the rise as offenders are targeting and recruiting children and teens online in the county, according to Grusing and Michalek. Michalek cited the teen from Castle Rock who last summer was indicted on charges of attempting to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization. “We’re not talking about political perspectives or political ideology,” said Douglas County Sheriff Darren Weekly. “We’re talking about when that rises to the level of violence and hurting people.”
As the election draws nearer, Coloradans have a lot of questions around voting — about how the process works, and also, what protections are there to ensure ineligible people aren’t casting ballots. It’s a perennial concern in every election, but one that has heated up this year, that somehow large numbers of non-citizens — and the dead — will manage to cast ballots. Weld County Clerk and Recorder Carly Koppes has been fielding versions of these fears since she first started working in the office in 2004. The Republican, who was first elected Clerk in 2014, is on her 6th presidential cycle. “This isn’t the first presidential election that we’ve got a lot of voters asking, ‘what about the illegals?’” she said. Despite no widespread evidence of voter fraud in the 2020 election, an NPR poll shows that a majority of Americans are concerned that there will be fraud this time around, in large part due to former President Donald Trump’s false statements. A majority of respondents in that survey said they believe noncitizens will be able to vote in the upcoming presidential election. A number of audits, investigations and studies confirmed the results of the 2020 election, which President Joe Biden won. The checks to ensure only eligible voters end up on the voter rolls start with the first question asked of anyone registering to vote in Colorado. “On the form it says, ‘Are you a citizen of the United State? Yes or No?” Koppes said, pointing to a printed copy of Colorado’s official voter registration form. Next to the question, the document says, “if you answered No, do not complete this form.” “So, it’s a self-affirmation. We are hoping that you are answering that question correctly,” Koppes explained. But “when we start registering you to vote in the voter registration system, we do verify and check.” In other words: trust, but verify. Clerks and the Secretary of State’s Office rely on a long list of databases to
SEE TRAINING, P8
SEE SECURITY, P4
Agents from the Denver FBI Division and the FBI Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force spoke to Douglas County school resource officers at the Legacy Campus in Lone Tree about the dangers of the internet and how it has played a part in the rise of violence and human trafficking. PHOTO BY HALEY LENA
Douglas County school resource officers train with FBI about online threats BY HALEY LENA HLENA@COLORADOCOMMUNTIYMEDIA.COM
When an FBI special agent asked a room full of Douglas County school resource officers if they had dealt with sextortion, only a couple of them raised their hands. But it’s not only sextortion that today’s school resource officers may have to face, there’s also violent extremism and human trafficking. “The school system has now become the epicenter of that nationally,” said Mark Michalek, special agent in charge of the FBI Denver Field Office. “Our school resource officers and our school administrators are on the front lines.” Sextortion is the solicitation and enticement of someone to engage in photographed sexual acts. Violent extremism involves using violence to support a goal, and human trafficking refers to the buying and selling of people. The FBI has seen a rise in human trafficking and violent threats involving youth throughout Colorado, mirroring national
trends, and is focused on lone offenders and small groups that are “radicalized” online. In September, roughly 50 school resource officers got national-level training at the Legacy Campus in Lone Tree on how to recognize signs of vi`olent behavior, sextortion and human trafficking. Jonny Grusing, the school district’s security director, knows what level of training the FBI offers, as he was in the FBI for 25 years. He said the partnership for the training provides local school resource officers with extra tools to recognize concerning behaviors and prevent victimization. National trends seen at state level
From October 2023 to August of this year, Michalek said the national threat operations center had received more than 4,500 threats against schools nationwide, including hoax bomb threats, fentanyl cases and swatting, similar to what Colorado is receiving. Before becoming the school district’s
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