CITIZENS FIGHT BACK AGAINST WALSENBURG BURGLARIES

WALSENBURG - A citizens uprising against rampant widespread burglaries and
break-ins of Walsenburg businesses, homes and vehicles over the past six
months produced a standing-room-only City Hall crowd of around 150 irate,
fed-up and frustrated Walsenburg residents at a Friday night community meeting.

Residents specifically wanted to know why the city police department wasn't
making any burglary suspect arrests and expressed concerns over what they
considered incomplete (particularly in the area of fingerprinting)
department investigations and little if any crime victim follow-ups.

The recently formed Citizens Protective Association, co-chaired by
Walsenburg businesswomen Jerriann Vigil and Jacque Sikes, (whose outpatient
clinic and insurance business were each recently burglarized) have begun to
pressure local law enforcement authorities and city council to do more to
curb and solve the rash of break-ins. Group member and Walsenburg insurance
agent Tom Powell said the group has knowledge of 35 communitywide
burglary-break-ins since last September through February.

Vigil said CPA attracted around 50 people to its most recent meeting and
noted that individual business and residential burglary losses had reached
up to $27,000, according to police records they had seen.

Walsenburg Police Chief Glyn Ramsey and Huerfano County Assistant District
Attorney Cathy Mullens acknowledged they were dealing with a very serious
crime problem but that their undermanned, overworked staffs were doing the
best they could with their limited time and resources.

Ramsey said that all but four of his staff of 13 police officers have four
or fewer years of experience. He said the department has only a $5,000
training budget and many of his former experienced officers have moved on
to higher-paying jobs in larger cities.

Ramsey noted that only one arrest has been made of a burglary suspect
(caught by a citizen) but stressed that he didn't think the
burglary-break-ins were related to organized gang activity.

"I know of no hard-core gangs operating around here but we do have a lot of
'wannabes' who could be causing a lot of the problems," he said.

Ramsey, who outlined specific investigative procedures police use in
scoping a break-in scene, said he will encourage more direct citizen
involvement as the community's eyes and ears in trying to solve the crimes.

He agreed the first steps could be the establishment of Neighborhood
Block-Watches, a joint citizens-police task force, resident ride-alongs in
police cars and he urged residents to be more aggressive in giving police
crime or suspicious activity information.

"Our association will be discussing the citizens task force further at our
meeting next week," said Vigil.

City Councilman, Police Committee Chairman and meeting moderator Paul
Sedillo, City Attorney Ellen Trujillo, police Det. Laurie Ortiz and Lt.
John Rodriguez also took turns addressing citizen concerns and questions.

Sikes and Walsenburg auto dealer Jon Harp said they thought the break-in
problems could be directly traced to the city's rampant drug trade. "The
same drug dealers are still out pushing the same drugs on our streets,"
said Sikes.

"Let's concentrate on the problem of drugs and go after that," said Harp.
"When our kids are tripped out on drugs and have no money, they're going to
break into our businesses and homes to get that money." "I think you're
absolutely right, the motivation is probably drugs," said Mullens. "To me,
that's the ultimate goal of the people in this room. We hear things and
know about the rumor mill and we have to get at the source of the problem.
Right now, let's solve the burglaries and all work together to clean up the
town."

"I think we're naive if we think 13 guys are going to clean up our town,"
said Harp. "I think we impact our community more if we direct our efforts
at the drug usage than if we have 40 to 50 guys trying to chase some guy
down a street for breaking into my office."

Sikes and Vigil expressed reservations after the meeting on whether
citizen-police crime solving communications will improve significantly. But
both said they were encouraged by the large community turnout and show of
interest.

"They showed a lot of concern so that's a good start," said Sikes. "The
numbers here were very positive for our group."