CON GAMES: Crime Time

February 28th, 2008 at 09:40pm Michael Conniff 2

Everybody knows the emperor has no clothes.

The monarch in question--Pitkin County Sheriff Bob Braudis--has made an iconic, ironic career out of routinely refusing to enforce the laws of the land. He (famously) doesn't enforce the drug laws, he doesn't enforce the immigration laws, and he has all but refused to enforce traffic laws.

If this weren't Aspen, where anything goes and keeps on going, somebody might ask: Exactly what laws does Sponge Bob enforce?

The Sheriff's Office's don't ask-don't smell drug policy is hardly worth talking about any more--what more can you say about drug-induced law enforcement fade-to-black ops?--but heretofore Sheriff Bob has insisted without surcease that his guys and gals keep do a bang-up job on the highways and byways of Pitkin County. So it is with some glee that critics of said Sheriff (that would be me) saw the front page story this week that lionized the Wyatt Earp of The New West for bodaciously increasing the number of traffic arrests in 2007 compared to 2006.

“It shows what we’re trying to do,” Undersheriff Joe DiSalvo, Sponge Bob's heir apparent, told a local paper. “We’re spending a lot of time on traffic enforcement and we’re encouraging deputies to get on the road when they’re not doing something else.”

The numbers: 510 traffic tickets issued in 2007, compared to 284 in 2006, a jump of some 80 percent in a single year.

“DUI enforcement is truly a public safety issue," Joe the Bartender told the paper, "and it’s important to us.” 

Well, duh!

But here's the rub for Bob-Joe and their posse: don't the new stats all but prove the Sheriff's Office was asleep at the wheel when it came to traffic enforcement in 2006? Challenger Rick Magnuson, ridiculed for his run at the Sheriff that year, was nonetheless responsible for digging out numbers that showed Sponge Bob's minions were doing next to nada, ending shifts when things were just starting and other acts of blissful ignorance.

So congrats to the crack (no pun intended) team for finally getting off their duffs and doing some actual enforcement work. They are all sworn to uphold the law, and it's nice to know even the employees of the Sheriff's Office are not entirely immune to doing their jobs.

One question: back in 2006, the Sheriff said DUIs and their like were down because of "education," and radio ads like the one for Tipsy Taxi. Of course, aside from the ads, there was no ongoing "education" whatsoever. As with drugs, the Sheriff has made a career out of saying "education" is the answer and then supplying none of same.

Oh well. It's not like Sheriff Bob Braudis let the facts get in the way of a good story. This is Aspen, after all, where dreams can come true and facts--bleep-bleep--never have the right of way.

Entry Filed under: Transportation, Aspen, Colorado, Crime, Pitkin County, Sheriff Race 2006, The West, United Post