The Carbondale Board of Trustees on Tuesday, Aug. 25, unanimously voted to halt the town’s participation in the Special Problems Enforcement and Response (SPEAR) regional crime task force.

The withdrawal follows growing community concerns that SPEAR — which has full-time personnel assigned from the Garfield County Sheriff’s Office, Rifle Police Department, Drug Enforcement Agency and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), and in which Carbondale Police participated until Tuesday — has aided federal immigration enforcement efforts.

After Glenwood Springs City Council voted to withdraw from the task force in April, Carbondale Police Chief Kirk Wilson urged Carbondale trustees to allow SPEAR to revise its Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) before making a decision about Carbondale’s participation, striving to clarify that the task force would not enforce immigration law. After reviewing the draft MOU on Aug. 18, he recommended the trustees withdraw from the task force, but made clear that his recommendation was not based on a conclusion that SPEAR had acted unlawfully, and should not be interpreted as a criticism of SPEAR, according to town documents. 

Town Manager Ryan Hyland summarized the reason for the recommendation to withdraw, chalking it up to a balance between community expertise gained from participation in SPEAR and the need for continued community trust in its law enforcement.

“There’s value that comes from participation in SPEAR and helping us to solve the crimes and adding some expertise,” Hyland said. “And there’s also value in making sure that our community is always comfortable, whether it’s walking in the door here to get services, calling 911 or calling … dispatch.”

The immigration enforcement concerns were brought to the public sphere this past February when Denver-based nonprofit Towards Justice served Sheriff Lou Vallario and the Garfield County Sheriff’s Office a cease and desist letter. The letter accused SPEAR of making data accessible to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), working with ICE to detain an individual — who the letter said was ultimately deported — and accused the sheriff’s office of holding inmates beyond when they typically should “for the purpose of immigration enforcement in violation of Colorado law.”

Sheriff Lou Vallario issued a public letter in March addressing what he called “intentional misinformation being thrown around” regarding SPEAR’s involvement with immigration enforcement. 

“To be clear, SPEAR does not work with ICE or provide information to them,” he wrote. He acknowledged, however, that the task force does have full-time personnel assigned from HSI, which is the umbrella federal department that includes sub-agencies such as ICE. The cease and desist letter alleged that, given the Department of Homeland Security’s “open internal information-sharing policies,” data shared with HSI would be accessible by ICE.

Prior to the Tuesday vote, trustees showed their support of Wilson’s recommendation to cease participation in SPEAR.

“I think it’s a really bright day for the community to be able to do that,” Trustee Ross Kribbs said of Carbondale’s halted participation in SPEAR, “and a dark day in that we have to be in that position in the first place, that maybe, at this point, some of the trust with federal enforcement is not there — and that’s unfortunate.”

In other news … 

The Carbondale Board of Trustees unanimously voted to greenlight an approval ordinance of a proposed three-story, commercial- and residential-use development on Main Street, now that the design aligns with the town code’s height restrictions.

Applicants Forum Phi and Smith Mountain Builders originally requested that the proposed build at 242-256 Main Street reach 42 feet in height rather than the code standard of 35 feet, allowing for an elevator shaft on the roof. The initial proposal also had a lower level floor-to-floor height of 12 feet rather than the code standard of 14 feet. 

Their new design aligns with the standard town code dimension restrictions.