The Boulder city manager’s office and police department are considering adding a police substation in North Boulder to address an uptick in reported crime in the area. The proposal is raising questions about how to allocate limited city resources strategically to reduce crime citywide.
The substation would serve as a satellite office for officers, providing a space to complete paperwork, take breaks or eat lunch without needing to return to the main police department building, about 10 minutes away.
Discussions about the substation come as reports of crime in North Boulder rise, and residents voice concerns about safety.
“Right now, we’ve got two hot spots in the city,” Boulder Police Chief Steve Redfearn told Boulder Reporting Lab, referring to North Boulder and the Central Park corridor downtown.
An analysis of Boulder Police Department data by Boulder Reporting Lab found that reported assaults citywide rose 17% in 2023 compared to the previous year, while North Boulder experienced an approximate 49% rise. Although the trend has slowed somewhat in 2024, it has not reversed. Reports of burglary, drug offenses, theft and trespassing also rose at higher rates in North Boulder than across the city overall last year.
By sheer numbers, North Boulder has some fewer reported crimes than other parts of the city. For instance, in 2023, 123 cases of assault were reported in North Boulder compared to 386 in Central Boulder. However, these figures do not account for per capita differences. And while reported crime can be a useful metric for tracking trends over time, it doesn’t necessarily reflect actual crime levels.
Advocacy for a North Boulder substation
Members of the North Boulder Alliance, a neighborhood advocacy group, have attended recent Boulder City Council meetings to express concerns about crime and advocate for a new police substation in the area.
In October, a North Boulder Alliance representative presented several requests to the city council, including installing a permanent light and camera at the intersection of Laramie Boulevard and Broadway, an access point to the Dakota Ridge neighborhood. The representative also called on the city to mark jurisdictional boundaries between city and county land in North Boulder, audit the impact of the day services center before providing additional funding to All Roads — which operates both the center and the city’s largest homeless shelter in the same location — and establish a “micro” police station in the area.
In November, at least one member of the group suggested at a city council meeting that the opening of the All Roads homelessness day services center in June 2024 contributed to the rise in reported crimes. However, city data indicate that crime reports began increasing months before the center opened. Similar concerns were raised in 2003 when the shelter moved to its current location.
“There's a lot of speculation that can't be really confirmed via data,” Redfearn said. “The current shelter does account for one of our higher call volume locations of the city. And that's not just crime, that's medical calls, that's people in crisis. So we knew when those hours expanded, we'd likely see an increase, and we have.”
In the past month, police recorded seven crimes within a quarter-mile of the shelter — out of 1,013 citywide — including two petty thefts, one third-degree assault and one case of menacing. (Review the definitions of those charges.)
Redfearn said, “The biggest thing that we saw an uptick in that was concerning for me was the assaults,” which he said often involved one homeless person assaulting another.
Andy Schultheiss, a spokesperson for All Roads, said the organization has supported the idea of a North Boulder substation since the shelter was built.
“The opening of the day center increased the hours at the shelter by 50% or so, and the more hours it's open, the more things happen,” Schultheiss told Boulder Reporting Lab in an email. “Our shelter staff have not noticed any increase in issues related to public safety since the day center [opened]. The center feels like a very safe place, and that's one reason people go there because life on the streets is anything but safe. But the number of welfare calls and things of that nature have likely gone up with the additional hours.”
Police strategies already underway to address rising crime reports include deploying more officers to North Boulder and assigning a commander to implement proactive crime reduction tactics, Redfearn said. These efforts are part of the city’s “reimagining policing” initiative, which uses a stratified policing model to target crime hot spots with preventative measures.
Specific actions include installing a camera at the Broadway and Rosewood underpass, advising a local liquor store manager to avoid serving alcohol to intoxicated people, and coordinating with the County Sheriff’s Office and Open Space and Mountain Parks to enforce Boulder’s camping ban — a controversial ordinance prohibiting sleeping in public spaces. City officials said enforcing the ban in North Boulder can be challenging due to pockets of land under Boulder County’s jurisdiction, which doesn't have such a ban.
Redfearn said the department is also revisiting certain assault cases in which victims were unable to provide statements at the time of the incident due to being under the influence of substances. Previously, such cases would likely have been closed without further follow-up.
The future of a North Boulder substation
Boulder has used police substations in other areas in the past, including an annex on University Hill. Currently, the department operates an annex at the Atrium building near Central Park and a second on Pearl Street, which will close in January.
Redfearn said the decision to add a substation to North Boulder ultimately lies with the city manager’s office, which must weigh budgetary and operational priorities.
“We're not at the point where we're ready to commit that we're going to do it, but it is something we're actively looking at,” he said.
At a Nov. 7 city council meeting, City Manager Nuria Rivera-Vandermyde said officials are also considering other potential substation locations, including one near the university. “When there is something to share, we will certainly do that with council and with community,” she added, declining to offer a more specific timeline.
Councilmember Taishya Adams expressed concern that homeless services would face backlash if safety issues in North Boulder didn’t improve. "This is an issue of coexistence,” she said at that meeting. “If we want to make sure that we are able to serve all of our community members, then we need to address these escalating crimes.”
Redfearn said he hopes to see a “good reduction in crime” in North Boulder by next year in response to the new strategies. He said he hopes the department can soon focus on more serious crimes, such as auto theft and burglary, rather than welfare checks and lower-level offenses like trespassing and public intoxication.
“We'd love to have our officers out really focusing on the people that are really victimizing our community, which is not necessarily the people you get the most calls about,” he said.
Definitions of relevant Colorado criminal charges:
Third degree assault: This occurs when someone “knowingly or recklessly causes bodily injury” to another person. To qualify as bodily injury rather than serious bodily injury, the harm must be minor enough that it does not risk death or cause long-term impairment of any part of the body. A person can also be charged with third-degree assault for knowingly harassing a police officer or medical provider by causing them to come into contact with bodily fluids, such as blood, vomit or urine.
Abuse of toxic vapors: The act of knowingly smelling or inhaling fumes from toxic vapors to induce euphoria, excitement, exhilaration, stupefaction or a dulling of the nervous system's senses.
Physical harassment: When someone strikes, shoves, kicks, or otherwise touches a person with intent to annoy or harass them.
Menacing: When someone strikes, shoves, kicks or otherwise touches another person with the intent to annoy or harass them.
Car theft: A person commits motor vehicle theft if they knowingly obtain or retain another person’s vehicle without permission.
I do wonder about the gap between reality and perception.
A unhoused person walking on the sidewalk in front of one’s dwelling is not a crime–or even a threat.
And the presence of a shelter for the unhoused was in North Boulder even before the one was built in 2004. It was in an old small motel on the west side of Broadway at Yarmouth.
The difference is not that shelter; it is the number of folks who moved into its neighborhood.
BPD crime data depicts reality, not perception. And based on the data, Chief Redfearn reports two crime hotspots in the city..the downtown Central Park corridor and NoBo. The number of “folks who moved into” NoBo doesn’t make the crime rate acceptable, which is probably understated since many incidences go unreported, particularly those including unhoused victims. The data also doesn’t include incidences of “a unhoused person walking on the sidewalk in front of one’s dwelling.” I’m pretty sure police officers are well aware that isn’t a crime.
Responding to the above comments, the data is needed about how many of the 123 assaults in North Boulder in 2023 involve clients of the shelter. My instincts are that jj comment is incorrect, North Boulder is not as dense as say South Boulder, which is not an assault hot spot, so it is not people moving into North Boulder that caused a spike in assaults, but the presence of the shelter. Which is fine in my opinion, this is a distressed community . I am encouraged by councilmember Taishya Adams’ statement that crime reduction is important in order for the community to continue to support homeless services and this is true.
Earlier this year the North Boulder Alliance circulated a petition and one of the points was to “restrict any further expansion of homeless services in North Boulder…” I think their motivations are pretty clear. As the saying goes, fight poverty, not the poor!
Boulder certainly has its issues, but the picture painted by these groups and the fear they promulgate on Nextdoor is not rooted in reality. I, for one, don’t want to live in a police state. The Boulder police budget is already over inflated and we’re seriously having a conversation about whether an officer should have to travel more than 9 miles to have a snack break?
Mike D. might be a little more honest in his virtue signaling – the whole paragraph in the petition was this:
“Restrict any further expansion of homeless services in North Boulder and broaden support services across Boulder County. Centralizing all services in North Boulder is an inequitable burden on one community.”
“broaden support services” especially means, mental health and substance abuse treatment – Housing First is not enough. Until you have that treatment, a small but rough population are causing the locals to fear for their safety walking up and down Broadway from Violet to Laramie, as well as the Four mile creek trail. I’m a 6 foot tall man and don’t have the same experience as others – moms and kids avoid the street, and the Skip, and have for years now. People who used to walk to the restaurants, and would like to walk with their kids to the library, are now driving.
Our petition was meant as a stake in the ground, and we appreciate the City Council and Police taking our concerns seriously.
Does it really matter who and why? I live in Boulder and pay EXORBITANT taxes, and now I have to worry about safety. Drugs, homelessness and illegal activity, since I moved here 25 years ago, are more evident than in the past. I have empathy for people struggling, but when does throwing money and resources at a problem, especially government that couldn’t work it’s way out of a paper bag, ever solved a problem. We give people so called housing instead of mental health help and drug recovery programs. That’s the only way off the streets!