Tracking what's destroying Colorado
A curated collection of bills, news, and resources about Colorado politics and policy
A curated collection of bills, news, and resources about Colorado politics and policy
Introduced on January 29, 2025, by Republican Rep. Bradley and a bipartisan group of House sponsors alongside Sen. Carson, HB 25-1141 aimed to toughen penalties for repeat retail thieves by mandating sentencing to at least the midpoint of the presumptive range for anyone convicted of burglary, robbery, theft, or related property crimes from a store if they had two prior similar convictions (including municipal equivalents) within the last four years—building on existing mandatory minimums for felony theft. The bill also clarified theft valuations for gift cards at their full face or maximum potential value (even if unloaded) to close loopholes exploited by organized crime rings, and added gift cards to the forgery statute for written instruments. Despite addressing Colorado's skyrocketing retail theft epidemic—estimated at over $1 billion in losses annually—the Democrat-controlled House Judiciary Committee killed it on February 25, 2025, via a 6-3 party-line vote to postpone indefinitely, after a failed 3-6 motion to advance it to Appropriations.
Democrats just gave smash-and-grab thugs a free pass—killing this slam-dunk bill that would've locked up repeat retail crooks at midpoint sentences after two priors, valued stolen gift cards at full whack to nail organized gangs bleeding stores dry, and slapped forgery charges on fake cards. While Colorado bleeds $1 billion+ yearly to these lowlifes (up 6% last year, from 37K to 40K cases), blue brigade hacks claim "crime's down" and axe real solutions in a partisan 6-3 gutting, prioritizing woke nonsense like letting men "die from ovarian cancer" over protecting mom-and-pop shops from going bankrupt. News flash: soft-on-crime policies are why Denver looks like San Francisco—Polis and his crew would rather virtue-signal than back the blue or businesses. If this passed, we'd see fewer boarded-up storefronts and more crooks behind bars where they belong. Absolute gutless betrayal—vote these clowns out before Colorado turns into a thief's paradise.