On Jan. 10 there will be a new sheriff in town, and Curtis Johnson feels ready to take on the role.
Johnson won the primary for Boulder County sheriff in June and faced no challengers on November’s ballot. He will replace Sheriff Joe Pelle, who has held the role for two decades.
Johnson, who spent 27 years with the Boulder Police Department in various roles, has been the division chief at the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office for the past 22 months preparing for this transition.
“This has been 18 months since I announced for office, getting to Jan. 10,” Johnson said. “It’s been a long time, a really hard year just getting through politics and the Marshall fire and all that stuff. I’m really excited for 2023. I’m excited to bring in a different energy and a different approach to leadership to the sheriff’s office while still honoring and respecting the 20 years of service that Sheriff Pelle put in.”
Almost all of the 450 employees who will be under Johnson’s command have only ever worked under Pelle, so the new sheriff’s first goal is to ensure a smooth transition. He plans to tackle some organization goal setting involving employees to start looking at the future of the sheriff’s office.
“To make sure that the things that they want us to look at, potential changes that may come — make sure that we’re engaging the employees and also engaging the community to make sure we’re doing the right thing,” Johnson said.
He wants to ensure the sheriff’s office has enough staff and that they’re putting staff in the right places. Coupled with that is Johnson’s longer term goal to improve hiring and retention.
“Long term, how do we develop leadership in our organization?” he said. “How do we make sure that we’re setting up people to succeed in leadership positions? How do we diversify the sheriff’s office in a more accurate reflection of our community? Those are things I can’t probably fix overnight.”
Johnson added that the sheriff’s office is currently calling staff in on overtime for nearly every shift, which he doesn’t believe is sustainable for staff or the people in their custody.
“I look at it from a mental health perspective of, you’re already working in a really hard setting,” he said. “It’s not easy work and then part of your weekend you have to come in and work against your will to cover a shift. How does that impact employee morale?”
Johnson plans to immediately dive into the impacts of mental health on the criminal justice system and look for solutions locally. He estimated that on any given day, 60-70% of inmates at the Boulder County Jail are mentally ill.
“For many of them, they might do better in a non-jail setting,” he said. “How do we figure out what that looks like moving forward? What do we need to do as a county to advance that? Because I don’t have a lot of confidence that the state is going to be able to solve that problem for us.”
Johnson said the sheriff’s office in the past has been reliant on the state, but he wants to look at other communities implementing local models.
“It is frustrating in all levels of the criminal justice system, from the street cops in Longmont or Boulder to the jail setting to the district attorney’s office and how they prosecute cases — the backlog of people who are waiting for competency hearings and all those challenges that really slow things down, that’s a huge piece of what we’ll be working on this year,” Johnson said.
The Alternative Sentencing Facility, which should be breaking ground next year, is another piece of the puzzle that Johnson is planning to work on. The facility will provide a living environment for up to 252 residents and offer an array of rehabilitative programs designed to treat individual risk factors and support efforts toward a successful reentry into society.
On the emergency response side, Johnson said the sheriff’s office will be looking at the newly passed wildfire mitigation and emergency service taxes in Boulder County to help make sure the funds are implemented sustainably.
“That will take years to get really solidly in place, but I think knowing now that we have that we have the funding mechanism behind it, we can make meaningful efforts and do some good work,” he said.
Johnson, with nearly three decades in law enforcement already, doesn’t expect to serve five full terms like his predecessor, but does want to help grow and improve the organization during his tenure.
“I will not be a 20 year sheriff,” he said. “I am older than Joe was when he started and look forward to retiring someday, but I want to make sure that I too can leave the place better than I found it, leave my impression on the organization in a positive way and set somebody else up to succeed in that office when I’m ready to go.”
