The Cortez City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to amend an ordinance so as to allow law enforcement more flexibility on sending youths caught with pot, alcohol or nicotine products to lower court.
“It’s long overdue, and it allows municipal court to deal with the less serious offenses that wouldn’t require incarceration and jailing,” City Attorney Patrick Coleman said of the amendments.
Prior to the amendment, almost all youth offenders found in possession of tobacco or cannabis by law enforcement were sent to district court, which tends to entail a more serious level of judicial intervention, said Municipal Court Judge Beth Padilla, who described the ideas behind the proposed amendment during a City Council meeting on July 8.
“A basic concept of criminal justice is you don't want to put low-level offenders next to really serious, high-level offenders,” Padilla said during the meeting earlier this month.
The new amendment now gives law enforcement officers the option of sending a youth offender to municipal court instead, which deals with less severe criminal offenses.
In between first considering the amendment earlier in July and Tuesday night’s official vote to apply the changes in code, city officials added a few adjustments.
Previously, more flexible sentencing options only applied to possession of tobacco and cannabis products, but new updates also added alcohol.
City Council also expanded the amendment’s wording, going went beyond “possession,” to add “purchase” and “consumption” into the amendments.
During Tuesday night’s meetings, Padilla described the municipal court’s juvenile docket, occurring during the second Monday of each month at 8:30 a.m.
“Specifically I chose that time so that any juvenile defendants that are in the courtroom can still get to school on time,” Padilla said.
Padilla said that she hopes the court can address their case in the morning so that “they won't have any additional truancy issues as a result of their pending criminal case.”
