This story by Sara Wilson appeared on Colorado Newsline on Monday July 29, 2024. We are sharing it an two parts.
Read Part One
In the 15 months since Colorado expanded the types of people who can use the state’s “red flag” law, few educators and mental health professionals have asked a court to remove guns from a potentially dangerous person.
Between April 28, 2023, and June 28, 2024, two educators, six mental health professionals and two district attorneys petitioned for an ‘Extreme Risk Protection Order’. Those cases were in Adams, Arapahoe, Boulder, Gunnison, Jefferson, La Plata, Larimer and Morgan counties. Eight of those requests were granted by local courts.
In one instance, the board of trustees at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden successfully petitioned to take away the gun of a suicidal student. The student attempted to die by suicide and checked himself into a hospital for mental health care, according to court documents. He continued to make statements about self-harm into the new year, which were reported to the university, and in February he told friends he bought a gun.
The school filed an ERPO petition and the court granted a year-long order less than a week later.
In another case, a mental health professional in Boulder County successfully pursued an ERPO when their client said they planned on buying a gun to kill their father after their discharge from a mental health facility.
The 8th Judicial District Attorney’s office in Larimer County petitioned in January to prevent a person from accessing guns once they left a detention center. The person allegedly used an AK-style rifle to rob a convenience store. A judge approved the request.
Newsline is withholding the names of red flag petitioners and respondents to protect the privacy of individuals in potentially dangerous situations.
Experts say that Colorado’s low uptake rate among expanded petitioner categories is in line with other states, such as Maryland, which allows medical professionals to petition, and California, where employers, co-workers and educators are eligible alongside more common petitioner classes.
“Since those laws have been implemented, those groups have been quite low. So I’m not surprised that they’re also low in Colorado,” said Leslie Barnard, an assistant research professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine who is active in the school’s Firearm Injury Prevention Initiative.
She has been working on a multi-state study of ERPO petitioners and, across the board, the number of health professionals is very small.
“We know from surveys in Maryland that medical professionals oftentimes are unaware that ERPOs are tools that they can use and that are available to them,” she said. “It’s the same thing we see with social workers in these surveys.”
She said that after an explanation of the law, those same professionals say ERPOs are a tool they would use in some circumstances.
A makeshift memorial near the Club Q nightclub, site of a mass shooting, seen on November 21, 2022, in Colorado Springs, Colorado. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Additionally, the numbers could reflect the distinct nature of a client-therapist relationship compared with that of a respondent and law enforcement. Mental health clinicians have more intervention options, and there might be confidentiality concerns for doctors and health professionals, who do not want to contribute to a deterioration of trust among their patients.
“Some of it is that balancing act … with concerns that clinicians in the mental health space have about damaging rapport with their clients, and walking the fine line between ensuring we’re keeping clients safe and that we’re providing support, but we’re also respecting confidentiality and limiting that involuntary decision making for them whenever possible,” Rupp said.
Edie Sonn, the senior director of external affairs of the Colorado Behavioral Healthcare Council, echoed that concern and the importance of a strong therapeutic relationship built on trust. She said that the low uptake might indicate that clinicians are doing every intervention short of filing an ERPO against a client.
“If a psychologist or social worker or whoever it may be were to file an ERPO, it could have a chilling effect on that client’s willingness to seek or remain in treatment,” she said.
That’s particularly a concern in rural and agricultural parts of the state, which often see higher rates of suicide and have fewer mental health clinicians in general.
Law enforcement agencies, which have the most success when filing ERPO petitions, also have the infrastructure in place to fill out paperwork correctly and attend necessary hearings. Completing legal documents such as an ERPO petition isn’t part of a therapist’s regular job description.
The Behavioral Health Council hosted an educational webinar last fall with the nonprofit Everytown for Gun Safety. Sonn said a few dozen health care leaders attended to learn about the new law. Similarly, the NASW Colorado chapter hosted a continuing education event with Colorado Ceasefire in February to provide information about the new law and petition process. About 50 people attended, and the organization posted the recording online. Rupp said the event was a mix of clinicians who were aware of the expanded law and professionals who learned about it for the first time.
“It’s a learning curve for clinicians who haven’t dealt with this type of paperwork and this legal documentation and accessing the court system in this way,” she said.
The 2023 law also provided the Colorado Department of Public Safety with funding to maintain an ERPO hotline with information on the process. Since it opened the hotline, the department said it has received nine calls.
Additionally, the law directed the Office of Gun Violence Prevention to incorporate ERPO information into existing educational campaigns. During the first phase of the office’s campaign, known as “Let’s Talk Guns Colorado,” the website’s ERPO information page had the second-highest view rate, after the homepage, according to Kacie Henderson, the office’s communications specialist.
The office also plans to use a bit over $450,000 from a federal grant to develop a new ERPO training curriculum and an online toolkit for mental health and health care professionals.