Arvada and Lakewood PD Investigating Me for Writing to Jeffco School Board Members

Near the beginning of August, I mailed letters to 4 out of 5 Jeffco School Board Members asking them to do the right thing and allow parents choice on the medical interventions (masks, etc.) for our children. I visited each of the board members’ houses to deliver the letters in person, but could not leave them due to no publicly accessible mailboxes. So I snapped a picture of each house to send with each letter to let them know I was there and dropped them in the mailbox.

Today, I was visited by an Arvada PD detective and a Lakewood PD detective, apparently fishing for some sort of confession that I had threatened the board members. Why was I the target of their investigation? My fingerprints were found on the letters I sent. That’s right – Arvada and Lakewood cops spent taxpayer resources fingerprinting my letters. Enclosed in each envelope was a letter with the following text:

[Board member’s first name],

We are writing you this letter to encourage you to support parental choice in Jefferson County Public Schools. We are not concerned with the efficacy of masks or vaccines, only the rights of Jeffco parents to send their children to school while choosing for themselves what is best for their families. Other Colorado school districts have wisely chosen to allow parents to make the decision for their children, and we request that you and the rest of the Board follow their lead and change Jeffco’s policy to match.

We live in your community, and you represent us. We expect you to stand up for our rights.

Please do the right thing.

-Jeffco Parents

My initial plan was to hand-deliver the letters to help the school board members understand that their policies are affecting their neighbors – people who live in their neighborhoods who simply want to retain their parental rights. However, the homes didn’t have accessible mailboxes, so I took pictures of each house and included a picture in each letter – again, to remind the school board members that their decisions directly affect their neighbors, including my children, and that I cared enough to visit in person:

Despite the officers’ attempts to get me to agree that being on a public street and taking pictures of houses constituted a threat of some sort, I refused to take their bait and instead reminded them that (just like I did with the school board members) they looked up my address and came to my house, which was not an implicit threat to me any more than me looking up the board members’ addresses, taking Polaroids, and mailing letters was an implicit threat.

The same pictures have been taken many times by Google for their mapping software, and I could have simply included a Google Maps picture and saved myself some time. Instead, I decided to visit my neighbors and struck out trying to hand-deliver my letters but still wanted them to know we were in the same community and we expected them to represent us.

A reminder: Taking pictures publicly is not a crime. Writing letters – even anonymously – is not a crime. In fact, petitioning our elected officials for a redress of grievances is a Constitutional right!

In short, a non-crime plus another non-crime does not equal a crime.

I have been a law-abiding, tax-paying citizen of Arvada my entire adult life. I’ve lived in Arvada since I was 10 years old. I grew up going to Jeffco schools where my mother worked as an administrator, went to CU Denver, and have served over 20 years in the Colorado National Guard. I have no criminal record of any kind. Yet I dare to challenge elected officials to do the jobs they have promised to do in accordance with the Constitution of the United States and the bodily autonomy that liberty promises. I have never violated a law in pursuit of fighting for my rights, and I did not violate the law by sending these letters. So, unfortunately, I’m exactly the person the would-be dictators in government are trying to silence. They would love nothing more than to see me and my fellow rights-insistent citizens censored, our lives destroyed, and if possible have us placed behind bars. The government only cares about our rights when we stand up and assert them.

While these detectives are likely merely doing their jobs, the fact that such embarrassingly flimsy “evidence” has caused the police to go through the process of fingerprinting and referring my “case” to a district attorney shows just how far the government is willing to go to protect their own – not from actual crimes like the spike in murder in Colorado this year, but from the citizenry simply questioning and petitioning public officials.

I am actively investigating whether or not this specious “investigation” merits legal action against both Arvada and Lakewood police departments.

Make no mistake about it – our local officials are actively looking for thought crimes, and they will attempt to trap you into admitting anything they can use to throw you in jail for challenging them.

For reference, here is a story from last year demonstrating the incredibly high standard that the law establishes for a “credible threat.”