Despite the statistics on significantly increasing crime, Sen. Brittany Pettersen (D-Colo.), who’s also a candidate to represent Colorado’s 7th Congressional District, championed a Colorado measure that reduced the penalty for fentanyl possession, Erik Aadland, Pettersen’s Republican opponent for the 7th Congressional District, told The Epoch Times.
The Epoch Times reached out to Pettersen’s campaign for comment on Aadland’s claims but didn’t receive a response.
Aadland noted that thanks to the I-25 corridor running north to south, one of the catalysts for Colorado’s increasing crime is drug cartels “building an empire on the Southern Border.”
“[Colorado is] No. 1 in auto theft, No. 1 in bank robberies, cocaine capital of the country, and ... leading in fentanyl overdose deaths,“ he said. ”But most concerning is this disaster on the Southern Border.”
Being Soft on Crime Leads to More
Colorado has essentially become a border state, thanks to the I-25 corridor and the massive influx of illegal immigrants using it, according to Aadland.“There’s significant drug trafficking coming up [I-25] and putting Denver on the map for distribution of illicit drugs,” he said.
Aadland also said that “the crime wave we’re experiencing in Colorado is linked” to the porous Southern Border and soft-on-crime laws.
But regardless of whether it’s cartels or citizens behind the particular theft, because of Colorado’s lax laws, there’s no actual deterrent to crime, according to Aadland.
“Perpetrators continue to either cut out catalytic converters or continue to steal cars again, and that affects hardworking families,” he said.
And it doesn’t stop there.
“When you have one rise in crime, it [has a correlating] effect on crime altogether,” Aadland said. “Because usually, those who are consistently committing crimes are involved in other forms of criminal activity.”
Consequently, he called Pettersen’s stance “shocking” and “incongruent” with what needs to happen to reduce crime.
In Aadland’s opinion, to help reduce crime in Colorado and the rest of the nation, there needs to be “reasonable controls in place” at the Southern Border, and legislators need to reverse their soft-on-crime stance.
That’s a reversal that Democrats in general refuse to embrace thanks to “antagonism” coming from the Biden administration and “Democratic leadership.”
Reversing Rising Crime
As evidence of Biden’s antagonism toward the border, Aadland said, “When Biden took office, he got rid of the remain in Mexico policy. That [was] the most important policy in terms of managing asylum seekers and preventing that illegal flow of immigration.”He noted that Biden then refused to enforce immigration laws or complete “the wall.”
Aadland said Democrats are undermining the police with their “defund the police” movement, and that has led to a precipitous drop in recruitment numbers. Aadland labeled the Democrats’ stance a “dereliction of duty.”
“The primary charge of the federal government is to protect this country and to secure our borders and uphold the U.S. Constitution,” he said.
When asked why Democrats have taken such a position, Aadland responded that it’s impossible to know their objective fully, but there appears to be an element of “malicious intent.” He said that from appearances, it looks like Democrats are following a policy designed to change the voting demographic but cautioned that he couldn’t say that with absolute certainty.
Still, he did say that he believes Democrats are doing “everything they can to tear down the rule of law, and it’s creating crime.”
“It’s creating chaos,” Aadland said. “It’s making people less trustful of their institutions. I think there’s an unprecedented distrust in our institutions altogether.”
As evidence, Aadland pointed out that Colorado’s secretary of state recently sent out a letter encouraging about 30,000 people to register to vote who are ineligible. He specified that he didn’t know if that was because of “corruption, extraordinary incompetence,” or “ineptness,” but it shouldn’t have occurred, and it causes people to question intent.
Aadland called the Chinese storage of such information “deeply alarming,” as it could point to foreign interference in U.S. elections. He said that instead of turning a blind eye to potential problems, those in positions of authority need to take a closer look at the system as a whole, “identify any flaws, and fix it.” He said Americans need to trust the system and that fixing issues should be “nonpartisan.” However, that isn’t happening.
Instead, he alleged, Democrats, along with their allies in the mainstream media, and specifically, progressives, are using “divisive rhetoric” to inhibit conversations. They’re looking to sow division and distraction to keep people away from examining their policies that “destroy the economy.”
“They destroy our national security,” Aadland said of the policies. “They destroy our energy independence. They undermine the fabric of American strength.”
To reverse that trend, Americans need to elect leaders who will “start with addressing the fundamentals of American strength and the kitchen table issues that are hurting Coloradans and everyday people nationwide,” he said.
To get the economy back on track and lower inflation, Aadland said legislators need to rein in government spending and make “government more efficient, so we’re spending within our cash flow.”
To reverse rising crime, Aadland said legislators need to secure the Southern Border, uphold the rule of law, and be willing to look for common ground across the aisle.
“These are things that we’ve got to address immediately, or we will continue to deteriorate,” he said. “I think JFK had a great quote: ‘It’s not the Democratic answer or the Republican answer. It’s the right answer.’ ... We’ve got to move past this hyper-partisanship and find ways to come together on common ground.”
Striking a Balance
As evidence of his more moderate approach, Aadland acknowledged that society impacts the environment and should be “judicious stewards of our resources.” He pointed to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in the 7th Congressional District and said he wants to fully fund its endeavors to look for ways to be less wasteful. However, he noted that he disagrees with the partisan approach of only looking for one way to be responsible stewards.He said the United States should be exploring all options regarding energy, including pursuing a nuclear energy policy and pumping petroleum, which the United States does “more cleanly” than anyone else. He also said the increased dependency on China for rare earth metals for things such as electric vehicles is “deeply concerning.”
“Just look at Russia and Ukraine and Europe’s dependency on Russian petroleum and natural gas,” Aadland said. “We need to be energy independent. We need to produce oil and natural gas as we build out nuclear. As wind and solar become more efficient and even unexplored technology. ... It’s all got to be done in balance. You can’t destroy the economy and rush toward a disastrous Green New Deal in the meantime.”
He argued that by solely focusing on one path, Democrats have committed themselves to “ideology” instead of science, and now their radical progressive policies are destroying the country.
To fix that, Aadland said the United States needs to elect “reasonable leaders in office who recognize economic fundamentals” and commit to solid leadership that thinks outside party lines.
Pettersen isn’t such a leader and will vote in lockstep with the Biden and Pelosi agenda, he said.
Neither Pettersen nor her campaign responded to The Epoch Times’ multiple requests for comment.
