How one Colorado police department is changing how officers respond to traffic stops

By Sarah Horbacewicz

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    BOULDER, Colorado (KCNC) — Earlier this year, the Boulder Police Department launched a new Blue Envelope Program aimed at improving interactions between police and community members. The envelopes have tips for successful interactions with law enforcement as well as space to write in any concerns or invisible disabilities officials should know about. Now, the department says hundreds if not thousands of envelopes have been given out and officers are starting to see them on calls.

Boulder resident Lucia De Giovanni was one of the first to pick up an envelope.   “I was pretty much terrified of a traffic stop,” De Giovanni said, “I don’t drink, I don’t do drugs, and I just have debilitating anxiety.”

Along with anxiety, De Giovanni also suffers from PTSD and other medical complications that can make what can already be a stressful interaction with police that much harder.

“I’ve had therapists that didn’t know what to do with me, let alone a police officer, you know, if I start shaking,” De Giovanni said, “I knew how a very innocent situation could potentially turn very tense.”

So, she wrote everything she’d want an officer to know about her health and needs down on the envelope. A few months later, when someone vandalized her car, she handed her envelope to the responding officer.

“I handed him this, and literally shaking because I didn’t know if he was familiar with it, how he would react. And he took it, he opened it, read it,” De Giovanni said, “And from almost like a, this authoritarian person, he became calm. He made me feel very comfortable.”

De Giovanni’s call was the very first to use a blue envelope, but more have followed since. Officer Caitlin Spinney says she’s responded to many of them and even gotten stopped on the street to answer questions about them.

“We’re trained to be prepared for every situation… in every direction that it could go…” Spinney said, “The blue envelope really helps us kind of look at a situation that may feel like it needs to escalate. … We see that envelope and we realize like maybe that’s not the case, and it allows us to really slow things down.”

Some of the accommodations that can come from the blue envelope can look like no lights and sirens, quickly seeing a need for a translator, or even just more patience.

“A lot of the times we’re going to calls based on just our dispatch notes, which are not always accurate. They’re getting information from callers. Things get lost in translation, so to have concrete information available immediately to us, verified by that person, is huge,” Spinney said.

And while Boulder police are not the first department in the country to use this program, they were the first in Colorado. Since their launch, the department reports at least 10 departments across the state and the country have reached out to ask about starting their own.

Boulder police created this envelope with the idea of drivers keeping it in their car, but the department says because they’ve seen so much interest, they’re not looking into creating smaller versions for pedestrians and bikers to more easily carry with them.

“I feel like I can never forget it. It’s always with me,” De Giovanni said, “If somebody like me can benefit, I know a lot of people who have depression, anxiety or certain limitations can certainly benefit from it.”

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