Vail Police Take New Approach to Unaccompanied Minors on July 4

While Vail’s annual America Days Fourth of July celebration draws large crowds to town, recent years have also seen large hordes of unaccompanied minors. This is something Vail Police are hoping to curb this year through increased education, outreach and enforcement.

“Last year there were big changes in the number of children coming and that was the turning point where we said, ‘Enough, this is affecting the rest of the city and the guests,'” said police Commander Lachlan Crawford.

In 2023, just after summer vacation, Vail Police Chief Ryan Kenney reported that there were nearly 1,500 children in the village.

“They were climbing the light poles, trying to knock them down, and jumping into Gore Creek. It became a bit of a disaster. We had to reroute the buses around Solaris because we couldn’t get the kids to move. We didn’t have enough staff to do that,” Kenney said on July 18.

This week, Crawford told the Vail Daily the problem is large groups of unsupervised youth. He estimated that at one point there were about 500 to 600 children in one group. Most of the children are from the Front Range and have been dropped off in town and then left unsupervised, he added.

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Police found “a lot of underage drinking,” some drug use and “a lot of destructive behavior,” Crawford said.

To deal with the volume of minors, Vail police issued tickets and made some arrests, but overall “they didn’t have the staff to handle that many children,” Crawford said.

“With such a large group, it is a challenge to track down individual children and get them to disperse,” he added.

In light of last year’s experiences, the Police Department began developing a plan in 2024 to prevent and address this undesirable behavior.

A proactive approach

“This group is not a safety threat to anyone. It’s more of a nuisance. But it’s hard to enjoy the evening when there are hundreds of kids drinking, screaming and yelling and misbehaving and making it difficult to navigate the city,” Crawford said. “So it’s not a safety issue. It’s not that anyone has anything to worry about. It’s just a big crowd. We’re just trying to contain it.”

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The changed approach began this spring by reaching out to some schools and school districts on the Front Range where many of the minors came from.

“Our SRO (School Resource Officer), Greg Schwartz, has been working with the SROs in all the Front Range schools, especially in the Cherry Creek area, to get the message across about what it’s going to be like this year,” Crawford said.

Crawford added that he did not know how schools, parents and students obtained this information.

“We didn’t get any feedback from any of the schools down there. All the feedback we got on our publications came from locals who were happy that we were working to solve the problem,” he said.

No warnings, zero tolerance

The message said, among other things, that law enforcement would pursue a “zero tolerance” policy this year, which essentially means “there will be no warnings,” Crawford said.

“If we come across alcohol, drugs, disorderly conduct, harassment, destruction of property in the city, vandalism or anything like that, there are no warnings… They are all brought back to the police station. They are all examined, fingerprinted, the whole thing. And then they are held here until a parent shows up,” he said.

Crawford reiterated that these increased measures are specifically aimed at the behavior of unaccompanied minors in recent years: “When children are here with their families or in smaller groups and are behaving, we are not trying to upset them,” he said. “It is the large groups that are here to cause problems and they do it on purpose.”

If parents or guardians do not follow the rules or fail to pick up minors under the age of 18, Vail Police officers intend to notify the state Department of Human Services.

In addition to working with the Department of Social Services, Vail police have also worked with the 5th District Attorney’s Office, local courts and other law enforcement agencies to move to this zero-tolerance policy, Crawford said. They also have “a good plan to accommodate a lot of children at the police station,” he said.

“Everyone is in favor of charging the young people and also the parents, because an important part of the message is: If you drop your children off here and allow this behavior, you will be charged too,” Crawford said.

On the 4th, Vail Police plan to send more officers on foot into town, as well as officers from other law enforcement agencies. The District Attorney’s Office will also have investigators at the police station to assist with any cases and answer questions as needed.

Although the city also considered imposing a curfew for the celebrations this year, it ultimately decided against it.

As Vail police prepare for the holiday, Crawford added that they will likely need to continue these policies going forward.

“It’s probably going to be the same next year and the years after that until we feel like we can pull back a little bit,” he said. “The Fourth of July in Vail is supposed to be a fun night for everyone with the fireworks and to be able to hang out. And when we have kids in town doing that, it’s just not good for the guests.”