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Christian Komor Gubernatorial Campaign Unveils “Protect and Serve” Public-Safety Plan After Deadly Colorado Summer — Rewards Officers Who Resolve Situations Without Firing a Shot

Christian Komor
Sep 1
5 min read

Woodland Park trooper shooting, Denver’s nine-homicide July, and Longmont officer-involved shooting all point to the same lesson: give officers the training to protect civilians first, and rebuild the neighborhoods that stop trouble before 911 is called.


DENVER — One week after two Colorado State Patrol troopers were shot during a traffic stop west of Woodland Park — one seriously — and following a summer in which Denver recorded nine homicides in a single month, gubernatorial candidate Christian Komor today released Deliverable 10: “Protect and Serve — Communities That Look Out for Each Other,” a plan that puts civilian safety first, rewards officers for de-escalation, and rebuilds the neighborhood institutions that used to keep Coloradans safe long before a squad car showed up.

“Bravery isn’t about gunfights,” Komor said. “It’s about doing everything in your power to protect the civilians who called for help. That’s the job. That’s the oath. Colorado is going to build a public-safety system that honors it.”

The events that made this urgent

On the morning of Tuesday, August 25, two Colorado State Patrol troopers were shot on U.S. 24 near Woodland Park during an attempted traffic stop. One trooper was seriously wounded; the second was struck as he arrived on scene. The suspect fled, triggering a shelter-in-place order across two subdivisions before he was later located and died at a hospital (Denver Gazette; KKTV).

It was the latest in a string of Colorado incidents that share a common thread: officers walking into fluid, high-adrenaline situations without the depth of training, tools, or community backup that keeps everyone alive. In early August, a Golden police officer was shot in a Colfax Avenue gas-station shootout (Hoodline). A Longmont officer-involved shooting during a domestic-related call left one man dead and remains under independent review (Boulder County DA). Denver rolled out an emergency violence-suppression plan after July’s homicide surge.

From the candidate

“Every one of these events is the same story from a different angle,” Komor said. “An officer under pressure. A civilian in danger. A neighborhood that lost the coach, the block leader, and the mutual-aid network that used to catch the trouble months earlier. We can keep arguing about slogans, or we can fix the system.”

“Our platform aims at prevention on multiple levels. I was a sheriff’s deputy in the 90’s and one thing I found is that, when adrenalin starts to flow our animal instant is to draw the gun and escalate. Yes, we need our officers to have the best defensive and offensive equipment and training, but also the best training in deescalation, calming down situations and acting to protect citizens first and secondly themselves. You don’t become a cop because you expect it to be a safe job. You sign up to go into harm’s way. Bravery is not about gunfights, it’s about doing everything in your power to protect civilians. That requires quick thinking, solid planning, and knowing how to communicate. Our Administration will reward ‘Situation Resolved – No Shots Fired” resolutions and we will give our heroic officers better tools, better training, and a job description that puts protecting civilians first. Also, we have dedicated an entire portion of our Platform to 'Reinvigorating Civic Connection and Regional Stewardship'. Communities need the coaches, block leaders, and mutual-aid networks that used to catch problems early.”

What the plan does

1. Protection first. Colorado will reorient state law-enforcement standards and metrics so the first duty is the safety of the civilian who called — before the pursuit, before the chase, before the arrest. State public-safety grants will reward verified Community Service Actions: mental-health de-escalation calls resolved without arrest, roadside assistance, elder-check visits, and neighborhood stabilization work. Arrest quotas lose their grip. Officers are rewarded for harm prevented, not just bad guys caught.

2. “Situation Resolved – No Shots Fired.” This becomes a signature Colorado metric. Officers and units who consistently talk people down, buy time, use non-lethal tools, and end volatile calls without firing a weapon receive recognition, advancement credit, and grant priority. Departments compete on how many crises they defuse, not how many rounds they expend.

3. Civilian-safety metrics. State policing grants and certification will tie to civilian-safety outcomes — response time to the person who called, repeat-victimization reduction, and community-trust surveys — alongside clearance rates and arrest totals, not instead of the traditional numbers, but in addition to them, so the whole picture counts.

4. The Technical Superiority Fund. Every Colorado municipal officer, statutory marshal, and county deputy will get top-tier training and equipment: advanced non-lethal tools, protective gear, tactical urban threat training, verbal de-escalation certification, and mental-health crisis certification. Officer safety up. Lethal-force incidents down. The Woodland Park troopers, the Golden officer, and the family that called Longmont police for help all deserved every tool and every layer of protection Colorado could give them.

5. Reinvigorating Civic Connection and Regional Stewardship. Fund and protect the community organizations, neighborhood associations, youth programs, and mutual-aid networks that prevent crime before it starts. A kid in a coached program at 4 PM isn’t in a cruiser at 2 AM. This is not soft policy — it is the cheapest, most effective crime prevention there is.

6. Looking out for each other. Stand up trained, accountable community-safety liaisons — not vigilantes, but neighbors who know their block, connect people to services, and flag trouble early. Pair them with a Behavioral Threat Assessment Layer: professional threat-assessment personnel embedded regionally, working proactively with schools, mental-health providers, and law enforcement to identify problems before they become 911 calls.

7. Appreciation for differences. If you’re not hurting anyone, you deserve Colorado’s protection and Colorado’s respect — whatever your sexuality, skin color, faith, or how you live. Live your life. Let your neighbor live theirs. Set that example for the kids watching.

8. Problem-site safety. Where guns show up on the civic grid as a problem — schools, public gatherings, domestic crises — Colorado will work hard, proactively, on the safety side: hardened facilities, early intervention, de-escalation, and the protection-first response above. (See Deliverable 12 for school-specific hardening.)

Jobs this creates

  • Trained officers, marshals, and deputies with Colorado Community Service certification: ~1,500–2,500 new positions

  • Mental-health co-responders and crisis navigators: ~600–900 positions

  • Threat-assessment personnel: ~200–350 positions

  • Community-safety liaisons and youth-program staff: ~800–1,200 positions

Positions are union-eligible. Sworn roles align with the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), International Union of Police Associations (IUPA), and municipal police unions. Mental-health co-responders, civilian navigators, and community program staff are eligible for AFSCME and SEIU 105.

Who pays

Reallocation of existing law-enforcement and community-development funding toward protection-first outcomes. Bureaucratic Consolidation savings. Rapid-resolution Citizen Juries replace multi-million-dollar partisan land-use court battles, freeing General Fund capacity for direct local public safety. Zero new taxes on working families.

The bottom line

“I’ve worn the badge,” Komor said. “I know what it feels like when the adrenaline hits and the training has to take over. The officers of this state are heroic — they sign up to go into harm’s way for people they’ve never met. They deserve better than a decade of political grandstanding that left them with worse tools, thinner backup, and no clear mission. Deliverable 10 gives them the training, the equipment, and the job description that ‘Protect and Serve’ was always supposed to mean — and it rebuilds the neighborhoods that used to catch trouble long before an officer’s life was on the line. That’s the deal. That’s the outcome. And that’s the Colorado we’re going to build.”


About Christian Komor: Dr. Christian Komor is a doctoral-level psychologist, former sheriff’s deputy, Earth-systems science advisor, author, and candidate for Governor of Colorado in 2026. Deliverable 10 is part of a broader plan to modernize Colorado government around outcomes for working families.

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