Editor’s Note: This article has been updated to clarify the difference between Summit County’s dog leash laws and Breckenridge’s dog leash laws.

Breckenridge Police Department provided Breckenridge Town Council members with an overview of the last half of 2024 at a Feb. 11 meeting as officials hashed through hot button topics constituents continue to bring to their attention.

Elected officials wanted information on what the department was doing to address what they said were two of Breckenridge’s most talked about issues in the second half of 2024: dogs off leash in restricted areas causing problems and vandalism. 

Council Member Marika Page questioned Sergeant Garrison Green about how warnings doled out by the department were tracked, particularly those for “the elephant in the room … off-leash dogs.” 

“Are you tracking those warnings or not?,” Page asked. 

The topic remained on the desks of both Breckenridge Town Council and the Breckenridge Open Space Advisory Commission for months, until it was no longer warm enough for people to frequent the town’s trails. 

Summit local Alicia Vargo’s collision with an off-leash dog in June — resulting in two fractured vertebrae, soft tissue damage and other injuries for the former collegiate athlete and seasoned trail runner — served as the catalyst for the conversation. 

Vargo appeared before officials to let them in on the aftermath of the accident and the daily chronic pain it left her with at a Sept. 16 Open Space Commission meeting. At that same meeting, Breckenridge Open Space and Trails staff, the Breckenridge Police Department and Summit County Animal Control all reported an increase in public complaints for failure to control dogs. Summit County Animal Control had seen a 22% increase year over year in animal service calls for areas in unincorporated Summit County as of Aug. 31.

Summit County law currently mandates dogs to be under immediate control, meaning the dog has to be within 10 feet and under voice control. Dogs not under voice control must be on a leash that is no longer than 6 feet in length. This is applicable to trails in unincorporated Summit County near Breckenridge. Trails in town limits are subject to Breckenridge’s leash laws, which mandate any dog off an owner’s property be on leash 6-feet-long or under.

“We typically give a written warning for that, so that it is tracked, and that’s our code enforcement officers who do that,” Green said. “Typically, anything like that — trash, parking, dogs off leash, typical quality of life issues — that we know that affects everyone differently, are typically written warnings for those instances.”

Council Member Jay Beckerman asked Green about the department’s efforts related to mitigating vandalism, noting it is a recurring issue officials hear about. 

Green said the department recognizes vandalism as an “ongoing” issue and formed an internal working group on the topic this summer.

He said the group determined public art installations and spots like bike underpasses get targeted the most. He said they also agreed having a sign which says “no graffiti” wouldn’t be effective. 

Security cameras didn’t seem to be a rock-solid solution, either, Green said, noting it can be tough to identify people at night. 

He said as the department acquires more staff with experience in this realm, they will likely beef up efforts surrounding vandalism. 

“Once things start warming up and kids get out of school, maybe we do some more directed enforcement in these low-visibility areas and just have a police presence, and maybe that kind of dissuades people from doing it,” he said. 

On the topic of staffing, Council Member Dick Carleton asked about statistics he was presented demonstrating a bump in staff turnover for the police department from 2022-2024. 

“We had HR pull those numbers for us and it was kind of shocking,” Green said. “I think it was 2022 we had like a 74% turnover rate. A lot of that was because during COVID, no officer wanted to leave their job and try to transfer to another agency because they knew they had job security in the agency.”

He said things went back to normal, which he described as a 25% yearly staff turnover, after 2022 and the department began focusing on recruiting locally. 

“Great, so you’re feeling like we’ve got a path to addressing that?” Carleton said. 

Green responded that he plans to continue work on the curtailing the turnover rate.

The discussion during the Feb. 11 meeting was a presentation of police department statistics specific to the second half of 2024 and officials did not vote on any matter related to police.