Who is the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition?

Our mission is to reverse the trend of mass incarceration in Colorado. We are a coalition of nearly 7,000 individual members and over 100 faith and community organizations who have united to stop perpetual prison expansion in Colorado through policy and sentence reform.

Our chief areas of interest include drug policy reform, women in prison, racial injustice, the impact of incarceration on children and families, the problems associated with re-entry and stopping the practice of using private prisons in our state.

If you would like to be involved please go to our website and become a member.


Thursday, December 04, 2008

Prison Drug Smuggling Operation

So when they tell you there are no illegal drugs in prison....remember this.

Writer:
Andrew Travers

A pair of local brothers are implicated in an operation that allegedly brought narcotics into a state prison in Cañon City, where one of the men is currently incarcerated.

Authorities in Fremont County allege that Four Mile Correctional Center inmate and Aspen native Stefan Schutter enlisted his brother, Devin, to help bring cocaine and heroin into the prison, using covert drug deliveries by a milk truck driver.

Devin Schutter, who has eight unrelated criminal cases currently pending in Aspen — including charges for dealing cocaine, threatening to kill a local woman, and several alleged violations of his probation terms — was arrested here last month for violating the bail bond conditions in all eight of those cases, after a warrant was issued for him in Fremont County for his alleged role in the prison drug operation. Devin Schutter has three previous felony convictions. He turned 30 in Pitkin County Jail last week.

His younger brother, Stefan, was convicted of holding up Clark’s Market in August 1999 in one of a series of armed robberies carried out by local teenagers. He served six years in prison for that, was released in 2005, and was then arrested months later in Jefferson County in possession of an assault rifle, a revolver, more than 270 grams of cocaine, 220 grams of hallucinogenic mushrooms, 360-plus grams of marijuana, and smaller amounts of crack and heroin. Last year he was sentenced to a 10-year prison term for that transgression.

Devin faced a district judge in Aspen yesterday, during a hearing on whether the locally issued warrant had established probable cause for his Nov. 6 arrest at the Hickory House on Main Street. The warrant, issued by the Aspen Police Department, did not clearly present that he was free on bond when he allegedly contributed to the prison drug ring.

Chief District Judge James Boyd accepted an amended, corrected warrant yesterday and denied a request from Devin Schutter’s attorney to free his client on a zero-dollar bond, as a sanction for the police mistake. He remains in custody here on nearly $220,000 bond.

An investigator for the Colorado Department of Corrections (DOC) began tracking the Schutter brothers after he was tipped off earlier this year that drugs were being smuggled into the Cañon City prison by a milk truck driver named “Henry Ferstreat,” who was allegedly charging inmates $200 for packages of drugs he delivered, according to court documents. Subsequent investigation found the alleged drug courier’s last name was actually Verstraete.

The DOC investigator claims Federal Express packages were sent to Verstraete from Devin Schutter in Aspen.

The investigator, William Claspell, began tapping phone conversations between the Schutter brothers from the prison in July, when Stefan allegedly asked his brother to mail drugs to Verstraete concealed in a bottle of the muscle-building supplement Creatine Monohydrate.


Aspen Daily News

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Do you think that DOC would investigate the main sources of drugs in prison? Those sources are the correctional officers themselves.
A prisoner, in his early 30's, named Schmidt, was discovered dead in his cell hours after overdosing on prescription drugs, and the DOC has covered this up from the moment that it was discovered. It happened on September 9 and all of the news media was notified, but no one has investigated this.mpc

Anonymous said...

How would the inmate pay the milk driver??? He doesnt have axcess to money. Prisoners have accounts held by DOC and they can only purchase anything thru DOC canteen. MPC is right, anything smuggeld into a prison has to be thru a guard. Some one on the outside would have to pay the guard.djw

Anonymous said...

We are well rehearsed in the Department of Corruptions. I thought I would be the only one to post a comment about those 'fine and mighty' correctional officers providing drugs to the inmates. It is done all of the time! It's pure cover-up.

CCJRC has recently sent a request for monetary funding. I would be happy to comply, limited budget or not, IF CCJRC would put forth the articles that expose DOC and the court systems for what they truly are.

I look forward to the day when CCJRC realizes that exposing the absolute truth will be the progressive change we need to bring forth fairness and rehabilitation instead of high incarceration rates and excessive sentencing.

I also question why Ms. Clifton will not sue DOC and those that refused her medical treatment for her. This is still painful for her as it was criminal behavior on the part of those on duty.

Truth, not white-wash. DOC knows it is the very people they employ (especially in private prisons) who are the drug dealers.

Anonymous said...

c w s. Come on the blame starts at the roots. U know that

Anonymous said...

Honestly Andrew Tavern...?... I do not understand how you can have no soul. It is not only that, but you lack SO many Facts and include so many lies in your articles, you dont even report the police reports accurately which everyone knows ARE already tainted.
What I would like to ask you is this. Why is it that every
time Devin Schutter or anyone, and I mean anyone that has ever known him!! ... IS reconized... you feel the need to print a story; fabricated from the fabricated police reports that include bribery... but wait. . that part must have been excluded from the police report.. interesting . My advice to you as a writer is try to get the real story instead of the one that is created. I dont know you but your false information that you have been dispersing is gross. And why would anyone want to tell you the truth when your reporting back stabbing ways advance your career but emit no truth.. i could almost laugh at you. Usually I dont like to hurt people's feelings. . . but since you have no vertebrae it makes no difference. Get a life! And stop being the liar you have been for the past 2 or 3 years, Dont you want to be known as someone else besides the guy that lied in the paper???? Although those boys, the Schutters,may not always make great choices... THE media and you, who reports on subjects he knmows nothing about,t
at story may not be so dramatic... and I can tell you a different separate incident including that same officer that was

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Anonymous said...

Thanks, luckily i do not need the drug rehab link... so kind of you tho... but AS I TRIED TO CONVEY TO YOU ALL ALMOST ONE YEAR AGO... the system is unfair... all of the police are "alleged" criminals.... oh the alleged word can be removed in this case. And devin schutter is an angel compared to any cop that was a pervert and took video footage of under aged girls in the shower, "allegedly", or some cop that tried to bribe an "alleged" dealer to make up an "alleged" story about her boyfriend. Oh and then that officer who tried to bribe her also got arrested for being intoxicated while being a police officer.. while carring a hand gun while driving a cruiser??? There is no alleged there.... You guys have it all backwards. *sigh* The DA, and at least 2 of the arresting officers are conflicts of interest. Find something more interesting and stop spending so many tax dollars on not only people who do not deserve to be in prison, but stop SOAKING THE REMAINDER OF THE TAX DOLLARS BY BEING CROOKED D.A.s. AND CROOKED COPS ...... A.M. EVEN YOU ARE FACING BACKWARDS .... I THOUGHT SO MUCH MORE OF YOU... NOT ANY MORE..!

Anonymous said...

Why are these two brothers involved is a life of crime? They are from an affluent family, they don't need the money...what happened to these boys? Where were the parents?