Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez spent more than 20 years working with Denver families caught in child welfare, juvenile justice, and truancy court before anyone asked her to run for office. That background — and raising three kids in Denver — is what drives her now as a Denver City Council member at large.
Casey Krizman sat down with Councilwoman Gonzales-Gutierrez on Criminal INjustice to understand what she’s fighting for and why. The through line: the people who don’t usually get a seat at the table.
She traces her push toward policy to a specific frustration. As a caseworker, she kept hitting the same walls on behalf of the same families. Landlords ignoring mold. No rental assistance at the city or state level. “We could only help one family at a time,” she told Casey. Policy could move those walls. Casework never could.
Her children shape her priorities just as directly. When she spent two years in the legislature pushing to raise Colorado’s minimum arrest age from ten to thirteen, her daughters were exactly that age. At the city level, she’s focused on education, environmental justice, and how Denver’s systems treat young people.
The episode also covers her effort to align Denver’s municipal sentencing code with state law following a Colorado Supreme Court ruling. She describes it as a commonsense equity fix that has met more resistance than it should. Casey called it “fighting against shadows.”
Reach her office at denvergov.org.
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