State legislators dropped by three businesses in Colorado Springs Friday morning to hear about shoplifting, drug use and other crimes driving up their costs to stay secure.

Mayor Yemi Mobolade organized the public safety tour for the state lawmakers to begin making the case for crime laws that could change in the 2026 session. More than a dozen state legislators showed up for the tour, along with three City Councilmembers and other leaders from around Colorado Springs.

Mobolade and city staff said the event was based on the success of a public safety summit last year that focused on a spike in juvenile crime. Those meetings may have helped support a successful bill, HB 25-1146, increasing the number of juvenile detention beds.

The bill increased the number of “emergency detention beds” available under the statewide juvenile detention bed cap from 22 to 39.

Friday’s tour had a broader focus on crime issues and how it overlapped with the city’s homeless population

“Two things can be true at once. We can push for stricter law enforcement and push for greater resources and compassion to deal with residents who are experiencing homelessness,” Mobolade said Friday afternoon after the tours.

One of the main stops was Spencer’s Lawn and Garden Center on Tejon Street. Longtime owner Mike Spencer said he had been repeatedly contacting the city to deal with the increased presence of drugs and criminal behavior in the neighborhood.

Spencer said the garden store saw a break-in most weeks, whether it was a cut lock or something more severe like an incident last year where the business’ computer server was stolen. He appreciated that Colorado Springs police were doing what they could but said they needed to be able to enforce stricter punishments for smaller offenses.

“I want to bring attention to this not just for us, but for the rest of the South Nevada (Avenue) corridor and the houses just off the corridor who won’t see their values go up until we address these problems,” Spencer said.

House Minority Leader Jarvis Caldwell, a Republican, asked how the crimes were affecting Spencer’s insurance costs for the business. Spencer replied that it has become difficult to get coverage in the area so they were essentially self-insuring many areas.

Early in the morning the group visited Carniceria Leonela, a Mexican grocery store and butcher on Pikes Peak Avenue. Ana Mendoza, part of the family that runs the store, said they had been facing an exponential growth of shoplifting over the last few years. The thefts became so frequent that earlier this year, the store began paying thousands of dollars a month for a part-time security guard to help curb the losses.

“We probably had one or two incidents of shoplifting a day,” Mendoza said. “Meat is the most expensive thing we sell, so it’s not like we are losing TVs, but we get all kinds of people taking things.”

The legislators mentioned a bill that stalled in the House earlier this year that would have increased penalties for repeat offenders of retail crimes. Mendoza said the store wanted to know how to weigh in if a similar bill was proposed again in 2026.

Mobolade said the city would keep meeting with businesses to set a full list of legislative priorities for 2026. Colorado Springs Police Chief Adrian Vasquez said other changes the police might support included lowering the dollar amount that triggered a felony theft to less than $2,000 or reconsidering crimes that had been reduced to a misdemeanor offense in recent years.

Rep. Amy Paschal, a Democrat who covers the western sliver of Colorado Springs in House District 18, pushed back a little on Spencer about the crime enforcement side. Paschal agreed that the state needed to enforce the laws but said that just arresting people would not fix the reasons that people end up homeless.

“A lot of the folks have mental illness, they have addiction issues. If you put them in jail for 10 days, they are still going to be right back,” Paschal said. “It’s still a revolving door but the return time is just longer.”

Spencer said he wasn’t opposed to other alternatives that would get people off the streets, including treatment centers or short-term institutions, but that those would take much longer to fund and implement.

“The reason my family is paying our tax dollars to you is to fix this problem. I don’t care how you correct it,” Spencer replied.