Ever since Northglenn Detective Daniel Joyce and Thornton Detective Robert Lopez filed a lawsuit last week alleging corruption within Operation Fortune Cookie, the news media has been rehashing the long, strange tale of the state’s largest — and likely most convoluted – indoor weed bust. (Here’s a play-by-play primer on…
With the sentencing of prominent restaurant owner Dan Tang this coming Wednesday, March 31, it seemed like the long, strange tale of Operation Fortune Cookie would finally be coming to an end. What started more than two and a half years ago as a vague police tip blossomed into the…
This past Monday, when Westword started making calls about a lawsuit that had just been filed by two former North Metro Task Force members alleging they faced retaliation for speaking out about corruption that occurred in Operation Fortune Cookie, a massive indoor weed bust, the case was so new that…
Just a week before prominent Thornton restaurateur Dan Tang is set to be sentenced for his part in the largest indoor marijuana bust in state history, the lead investigator on the case and a colleague have filed a federal lawsuit alleging that they faced retaliation from their superiors for reporting…
Early this year, reports that the city had issued more than 390 sales tax licenses to medical marijuana dispensaries led many to proclaim Denver “Cannabis Capital USA.” But once city council passed new dispensary regulations on January 11 requiring all current dispensary owners to apply for a new dispensary license…
Jeffrey Sweetin, special agent in charge of the Denver field division of the DEA, lately hasn’t been too fond of the mainstream media. Much of it has to do with how reporters covered the case of Chris Bartkowicz, a Highlands Ranch man who was arrested by DEA agents last month…
Today should turn out to be a very good St. Paddy’s Day for Colin Olmstead, since he’ll be getting a whole lot of green from the Arapahoe County DA’s office — and by green, we mean two pounds of pot. Olmstead had the marijuana confiscated in Arapahoe County over a…
The Northwest Denver Toy Library, located in the basement of Smiley Branch Library, 4501 West 46th Avenue, has been letting pint-sized library-card holders borrow toys for free since 1980. But lately it’s been harder than ever to do so, thanks to new federal restrictions on the amount of lead and…
As we wrote about in last week’s cover story and sidebar, CannaMed and several other medical marijuana doctors clinics are selling patient information to dispensaries and grow facilities who need patients to cover the pot they have on hand. Some of the patients involved say that’s left them with caregivers…
Just in time for the warmer weather, Google Maps has released navigation directions for those on bikes. And Denver’s among of the first cities around the country to get the service…
Pot advocate Mason Tvert filed language on Wednesday for a November ballot initiative that would allow Coloradans 21 and older to use marijuana. Does that mean Colorado is about to be embroiled in a full-scale movement to legalize weed? Not necessarily…
Keeping track of all the individuals and organizations duking it out on the front lines of the state’s medical-marijuana debate is trickier than picking through the med strains at your corner dispensary. To help weed through the chaos, we’ve created this guide to the state’s top marijuana power players, complete…
CannaMed owner David Mazin came up with the idea of having his medical marijuana evaluation clinics sell patients to dispensaries and pot growers a year ago. Since then, he claims, several other outfits have adopted the same process. To find out which ones, Westword called many of the local medical…
Karen needed a medical marijuana card. She’d smoked enough pot in her fifty years to know that it subdued her recurring headaches, her nausea, the pain that lingered from the knee surgery she’d had a few years earlier. With all the medical marijuana dispensaries proliferating around Denver, it just made…
Keeping track of all the individuals and organizations duking it out on the front lines of the state’s medical-marijuana debate is trickier than picking through the med strains at your corner dispensary. To help weed through the chaos, we’ve created this guide to the state’s top marijuana power players, complete…
Veterans Suspected of Crimes Swap Guilty Pleas for Rehabilitation Just a few months ago, Iraq War veteran Nic Gray came to in a Colorado Springs jail cell, having been charged with crimes he couldn’t remember committing. The recent Westword feature “Martial Law” details Gray’s troubles — as well as how…
You may know Louisville native Nicole Fox as the recent winner of America’s Next Top Model, but did you know she’s also a magical green fairy who bestows the enchanting nectar of wormwood to all those reckless enough to beseech her succor? That’s how she’s portrayed in new marketing materials,…
Last week, we noted that the Colorado Rail Passenger Association didn’t like the fact that the new-and-improved Union Station was finally starting to be built, since the advocacy group is still awaiting the results of a lawsuit they filed last May that demanded officials consider at other permutations for the…
And to think that your high-school guidance counselor said you’d never make it to college when he caught you smoking pot in the bathroom. These days, Colorado boasts a number of education programs devoted to medical marijuana. Whether you want to learn how to become a state-certified patient, grow your…
As we wrote about in our February 4 cover story, a new Colorado Springs program, the El Paso County Veteran Trauma Court, recently launched to help soldiers who’ve come back from war and found themselves caught in the criminal justice system. One soldier it’s already helped is Nic Gray, a…
As we noted last week, Union Station 2.0 is finally ready to be built, courtesy of a $304 million loan the project just scored from the feds. In fact, preliminary construction work in the area started this past Monday. But that and all other work on Union Station will stop…
If there’s one thing we Coloradans love, it’s our mountains. We hike up them, climb up them, ride trains up them. We have guys named after our state capital sing songs about them. Now we even have a museum dedicated to the exploration of them: The Bradford Washburn American Mountaineering…
