Last night, the Denver City Council voted to approve a zoning code update that will prevent the new construction of slot homes, a variation on the garden-court form in which entrances don’t typically face the street.
Thirty-three members of the Colorado legislature have signed onto a letter to U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions calling for congressional action “to protect the sovereignty of states like Colorado and ensure that marijuana businesses and consumers will be free from undue federal interference.” But even though the original document, on view below, was backed by the entire Colorado Congressional delegation, regardless of party designation, no Republican state senators or representatives have done likewise.
Today in two cities, Denver and New York, Denver Post employees will be taking part in separate demonstrations against Alden Global Capital, the vulture hedge fund that has so gutted the newspaper that former owner Dean Singleton chose to resign as chairman and step down from the editorial board as a way of expressing his frustration and disappointment.
On Friday, May 4, Dean Singleton, who owned the Denver Post from 1987 to 2013, resigned as the newspaper’s chairman and also left his position on the editorial board
Although Lisa Raville has worked hard to build the Harm Reduction Action Center into the Colorado’s largest syringe exchange, she feels strongly that even more good could be done if the state had supervised use facilities, where individuals could inject drugs in an environment that put safety first, as opposed to the Denver Central Library branch, where six people overdosed during the first three months of 2017.
With Colorado cycling season in full swing, we recently dug into City of Denver traffic data to learn which neighborhoods have been the setting for the most car-versus-bicycle accidents, and the numbers for the top ten were disturbing. In contrast, ten other Denver neighborhoods have a far better record, registering fewer than ten incidents of this type over the past six years.
Denver Post editorial page editor Chuck Plunkett has resigned after an executive for the subsidiary company that runs the paper refused to okay a new editorial critical of its actual owner, Alden Global Capital, a vulture hedge fund that’s slowly sucking it dry. But you won’t read about that in the Post, thanks to what amounts to internal censorship enforced by Alden and Digital First Media, its de facto proxy.
Last year, after Miguel Lopez was refused a permit for the Denver 420 Rally, which he’s put on annually since 2008, following complaints about Civic Center Park being trashed, attorney Rob Corry filed a lawsuit against the City and County of Denver on his behalf. Then, after Michael Ortiz was awarded the permit only to see it subsequently handed to Euflora, a local dispensary, Corry sued Denver in his name, too.
During its 10 p.m. broadcast on May 2, nearly two weeks after Westword revealed that an investigation into former Manual principal Nick Dawkins found he had violated Denver Public Schools policies related to “equal employment opportunity and non-discrimination” and “procedures for the investigation of employee complaints of discrimination or harassment,” 9News reported that DPS had finally sent a letter to Manual parents about the inquiry. But that wasn’t true. Or at least it’s not true yet.
In a story of strange political bedfellows, representatives from the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) are working with the office of Colorado Republican Senator Cory Gardner on an upcoming bill that would prevent the federal government from interfering with the marijuana system here and in other states that have allow the sale of cannabis.
In newly released body camera video that can be seen here, Colorado State University student Michaella Surat asks Fort Collins police officer Randy Klamser, “What the fuck did I do?” as he tries to arrest her. Klamser tells her, “I don’t want to throw you on the ground” seconds before doing just that.
The Denver real estate market remains red hot, with plenty of homes selling for well above the listed price. But when should sellers to put their property on the market and when should they wait? Denver-specific numbers from a new study reveal the ten best and worst days to make a deal for a house in the Mile High City.
Last night, May 1, the Castle Rock town council voted unanimously to adopt a new animal ordinance that effectively ends the community’s prohibition on pit bulls. Advocates for pit bulls are overjoyed by this turn of events and feel optimistic that the move will trigger new efforts to overturn similar bans in six other Colorado cities.
With the weather improving, more and more cyclists will be hitting the streets of Denver. Unfortunately, in some instances, cars will also be hitting them. But which neighborhoods have been the setting for the most car-versus-bicycle accidents? Westword’s analysis of City of Denver traffic data provides the answers.
According to former Friends of Manual board chair Lainie Hodges, staffers and students were left reeling by news that a Denver Public Schools investigation found that former Manual High School principal Nick Dawkins had violated policies related to “equal employment opportunity and non-discrimination” and “procedures for the investigation of employee complaints of discrimination or harassment.”
Lisa Raville has been seeing more injection meth users taking advantage of the Harm Reduction Action Center’s programs in recent years — “but I’m not sure if it’s a rise or if it’s just a harm-reduction method people have been using for years and years and years.” She speculates that increased participation may be related to a drop-off in “the paranoia of people thinking cops will be sitting out front or that we’re law enforcement.”
According to Denver Police Department data, crime in the Mile High City as a whole is up during the first part of 2018 compared to the same period last year. But the problem is more acute in certain areas than others, as is demonstrated by the following list, which spotlights the specific areas with the most crime reports during the initial three weeks-plus of this month.
Denver has a new rule requiring that all single-occupant public restrooms in the city have gender-neutral signs, and businesses that violate the ordinance may face escalating fines. But Laura Swartz, a spokesperson for the city’s Community Planning Department, thinks that in most cases, a warning will be enough.
The search is on to replace Denver Police Chief Robert White, who formally announced his retirement on April 24, and Nick Rogers, president of the Denver Police Protective Association, the city’s most powerful police union, knows exactly the type of person he’d like to see in the post: “someone who has a tremendous amount of honor and integrity.”
The Harm Reduction Action Center’s Lisa Raville is sharing her four top reasons why people overdose in the hope that increased knowledge will lead to fewer tragedies. In her words, “I’m sick of losing people. A year ago January, we lost seven participants in our program in a two-week period, six to overdose.”
The Cannabist, the Denver Post’s marijuana site, is the latest victim of downsizing at the the newspaper. According a tweet by Jake Browne, who reviewed marijuana for the section and hosted its signature video program, The Cannabist Show, the Post “has cut all editorial staff and will replace them with bots.”
It’s tempting to call the Denver Broncos’ pickup of North Carolina State defensive lineman Bradley Chubb with the number-five pick in the 2018 NFL Draft as an example of dumb luck, and in a way, it was. But it’s more appropriate to say Chubb wound up in orange and blue thanks to the actions of idiots. And those idiots are the people who run the Cleveland Browns.
