Denver Neighborhoods With the Most Violent Crimes Right Now

Through the first three quarters of 2017, violent crime as a whole in Denver is up, with the most worrisome leap coming in the homicide category. And while a significant number of neighborhoods in the city have registered few violent offenses, five sport totals in excess of 100 combined episodes of murder, robbery and aggravated assault.

Ex-KOA Host Steffan Tubbs: Charges Dropped, Calls Himself a Victim

Steffan Tubbs, former host of KOA’s Colorado Morning News, who was let go by the station following his late July arrest on suspicion of domestic violence, disturbance by phone, has revealed that charges against him were dropped yesterday, October 19. He did so in a tweet in which he called himself a domestic violence victim.

Meet Erik Underwood, Ex-Republican Running for Governor as a Democrat

Erik Underwood, a tech industry pro who switched his party affiliation from Republican to Democrat after his 2016 run for the U.S. Senate fell short, is a candidate for Colorado governor in 2018. In the following in-depth conversation, Underwood talks about overcoming an impoverished childhood en route to a successful business career and the details of his ambitious agenda for the state.

Study: New Amazon HQ in Denver Could Send Rents Sky High and More

Today, October 19, marks the deadline for cities to submit proposals to Amazon focusing on why they should be home to the company’s second headquarters, shorthanded as HQ2, and the presentation from Denver, which is considered one of the favorites, is in. Plenty of locals have been worried about the impact on traffic, infrastructure and more should the Mile High City win the race, which is predicted to result in more than 100,000 new jobs between Amazon employees and ancillary workers, and a new study that predicts significantly higher rent and housing costs here in the wake of HQ2 adds more reasons for concern.

Denver Radio Boss of KS-107.5, Alice and More Is Out

One of the most powerful figures in Denver radio has fallen. Amy Griesheimer is out as vice president and general manager for KS-107.5, Alice and three other stations owned by the national media conglomerate Entercom, with observers speculating that the move was made because of ratings and revenue shortfalls in an industry that continues to struggle with the fallout from technological changes and shifting listener habits.

Kendall B on JAMMIN 101.5 Return, Split From Larry, Kathie J and KS-107.5

This week marks the return to Denver radio of Kendall B, who’s now helming the morning show for old-school R&B station JAMMIN 101.5. And while he’s very excited about the new opportunity and upbeat about being back on the airwaves in the Mile High City, he wants to make sure his history at KS-107.5, where he teamed with Larry and Kathie J on a mega-successful morning show for fifteen years, isn’t overlooked, as he makes clear in the following in-depth Q&A.

Why You Should Order Satan Cakes From Discriminatory Christian Bakers

Jack Phillips of Denver’s Masterpiece Cakeshop is reportedly shocked and appalled that someone asked him to bake a birthday cake for Satan. But was his rejection of this entreaty against the law? A representative of The Satanic Temple, a Salem, Massachusetts-based organization that’s been encouraging folks to make just such a request of Phillips and other bakers who feel they should be allowed to refuse service to gay customers because of their Christian faith, says yes.

Kyle Clark on How He and 9News Are Mastering Social Media

Once upon a time, ratings were pretty much the only way of judging commercial success for local television news. But that’s no longer the case. Witness a new report by TV Spy, a broadcasting-industry website, which grades Denver TV outlets and personalities by social-media engagement. Using that measure, 9News is the clear number one, while Kyle Clark, anchor of Newt With Kyle Clark, tops the talent chart in part because of the ways he uses Facebook, Twitter and Instagram beyond simply establishing and extending his brand, as he explains to us in the following Q&A.

An Open Letter to Walmart: It’s Too Damn Soon to Be Pimping Christmas!

I feel the commercialization of Christmas is currently way more out of hand than when Linus van Pelt first dropped Biblical verses on the American public, and you, Walmart, are making things worse. As exhibit A, I offer my visit this past weekend to one of your branches in Northglenn, where I discovered that a huge portion of the store is already devoted to Christmas.

County Sex-Offender Registry Pulled Down Because of Lawsuit Fears

As we’ve reported, Montrose County, on Colorado’s Western Slope, pulled its sex-offender list offline following a recent court ruling in which U.S. District Court Judge Richard Matsch found that such registries constituted cruel and unusual punishment in the case of three plaintiffs. The ruling is specific to the complainants in question, rather than everyone on the roster, and Colorado Attorney General Cynthia Coffman has announced her intention to appeal. So why make the move now? According to a representative from the sheriff’s office in Montrose, a fear of lawsuits.

Tom Green Remembers How to Tie a Tie — Lucky for 9News, Which Hired Him

The day before the announcement that he’d been hired by 9News, Tom Green, who left a decade-and-a-half stint on Daybreak, the KWGN morning show, in May and has been off the air ever since, posted the photo above on his Facebook page along with a caption that reads, “I tied a tie today…wasn’t sure I’d remember how. I’m kinda proud of myself.”

Why There Will Be a Lawsuit in the East High Cheerleaders Splits Torture Case

On Saturday, October 14, in an extraordinarily blatant attempt to bury a controversial decision, the Denver District Attorney’s Office announced that it would not file criminal charges over videos of East High School cheerleaders crying out in agony while being forced into the splits position. But the prospects of the case winding up in court haven’t disappeared. Two families are working with one of Denver’s most dogged and successful civil-rights attorneys, who’s issued a statement that hints strongly at the prospect of future litigation.

Twenty Angriest Tweets About Broncos’ Meltdown Against New York Giants

Last week, after listening to pundit after pundit say your Denver Broncos had virtually no chance of losing to the injury riddled, 0-5 New York Giants on October 15’s Sunday Night Football, this longtime Men of Orange fan sensed disaster. For decades, after all, the Broncos have regularly sucked it up against inferior opponents they were supposed to pummel, especially in prime-time contests, for reasons of overconfidence, a lack of intensity, the assumption that phoning it in would be good enough under the circumstances, or a combination thereof. And damned if they didn’t do just that, falling 23-10 to the pathetic G-men in a game whose outcome unleashed one of the angriest Twitter storms in recent memory, as demonstrated by the collection of tweets below.

Boulder Isn’t Nearly as Young, White and PC as You Think

Around the country, Boulder has a reputation as a youthful, wealthy, lily-white, politically progressive utopia. But the truth turns out to be considerably more complicated. According to “Boulder County Trends,” a fascinating new report from the Community Foundation Boulder County that’s accessible below, the population in the area is growing older and more diverse in ways that are complicating the interactions of the well-off and their less financially secure neighbors. Moreover, the county’s ideology doesn’t always translate into fairness or charity in quite the ways most locals likely imagine.

9News’s Kyle Clark on Being Denver TV’s Social-Media King

Once upon a time, ratings were pretty much the only way of judging commercial success for local television news. But that’s no longer the case. Witness a new report by TV Spy, a broadcasting-industry website, which grades Denver TV outlets and personalities by social media engagement. Using that measure, 9News is the clear number one, while Kyle Clark, anchor of Next With Kyle Clark, tops the talent chart in part because of the ways he’s used Facebook, Twitter and Instagram beyond simply establishing and extending his brand, as he explains to us in the following Q&A.

“Small-Town Politics on Steroids” and the Police Beating of a Vietnam Vet

A federal jury has awarded Vietnam veteran Mark Smith a $760,000 judgment to be paid by the Town of Kremmling and two members of the community’s four-person police department, including the chief, over a brutality episode with a long and bizarre backstory. Smith’s attorney says the beating Smith took was motivated by what he calls “small-town politics on steroids.”

The Mega-Irritating John Denver Revival on the 20th Anniversary of His Death

Twenty years ago today, on October 12, 1997, John Denver died when an experimental aircraft he was flying crashed into Monterey Bay off the coast of California. But even before this benchmark anniversary, the makings of a full-scale JD revival was underway, as exemplified by the prominent role his song “Take Me Home, Country Roads” plays in two major films currently unspooling at a multiplex near you. And speaking as a longtime resident of the city for which the man born Henry John Deutschendorf Jr. renamed himself, I find that irritating as fuck.

Jack Splitt’s Tragic Death and Bizarre Prosecution of His Marijuana Provider

Last year, we told you about the tragic death of Jack Splitt, the fifteen-year-old namesake of Jack’s Law, a landmark bill that allowed young medical marijuana patients in Colorado, like him, to take their cannabis-based medication at school. More than a year later, Mark Pedersen, who made MMJ suppositories that helped alleviate the pain suffered by Splitt as a result of a condition associated with his cerebral palsy, faces five felony pot possession and manufacturing charges in Jefferson County that flowed from the investigation into Jack’s passing despite the fact that there’s no evidence the medication harmed him in any way.

Inside John Ramsey’s CBS Lawsuit Over Brother-Killed-JonBenét Show

John Ramsey, father of JonBenét Ramsey, who was murdered in her Boulder home on Christmas Day 1996, has filed a $350 million lawsuit against CBS and assorted individuals associated with The Case of: JonBenét Ramsey, a 2016 docuseries in which a panel of experts concluded Burke Ramsey, JonBenét’s brother, killed his sister with a blow to the head. In an interview on view below, Atlanta-based attorney Lin Wood, who also represents Burke in a similar complaint filed late last year, maintains that the suit isn’t specifically intended to prevent news organizations from making such claims in the future, but he’s fine if it has that effect.

The Final Chapter in a Teen’s Murder Over a Cricket Cell Phone

Just over two years ago, we told you the shocking story of Desmond Smith, a fourteen year old allegedly murdered over a Cricket cellphone. More than two years later, three men have been sentenced in the case, which began with a particularly senseless act of violence and escalated into family drama in which a son agreed to testify against the father whose crime involved covering up for him and his uncle.