At an event last week, Denver City Councilman Albus Brooks revealed that he had battled through an addiction to opioids. But he declined an interview request from Westword to talk in more detail about this ordeal, which came about as a result of treatment for cancer, even though opioid deaths are on the rise in Denver and across the state.
Just over a month after Ed Perlmutter dropped out of the 2018 race for Colorado governor and announced that he wouldn’t seek reelection to Congress in the state’s 7th Congressional District, he has changed his mind. Perlmutter has now declared that he will indeed make a bid to stay in Congress, contradicting earlier statements about making room for new blood.
A former first-year University of Denver student is suing over what his complaint describes as “false allegations of non-consensual sexual contact” with a fellow DU freshman that led to his expulsion. The suit is at least the second of its type filed against the university in the past two years, and the attorney handling both cases accuses the school of using a procedure that is patently unfair to those accused of such offenses and gives them little opportunity to defend themselves.
During the solar eclipse today, August 21, The Society for the New Message from God, a sect based in Boulder, will be sharing what a representative describes as divine revelations that Jehovah Himself divulged to Marshall Vian Summers, His designated “messenger.” Attendees at one of the largest eclipse parties in Wyoming will be among the first to receive this wisdom, via handouts of books financed by that most heavenly of devices, a Kickstarter campaign.
Darren McKee, who’s better known to listeners of 104.3 The Fan as D-Mac, wasn’t exactly an overnight success. Today, Big Al and D-Mac, the afternoon-drive show he co-hosts with former Denver Broncos great Alfred Williams, is among the highest rated programs on any metro-area radio station, as it’s been for most of the pair’s nearly eight years together. But as McKee tells us in the following in-depth interview, his career path prior to combining forces with Williams was marked by as many downs as ups, and probably more.
In July 2015, Matthew Burry, a sex offender who spent more than a decade in prison, was arrested and charged with child abuse resulting in death after the passing of his four-and-a-half-month-old son, Dominic. But an Adams County jury has now found Burry not guilty of the crime after his legal team presented evidence that the child actually died as a result of meningitis that had afflicted him since birth.
Tattoo artist Brian Pattison has been found guilty of killing Shane Richardson last year, then starting a fire that closed Rosenberg’s Bagels & Deli, an iconic eatery located in the same structure, for months. Prosecutors say Pattison came to Denver from his home in Colorado Springs for a “tattoo party” at Richardson’s place that went terribly wrong, and surveillance footage from Rosenberg’s proved key in solving the case.
Steve Barlock, an independent Denver-area real estate broker who co-chaired the 2016 Mile High City campaign for now-President Donald Trump, is running as a Republican for governor here in 2018. In the following in-depth interview, he goes into detail about his reasons for seeking the office, shares his frustrations with entrenched powers on both sides of the political spectrum, and touts himself as a candidate of the people dedicated to being to Colorado what Trump is to the United States as a whole.
Denver Go Topless Day 2016 drew by far the largest crowd in the event’s history to a rally and march on the 16th Street Mall to celebrate equality and demonstrate against the idea that it’s okay for men to appear topless in public but either distasteful or (in some locations) illegal for women to do likewise. But while females participants tend to get the most attention, the main organizer for the gathering, whose 2017 version will take place from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, August 26, is a man, Matt Wilson. But if that conjures fears of male-dominated exploitation, don’t worry: Nothing could be further from the truth.
Donald Lucero has been arrested for a series of assaults Tuesday, August 15, on the 16th Street Mall, including the alleged punching of a man for laughing. It’s the highest-profile crime on the Mall since last year, when multiple fights and random attacks were caught on video. Authorities responded by instituting a new safety plan that appears to have lessened but not eliminated violence in the iconic shopping area.
The disappearance and feared death of Eric Ashby while trying to find a $2 million treasure allegedly hidden by New Mexico author Forrest Fenn has led to renewed calls for the search to end. Among the most prominent people making this request is Linda Bilyeu, ex-wife of Randy Bilyeu, the first Colorado treasure hunter to have died in a quest for Fenn’s mysterious riches. Even before treasure-seeking Grand Junction pastor Paris Wallace perished in June, she believed the hunt is bogus, and as authorities work to determine if human remains found near the Arkansas River are Ashby, her resolve is stronger than ever.
The Family Dog may be the most influential rock-music venue in Denver history. Yet it’s also the most mysterious.
During a recent interview with Westword, Smart Approaches to Marijuana President and CEO Kevin Sabet, one of America’s most influential critics of cannabis legalization, offered an unexpected observation about his visits to Denver. According to Sabet, a number of vehicles provided to him by Denver International Airport rental car businesses over the past few years have smelled strongly of pot. He added that he’s had to exchange rentals multiple times at DIA before he’s been given one that didn’t reek of weed, giving him multiple opportunities to “educate” personnel at the agencies about the scope of a problem he views as positively chronic.
One year ago today, we published a post about outrage over the light sentence given to convicted rapist Austin Wilkerson, a former CU Boulder student. Turns out, though, that Wilkerson’s punishment was even more modest than originally advertised. He’s already a free man, after reportedly being released from a two-year work-release obligation twelve months early.
Jon Caldara, the feisty president of the Independence Institute, is continuing an ideological assault on Colorado Public Radio, arguing that the venerable broadcaster lacks diversity not of race, color or creed, but of thought. And while CPR initially defended itself against this claim, it’s now declining to comment in the apparent hope that Caldara will shut up, go away or move on to pester someone else.
A new study maintains that two-thirds of Denver renters plan to move to another city, a figure higher than the national average, with most listing high rent costs in the Mile High City as the main reason. At the same time, however, so many people from other places want to move here that the actual number of renters in Denver will likely remain steady in the near-future and could actually rise.
David Batty, who pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for killing Tonya Lei Webster last year, has been sentenced to 48 years in jail. It’s the maximum punishment possible in Colorado for the crime. But the horrific nature of Batty’s actions, which included sodomizing Webster with a novelty baseball bat after strangling her to death, was only one reason for the length of this jolt.
Kevin Sabet, the president and CEO of Virginia-based Smart Approaches to Marijuana, has become arguably the most influential critic of marijuana legalization in the United States. But in an extended interview on view below, he fights against the perception that he’s a one-dimensional prohibitionist along the lines of U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Sabet stresses that he and his organization, shorthanded as SAM, take what he sees as a sensible approach to cannabis by arguing in favor of treatment rather than jail time for users in trouble and advocating for greater study of the substance to determine the best ways to utilize it medically.
The Taylor Swift trial appears to be drawing to a close, with most prognosticators predicting it will end today, August 14. That will likely come as a relief to Jeff Kandyba, the sketch artist hired to capture the scene in the federal courtroom, which doesn’t allow cameras. Kandyba’s work has been ridiculed by snarky media organizations, as well as Swift fans, some of whom have even implied that he’s purposefully submitted unflattering likenesses because he favors Katy Perry in her longtime feud with the “Bad Blood” singer. But Kandyba, who’s actually drawn courtroom sketches in high-profile cases for three decades in the Denver area, scoffs at the notion.
Amber Raye Presson, a 31-year-old from Denver, died on Sunday, August 13, while attempting to rescue her son while tubing on Clear Creek in Golden. Her death is at least the sixteenth at a Colorado water attraction in 2017, and the fifth fatal tubing accident in the state during that span, by our estimate.
As we previewed in a January post, Greg Heard, a homeless man, has filed a lawsuit against a Denver police officer and the City and County of Denver over a June 2016 arrest during which he was tased in the act of surrendering even though he was unarmed. The complaint, accessible below, bolsters its argument with a video also shared here and references to a Westword post from March in which a police trainer harshly criticized Dulayev’s decision to tase first and ask questions later.
A man living in the metro area says the response of the Denver Police Department to the recent theft of his vehicle was so slow, rude and ineffectual that he decided to search for it himself. He adds that many hours later, after finding the vehicle on his own, the officer he called to clear the case was more polite than his predecessors. But the cop’s comments about the charges and fees he’d incur for an investigation and the long odds of catching the culprit ultimately convinced him that the DPD would be of no help. So he took the vehicle home and shared his experiences on a neighborhood Internet bulletin board, prompting plenty of similar tales from folks living near him.
