According to a just-released report from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, crime in the state circa 2016 was up in every major category, including homicides, rapes, robberies, burglaries and motor-vehicle thefts. The percentage increases over the previous year vary from 0.8 percent to 22 percent.
Denver has long had a reputation for having a surplus of single males, leading to the nickname Menver. Locals have spent years debating whether this is myth or reality. But now, actual U.S. government data suggests there actually are more available men than available women in the Mile High City. At least 19,000 more, in fact.
Representative Ed Perlmutter has officially dropped out of the race for Colorado governor in 2018 just three months after announcing his candidacy and being branded the Democrat to beat in many quarters. Perlmutter insisted that the reasons for this move had more to do with the difficulties of serving in Congress and seeking statewide office at the same time than the entry into the contest of fellow Colorado rep Jared Polis, a multi-millionaire who plans to put plenty of his personal resources into his campaign. But the press corps had a tough time buying it, despite Perlmutter’s repeated assertions.
The death yesterday, July 10, of a Loveland cyclist after being struck by an SUV is at least the fifth in Colorado since May. This toll underscores the potential dangers associated with more and more cyclists hitting roadways clogged with drivers during warm weather months.
Violent crime has gone up in Denver during the first half of 2017 as compared to the same period last year. But there’s a wide variation in the number of these offenses from area to area. Denver Police Department statistics for all 78 officially designated city neighborhoods, as shared below, show that two of them didn’t register a single violent crime through the initial six months of this year, while one was the setting for more than 150 offenses in this category.
At this writing, Denver city officials are releasing little information about a death that took place at the main Denver jail on July 10. However, the Denver Sheriff Department is pushing back on suggestions by critics that chronic overcrowding at the facility may have contributed to what is being investigated as a homicide.
Earlier today, on the morning of July 10, an inmate was killed at Denver’s main downtown jail. The incident, which a source says involved inmate-on-inmate violence, took place mere hours before speakers at a press conference scheduled to take place outside the facility are expected to demand an investigation into the death of Marvin Booker, who died at the jail on July 9, 2010, nearly seven years ago to the day.
At 5:30 p.m. today, July 10, family members of Marvin Booker, who died in Denver’s main jail seven years ago this month during an excessive-force incident that led to a $6 million settlement, will take part in a press conference at which they will demand that Denver District Attorney Beth McCann begin a new investigation into the case. They say a Taser used on Booker is missing, and they believe the story behind its disappearance suggests a potentially criminal cover-up.
While rents in six metro-area suburbs are rising faster than in Denver proper at present, prices are still going up in most city neighborhoods, and costs remain on the high side. Median rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Denver’s tenth most-expensive neighborhood exceeds $1,600, and that’s just over half the nearly $3,000 tag in the part of the city at the top of the scale.
The 2008 murder of Angie Zapata, a transgender teen from Greeley, stands as both a horrifying example of violence targeting the LGBTQ community and a precedent-setting case for federal hate crime laws. Now, Angie’s story, which we’ve told in a shattering Westword feature and numerous followup posts, is going national by way of “Lost Angel,” an episode of the Investigation Discovery series Murder Calls that debuts tonight, July 10.
Mason Tvert, a key figure in the passage of Amendment 64, the 2012 measure that legalized limited recreational marijuana sales, and the Denver pot-legalization regulation that preceded it, is leaving his post as communications director for the national Marijuana Policy Project in favor of a similar position at VS Strategies, a Denver-based consulting firm that’s become a national powerhouse.
Drivers traveling between Boulder to Denver using express lanes on Interstate 25 and U.S. 36 could be paying more depending on the time of their commute mere weeks from now under a new proposal by Plenary Roads Denver, the private concessionaire that manages the lanes for the Colorado Department of Transportation. The price tag for people who don’t use Express Toll, the service that automatically assesses fees rather than mailing bills based on license plates, could be as high as $21 to travel the route, more than $5 higher than the proposed toll rates less than two years ago.
CU-Boulder student Sam Forgy was shot and killed by police in July 2015 when he was naked, on acid and armed with a hammer. Afterward, Forgy’s friends raised questions about the use of lethal force in the incident, and now, his father, Glenn Forgy, is suing the City and County of Boulder and Officer Dillon Garretson, who shot Sam four times, including in the middle of the forehead. In the suit, Glen argues that the death of his son was completely unnecessary.
As expected, Denver has been named the new home of the Outdoor Retailer shows thanks to a five-year pact confirmed at a press conference this morning. And the advocacy group Conservation Colorado links this economic coup with controversy over public lands policies in Utah, Outdoor Retailer’s previous home, and the plan to shrink Bear Ears National Monument pressed by President Donald Trump’s administration.
Approximately 3,200 school counselors from across the country and the globe are expected to descend on Denver for the annual conference of the Virginia-based American School Counselor Association, which gets underway on Saturday, July 8. And while ASCA assistant director Eric Sparks expects the event to be a lot of fun, plenty of serious topics will be discussed, and that’s appropriate. Sparks enumerates ten of the biggest challenges facing school counselors in 2017, and his run-down collectively illustrates how these educators are on the front lines of major societal changes whose impacts will be felt on young people for many years to come.
Although Colorado establishes the age at which you can legally consume alcohol at 21, state statutes include five exceptions that allow underage drinking that would otherwise be illegal. Moreover, none of the exceptions sets a minimum drinking age, although one of them comes close.
Rick Wainwright, whose acquittal in a 2009 criminal case helped cement the concept that Colorado’s six-plant threshold for medical marijuana patients can be expanded, is suing Colorado governor John Hickenlooper and state attorney general Cynthia Coffman over a new law that tries to limit large home grows under the theory that they may be part of the illegal gray and black markets for cannabis. Wainwright sees the legislation as a stealth effort to target and criminalize law-abiding MMJ caregivers like him.
Representative Jared Polis is among the biggest names to enter the race for Colorado governor in 2018, and in the following in-depth interview, he cites his experience in business, the nonprofit world and Congress, as well as proposals related to education, energy, infrastructure and more, as reasons voters should cast a ballot for him.
Rent in Denver continues to rise at a rapid clip as measured both month-to-month and year-to-year. But rent prices are going up more quickly in at least six metro suburbs than it is in Denver proper.
Russ Zieglowsky, a 52-year-old former city councilman from Washington, Iowa, has added to the disturbingly high death toll at Colorado water attractions this season. Counting his death during a commercial rafting trek along the Taylor River in Gunnison County, at least nine people have lost their lives on a Colorado lake or river since late April.
The Jackson Lake drowning of Cord Carpenter, 45, who was reported missing on Saturday, July 1, adds to the already high death toll at Colorado water attractions this season. Carpenter is the fourth person to die at a river or lake in the state over a five day period, with three of the deaths taking place on a single day.
More than 325,000 people have so-called special Colorado license plates honoring various groups in the state, with the numbers of the ten most popular ranging from a few thousand to nearly 100,000. Because of rules set up by the Colorado Department of Revenue, fourteen less popular special plates seemed likely to be eliminated either this year or next year because not enough people have requested them. But all of them will survive thanks to a last-minute reprieve.
