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Until the cops slapped on the cuffs and loaded her into a paddy wagon, Dellena Aguilar had only heard the stories about police rousting teens on the 16th Street Mall for nothing more than petty infractions. But after she was jailed for simply watching one of these episodes, she saw…

Hearts and Glowers Robin Chotzinoff’s “Detective Lynch Gets Her Man,” in the February 11 issue, was a wonderful valentine to love–and a real shocker to find in Westword. Since when did you decided to run heartwarming stories? Next thing you know, you’ll be running a pet column. Francie Dillon via…

District Judges Six-month- Three-year- old motions old cases Lewis T. Babcock 131 34 Wiley A. Daniel 236 35 John L. Kane, Jr.* 51 16 Richard P. Matsch 36 50 Walker D. Miller 435 46 Edward W. Nottingham 390 35 Daniel B. Sparr 108 19 Zita L. Weinshienk* 55 17 *Senior…

The woman is hunched over in her wheelchair, a pillow supporting her torso, head lolling, body clenched in on itself, feet tensely touching. Someone smooths her hair, gently tilts up her head. She grimaces, though whether from grief or pain–because of an involuntary reflex–it’s impossible to tell. Now the people…

Although he dons black robes instead of blue scrubs, there are times when Richard Matsch feels like a doctor hitting a crowded emergency room on a Friday night. Maybe not George Clooney in ER, exactly, but just as calm in the face of unrelenting crises. Resolute. Driven. “When a judge…

For decades, the Rocky Mountain Arsenal served as a playground for the production of lethal chemicals. Nearby city officials want to make part of it a playground for kids. Civic cheerleaders in Commerce City are pushing to buy more than 900 acres of arsenal property north of 56th Avenue and…

Conditions at a Denver nursing home so alarm the state health department that it recently placed the facility under continuous monitoring and began fining it $1,700 a day. Although the Colorado Department of Health and Environment has been criticized for its lax enforcement of nursing-home standards (“Dying for Dollars,” October…

The heart of the matter: Just in time for Valentine’s Day, state lawmakers are working overtime to make Colorado safe for heterosexual love. Last week, a somewhat emasculated version of state representative Mark Paschall’s “covenant marriage” bill cleared the House Judiciary Committee. As originally conceived, Paschall’s proposal would have created…

Littleton police detective Bryann Lynch unlocks the storage building, slides open its metal garage door and surveys, once again, the ninety-odd wedding dresses that hang there, their trumpet beads winking in the dim light. A few trains have drifted to the concrete floor. A bag of what Lynch calls “those…

Nothing Personal I never appreciated Westword as much as I did when I read Patricia Calhoun’s “Personal Foul,” in the February 4 issue. You had to read all that “penis” talk, uncensored, to realize how idiotic that Tyrone Braxton case was. This is the sort of case that gives lawsuits…

Hey, Faggot: I’m a forty-year-old well-endowed straight male into cockfights. Considering my size–I’m almost eleven inches long and six and a quarter inches around–it is foolish for men to challenge me, but they do. I was in two fights recently. One guy was nine and a half by five and…

Last summer, a miracle appeared in the dead waters of the Alamosa River. A micro-invertebrate. A caddis fly larvae. “It’s a start,” says Victor Ketellepper, EPA project manager at the Superfund site upstream. A great deal of anger, mistrust and sadness still flows along the banks of the Alamosa, creating…

Brian Rimar, a scientist with the Environmental Protection Agency, thought his assignment seemed simple enough: Monitor a herd of sheep through the southern Colorado grazing season, then dissect and analyze their livers for possible copper poisoning. What Rimar didn’t know was that the project would take his own career to…

Peter Fonda told him to call back at 4 p.m., January 16. “I’ll be here,” he promised Nile Southern, who has been waiting for years to hear those words, that hint of promise. “We’ll talk then.” It’s now 3:58 p.m. on January 16, and Southern paces around the basement office…

Several pieces of proposed legislation making their way through the Colorado General Assembly raise the question: If Secretary of State Vikki Buckley had nothing left to do, could she do it well? Early last week, three bills designed to take away a huge chunk of her responsibilities were awaiting action…

Stupor bowl: Not so very long ago–three weeks, in fact, right before the Broncos were to face off against the New York Jets in the playoffs–Mayor Wellington Webb again refused to make any wacky wagers on the outcome of the game. While other politicians were betting Rocky Mountain oysters against…

As Erin Ault rode RTD’s route 15 bus on the evening of November 29, 1998, he heard what sounded like a muffled popgun. Seconds later, other passengers on the bus began to scream at RTD driver Daniel Boyer, pleading with him not to stop. Ahead, close to a bus stop…

Now that the Super Bowl’s out of the way, local television newscasts can focus on the Really Big Game: Sweeps, that all-or-nothing effort to lure members of the elusive Nielsen family into watching their stations so they can up their ratings. The February sweeps period doesn’t officially begin until Thursday,…

Todd Manns thinks he’s found a way to prove once and for all whether Lee Harvey Oswald was a lone assassin. Using his company’s firearms-training simulator, Manns is working on a virtual re-creation of the view from Oswald’s sixth-floor perch in the Texas School Book Depository, from which he shot…

Momy Drearest Regarding Eric Dexheimer’s “Honor Thy Mother,” in the January 28 issue: What is a putz? Ciaran Redmond. If it weren’t for the humor of his stupidity, his story would be as pathetic as most losers’ stories are. John Rael via the Internet And Justice for Some I am…