It was a bloody holiday season, but there’s little doubt which crime was the most startling — the death of Rolyn Javier, age five, at the hands of a three-year-old wielding a loaded gun allegedly left out by Adam Laham, 23. Laham’s slated to be back in court tomorrow for…
Three games ago, Tim Tebow’s streak of late-game miracles looked bound for legend. Now, even true believers are left to wonder if his success was a mirage. No wonder comedian Bill Maher has been kicking the Chosen One when he’s down — on one knee, and on the scoreboard…
Visit Denver, the Mile High City’s convention and visitors’ bureau, released a short video last week highlighting our burgeoning craft-beer scene. The video featured Charlie Berger of Denver Beer Co, Bryan Balzell of Great Divide, Stuart Close of Breckenridge Brewing, the Colorado Brewers Guild’s Steve Kurowski and the ever-ebullient Marty…
Slippery slopes: The non-profit legal watchdog group Colorado Ethics Watch named its Top Ethical Failures of 2011 last week; the fourth annual report includes public officials, agencies and municipalities that committed some sort of ethics violation or showed a significant lack of judgment last year. The winners (or losers) included…
If age were measured in symbols rather than numbers, Burke Snowden would be strawberry Pop Rocks. On the corner of his nightstand sits a half-consumed package that he opened weeks ago, then decided to save “just in case.” Many of the items stashed inside his disheveled green bedroom speak of…
You’ve already read about the inductees into this year’s Westword Hall of Shame and refreshed your memory of this year’s strange-but-true news stories, so now, as a final goodbye in a month of goodbyes to 2011, we present the top ten Latest Word blog posts, in terms of traffic. Pageviews,…
Denver Police Department headquarters, the behemoth building at 1331 Cherokee Street, will cut its hours in 2012 in order to “streamline the department’s workforce,” the department announced this week. Starting Sunday, January 1, the lobby will be open from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. That’s quite a cut-back; currently, the…
Standing Akimbo’s Buddy Mix took me back to elementary school, when we mixed together rice cereal, peanut butter and sugar in a bag and got an awesome mess of goodness that we called Puppy Chow. Now a grown-up equivalent has been infused with the wonderful medicine that is marijuana, giving…
The Denver Police Department has had a difficult time firing bad cops over the past few years. And while the Department of Safety finally made some headway in 2011, it still has issues. For example, when Derrick Curtis Saunders was canned earlier this month, a whopping eighteen months after he…
During Tuesday night’s broadcast of the 34th annual Kennedy Center Honors, the cameras frequently swept over the President’s box occupied by Barack and Michelle Obama, as well as honorees Sonny Rollins, Barbara Cook, Neil Diamond, Meryl Streep and Yo-Yo Ma — and there, just to the president’s right…Colorado governor John…
Occupy Wall Street became an unofficial part of history the moment it spread to all seven continents, but now it’s becoming one for the books. At least six big-name museums and cultural organizations have launched quests to gather evidence, ephemera and relics from the movement for future collections. Should History…
Last week, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minnesota released information alleging that Boyd Ethan Wilkinson of Brighton, Robert Lee Bowker of Lyons, Mathew Martin Hecker of Evergreen and Anthony W. Raymond of Longmont had worked out a deal with two Minnesota men to ship pounds of marijuana from Colorado to…
What constitutes an “encumbrance” in this town? The signs at Civic Center Park? Or the piles of snow on streets all over town? Several readers pointed out that while the city seems obsessed with doing a clean sweep of the Occupy Denver camp, it’s ignoring the still-icy streets…
This dispensary has closed. Greenhouse is neither green nor a house. This may seem like a total “duh” statement, but it seems important to note in a town that has dozens of dispensaries in actual houses painted green…
In a way, Joanne Kron’s political problem-solving began in high school. It was there, at the Denver Center For International Studies, that the future executive director of ProgressNow Colorado got her subtle start in activism and advocacy through the combination of Model United Nations and something called World Affairs Challenge…
As mandated by state law, the director of the state Department of Revenue formally requested that the federal government reconsider their position on medical marijuana last week. Thanks to an often-forgotten clause in House Bill 1284, which laid the framework for the current regulatory system in place, the director of…
It’s holiday week in Aspen, and this New Year’s weekend is shaping up as the busiest party binge at the resort in years — a time for Hollywood celebs and other one-percenters to pack the slopes and the clubs, to ogle and to be ogled, and call 911 about Charlie…
Everyone has an opinion about Tim Tebow. For example, Buffalo Bills defenders likely find him to be an exceedingly generous sharer of the football. Some believe he is football Jesus and a decreasing portion of the population view him as a personal affront to professional quarterbacking. Broncos Executive VP John…
In the week since Occupy Denver was evicted on December 21, the Denver Police Department has kept Chief Robert White’s promise to remove any and all structures on a daily basis. Last night, this feat involved nine officers, eight police cars, two Public Works trucks and one arrest when police…
The Charter School Institute board is once again complete. Last week, Governor John Hickenlooper appointed a ninth member: Liz Aybar, who once served as principal of the now-shuttered P.S. 1 Charter School in Denver. Aybar and the other eight board members have their work cut out for them, as explained…
Westword staffer Kelsey Whipple had been on the job just a few days when she started covering Occupy Denver — and the beat has had its hazards, including getting shot in the ass, as she revealed in this three-month Occupy Denver retrospective…
More than two years past its original deadline, the National Science Foundation has finally awarded a contract to Lockheed Martin to handle the U.S. government’s vast operations in Antarctica. The thirteen-year, $1.9 billion contract begins April 1 and its headquarters will continue to be based in Centennial…
