Young Guns

Janice didn’t know why she tried to kill the other girl. “She just pissed me off,” she told counselor Adolph Montana. So Janice had lain in wait, and when the girl approached, she stabbed her and kept stabbing her until the knife broke. Montana knew what lay at the roots…

Hitting Close to Home

Domestic violence doesn’t affect just the two people involved in an abusive relationship: It also hurts their children. And those children, the most vulnerable of victims, can’t afford to wait for the system to right itself. This month, Westword is donating $10,000 to Denver CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates), a…

Off Limits

Essential seating: Now that Denver Post editor Dennis Britton is back from his bus tour of the state, the out-of-focus “Snapshot of Colorado,” he’s got a clear picture of priorities. Britton recently issued a micro-managing memo (shown above) detailing a suggested seating plan for the paper’s daily page-one meetings but…

Size Matters

Call it the fence from hell. A Denver man has spent thousands of dollars fighting a city board’s ruling that a ten-foot-high fence between his house and garage must be lowered to eight feet. Despite receiving no objections to the 24-foot-long fence from neighbors, the city is insisting that Jay…

Horse Sense

In his storied playing career with the Denver Nuggets, Dan Issel amassed 16,589 points and pulled down 6,630 rebounds–both club records. Now his daunting task is to score a few points with the fans. And any kind of Nuggets rebound will be welcome. As the new vice president, general manager…

Look Out Below!

Bringing a paring knife to school accidentally. Giving an elementary-school classmate a vitamin C tablet. Signing a yearbook “Have a kick-ass summer.” Distributing an “unknown substance”–organic lemon drops. From Longmont to Colorado Springs, schools, neighborhoods, police and prosecutors are cracking down on juvenile crime. And as the dragnet is cast,…

Letters

Domestic Abyss Westword has provided a very valuable public service with its June 11 report on domestic violence, “Hitting Them Where They Live.” But you didn’t stop there: The domestic-violence stories were also good (if depressing) reading, told with the usual Westword flair. Congratulations are in order to all involved…

Free Rides

If you were to speculate about the people who do business in the downtown US West office building based on the cars parked immediately around it, you’d think that 64 percent of them were physically disabled. On a recent business day, an average of 14 of the 22 available metered…

Off Limits

Is that a radio in your pocket? Departing congressman David Skaggs is crowing that the feds will review security at Rocky Flats, as he requested over a year ago when reports surfaced concerning inadequate security and safeguards at the decommissioned nuclear-weapons plant. When he visited the facility on Friday, departing…

A Growing Problem

Is there any way to prevent the Front Range from becoming a nonstop city that stretches from Wyoming to New Mexico? A state senator and a group of local activists, frustrated by legislative inaction, may try a direct appeal to the voters to fight sprawl. They’re about to issue a…

Shouts to Murmurs

When it was all over, rider Kent Desormeaux said he felt sick to his stomach. Then proved it. He had asked his mount for winning speed too soon, he said gloomily, then let the horse’s attention wander with a furlong to go. Down in the jockeys’ room, Chris McCarron draped…

What a Pane!

She calls him the Anne Frank of the trailer park. When she drives him home from school, her son has to duck down in the seat. When he’s in the yard, he has to watch over his shoulder for the park manager. He’s not a thief. Or a drug dealer…

Letters

Can We Be Frank? Westword has sunk to a new low with Dewey Webb’s “Final Episode” Killer Curse, in the June 4 issue. At last you look like the sleazy tabloid you really are. Ray Brown Denver The connection between the last episode of Seinfeld and the death of Frank…

Facing Off

Some domestic violence victims turn to the extreme end of the victim-services spectrum: They call Mike Newell.

A Shock to the System

The rush to protect battered women has turned domestic violence into “the social issue of the Nineties” — and raised issues of fairness for both perpetrators and victims.