Stir Crazy After reading the third installment in your prison series (Karen Bowers’s “Bad Ol’ Boys,” August 1), I threw down my copy of Westword in disgust. Isn’t anyone else as outraged as I am over the special treatment these criminals receive? I just wish that all the elderly people…
The Insiders It’s not easy getting old in prison. But in Colorado, it’s getting easier. The number of elderly felons being held in the state prison system is expected to soar dramatically in coming years, as an increasing number of life sentences continue to tick away. And, afraid of being…
Three weeks ago an unlikely group of lawyers, representatives from the Environmental Protection Agency and a private investigator met with prosecutors from the Colorado Attorney General’s office. The purpose of the gathering was to decide whether it was worthwhile, or even possible, to bring criminal charges of polluting against a…
The timing of Colorado Attorney General Gale Norton’s sudden intervention into the Lloyd’s of London securities case last week wasn’t half as odd as the timing of Norton’s last-minute return of contributions from Lloyd’s investors to her U.S. Senate campaign after a planned meeting became controversial. Last month Norton took…
An inventory of the disappearing tattoos of Nina Bonifacio: 1. On Nina Bonifacio’s right wrist–when she makes change in her job as a Target checker, you can see it very well–is the word “payasa,” injected under her skin in bluish ink by a friend five years ago. Nina was thirteen…
The name game: Pat Bowlen should send a big bouquet to Charlie Lyons and the rest of Ascent’s front line. Compared with the prospect of an Arapahoe County Avalanche (or an Alabama Avalanche, for that matter), the Broncos owner’s demand for a new stadium suddenly seemed all warm and fuzzy…
Volatile black activist Alvertis Simmons says he’s leaving his job of three years as the mayor’s neighborhood-watch coordinator to wage his own fight against the myriad social problems he sees facing Denver. “I’m looking forward to leaving the city,” he says enthusiastically from his sixteenth-floor office across the street from…
Howard Cobb drove trucks for nearly thirty years without an accident. His wife, Marion, worked as a bookkeeper, raised their three kids and kept the home fires burning. Three years ago he landed his best-paying job ever, making on-time deliveries crisscrossing the country for Mountain City Meat Co. Inc. of…
All right, then. Stay home. Seriously. Don’t even bother with the road games. Forfeit the damn road games. That way, you guys will save the club a couple of million bucks in airplane tickets, and you’ll always be able to have your eggs cooked the way you like them. You…
Prostate Your Case As one of your faithful–and no doubt oldest–readers, I am voicing my objections to your two new cartoons. In your July 25 issue, both “The City” and “Callahan” included cheap shots at those of us in our so-called golden years. Westword’s younger readers should know that we…
The Insiders There is a private garden in the Colorado prison system, a place where convicted killers can tend flowers and summer vegetables alongside rapists, burglars and thieves–all in the name of mental therapy. The small but immaculate plot sits behind the gates of the state’s newest penitentiary, a facility…
If you decelerate just past the 20th Street exit going north on I-25–although you really shouldn’t, as this creates “curiosity slowing”–you will see a simple sign: Fortieth Anniversary Valley Highway. One recent Friday morning, a time capsule was buried beneath the sign. Assembled on a grassy bank just east of…
The husband of Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell’s top aide, Ginnie Kontnik, lobbied Campbell’s office for a reported $10 million appropriation earlier this year, but the dream died before reaching the floor of Congress. And now the lobbyist, Lewis Kontnik, has resigned from his post as president of the Colorado Bio/Medical…
Slots of luck: Evie Dennis hit the jackpot when she resigned as superintendent of Denver Public Schools: In a secret deal, the school board awarded her a $400-a-month stipend for life. “I know I needed some compensation like other people,” Dennis told reporters when word of her whoopee cushion leaked…
Most musicians aren’t morning people–but if police are right, Brian Nalty is the exception to this rule. On July 9, the onetime guitarist for the Jinns, a Denver-based roots-rock band that seemed on the cusp of national stardom during the late Eighties and early Nineties, was identified as the so-called…
No, you don’t need to have your eyes checked: Westword has grown. As papers across the country downsize their pages, we’re expanding ours (and changing printers, from the Denver Post to the Rocky Mountain News). You’ll find all of our standard features on these bigger pages, as well as some…
Look at it this way. The average American working stiff makes $548 a week–before taxes. Michael Jordan makes $576,923 a week–before the sneaker company and the cereal maker and the burger chain and the people who provide his underwear can even line up to add their huge endorsement checks to…
Face the Notion There she goes again. In her most recent column (“Serf and Turf,” July 18), Patricia Calhoun gets all red in the face shouting over some perceived social injustice at the Palm, which even she admits is “just a restaurant” (and a “chain steakhouse” at that). Could it…
The Insiders In the overcrowded Colorado prison system, corrections officials face a new breed of customer: the special-needs inmate. Much as public schools are now expected to tailor programs for the diverse range of children the state educates, the Colorado Department of Corrections is under increasing pressure to accommodate the…
“Look, on this whole issue of running for President, I’m not trying to be coy at all. In fact, I want to be very direct with you. Running for President is being in the Superbowl of politics.” –Richard D. Lamm and Arnold Grossman, A California Conspiracy Whatever else it might…
Colorado Springs firefighter Tim Casey once was called to a home where he found the brains of a recent suicide–a doctor who’d shot himself with a .44 handgun on his 44th birthday–sprayed across the ceiling. When Casey stopped underneath a light fixture, some of the dead doc’s gray matter dripped…
Managing a city can be a sneaky business. How else to explain why Denver ran up a nearly $80,000 tab with R.A. Heales & Associates? According to its advertisement in the Yellow Pages, the firm offers “complete investigative services” including, but not limited to, “insurance defense,” “background” and “undercover.” Most…
