Politics
Denver DA’s Office reorganizes units for specific focus on juvenile diversion program
DENVER – The Denver District Attorney’s Office is reorganizing its juvenile and drug courts units to make a separate juvenile court unit staffed by attorneys who have expressed interest in working with youth offenders.
As of Wednesday, Denver’s Juvenile and Drug Courts Unit will split into two departments. Denver District Attorney Beth McCann has appointed Deputy District Attorney Courtney Johnston to head the new Juvenile Unit. Several other deputies will work under her.
The DA’s Office says the Juvenile Unit will continue to work to divert first-time offenders from the justice system. McCann says she wants to expand that program, wants to include 18-to-26-year-old offenders in the program, and is looking into diversion programs for people before they are booked.
The office says the juvenile unit will also continue to prosecute cases in Denver Juvenile Court and that the Drug Court Unit would continue its normal activities.
Johnston and others appointed to her position after she vacates it will serve a minimum of five years in the position. The deputy attorneys will serve at least three.
Johnston has several years of experience at the Denver DA’s Office and has also worked with youths in Mississippi and Georgia.
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Summitville Mine in southwestern Colorado gets $1M in Superfund grant money
DENVER – An old mining site in southwest Colorado has received $1 million in Superfund grant money from the Environmental Protection Agency to continue water treatment at the site.
The Summitville Mine, located in Rio Grande County, has been under the purview of the EPA and Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment since 1992.
Mining at the site began with gold and silver mining around 1870. It continued for more than 100 years, when Summitville Consolidated Mining Corp., Inc. started large-scale open-pit mining operations using cyanide to retrieve the metals from the rock.
A leak in the pad used to leach out the precious metals was discovered in 1986. The company abandoned the site shortly thereafter and filed for bankruptcy at the end of 1992, when the EPA took the site over for cleanup operations.
Over the next two decades, the EPA and state worked extensively to contain the leak and start rehabilitating nearby land and waterways, including the Alamosa River and Wightman Fork.
Construction on a hydroelectric power system at the site got underway in 2008, and $17 million in American Reinvestment and Recovery Act funds received in 2009 helped the completion of the water treatment plant at the site.
The $1 million in new Superfund grant money will go toward continuing water treatment at the site.
The site is one of 24 EPA Superfund sites in Colorado.
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House to hear Colorado bill allowing people to break into hot cars to save people, pets
DENVER – People would not be subject to any punishment for breaking into a car to rescue an at-risk person or pet if a bill proposed in the Colorado Legislature becomes law.
People who break into cars to rescue kids or animals, most often during the hot summer months when temperatures inside cars can reach more than 150 degrees, are still currently liable to face trespassing, mischief or property charges in the state.
But House Bill 1179, sponsored by Reps. Lori Saine and Joann Ginal, as well as Sens. Lois Court and Vicki Marble, aims to make that a thing of the past.
Their bill, which last week unanimously passed the House Health, Insurance and Environment Committee by an 11-0 vote, would give immunity from civil and criminal prosecution to people who meet certain standards when breaking into a car to try and save a life:
- They would have to believe in “good faith” that the person or animal is in “imminent danger” of great bodily harm or death.
- They would have to verify the vehicle is locked.
- They would have to “make a reasonable effort” to find the vehicle’s owner.
- They would have to contact a law enforcement officer or first responder before entering the vehicle;
- They could “use no more force than reasonably necessary to enter the locked vehicle;”
- And would have to stay with the person or animal near the vehicle until a first responder arrives. If the person has to leave the scene, they must leave a note with their contact information, name and location.
Currently, the term “animal” in the bill applies only to dogs and cats, but there was discussion in committee of extending the protections to certain other animals as well.
The law would apply beyond children in hot cars as well; it would extend protections to people breaking into cars to rescue any “at-risk” person no matter their age.
The bill heads to the House floor for further work on Tuesday.
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Denver Muslim leaders say rock thrown through mosque window in latest hate-related incident
DENVER – Leaders at a Denver mosque say someone threw a rock through its windows Sunday just before one of its prayer sessions in the latest instance of vandalism directed at minority communities over the past several months.
The Colorado Muslim Society says someone threw the rock, which was about the size of a fist, through a window at Masjid Abu Bakr mosque on Sunday.
The Muslim Society says it is “working with the proper authorities” to address the incident.
But the alleged vandalism is one of at least a half-dozen possibly hate-related incidents in Colorado since November.
More threats to at least a dozen Jewish community centers were made again Monday after similar throngs of threats over the past several weeks. The threats also came as at least two Jewish cemeteries – in Philadelphia and St. Louis – were vandalized over the past week, bringing damage to hundreds of headstones.
On Jan. 31, the Boulder Community Jewish Center received an unsubstantiated bomb threat, forcing evacuations.
Days earlier, the FBI joined an investigation into signs left at an Aurora immigrant and refugee center that threatened to “blow up” refugees.
On Feb. 7, the FBI was also called in to help El Paso County Sheriff’s Office investigators work to find out whether or not an Indian family in Peyton, Colo. was the victim of a hate crime. Their home was vandalized with eggs, dog feces, bath tissue, and papers scrawled with messages regarding their racial and ethnic background.
In early January, an 83-year-old Longmont man was pressured by neighbors and the city to take a sign down that read, “Muslim’s kill Muslim’s [sic] if they don’t agree. Where does that leave you, ‘infidel.’”
In November, a Denver transgender woman’s SUV was vandalized with swastikas and transgender hate speech.
Also in January, a self-proclaimed radicalized Muslim shot and killed a security officer working as an RTD guard at Union Station, though officials have not linked that shooting to being a hate crime.
And during the week of Valentine’s Day, Ku Klux Klan members dispersed fliers in at least three Grand Junction neighborhoods urging people to join the group, and to “stop homosexuality & race mixing.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center has identified 16 “hate groups” in Colorado that were operating in 2015, including several anti-Muslim and neo-Nazi groups. More on those groups can be found here.
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Hickenlooper: States have ‘sovereignty’ on recreational marijuana issue, a ‘great social experiment’
DENVER – Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper seems to have warmed to the legal recreational marijuana industry in the state, according to comments he made Sunday on NBC’s Meet The Press.
Moderator Chuck Todd asked Hickenlooper, who is in Washington for the 2017 National Governors Association Winter Meeting, on his thoughts about the recreational marijuana industry and how it might be affected by new U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Continue reading
Data: Crackdown on legal marijuana industry would cost thousands of jobs, billions in revenue
DENVER – White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s Thursday statements that the Department of Justice may crack down on states with legal recreational marijuana could lead to far-ranging effects on the burgeoning industry should they hold any water.
A Forbes report based on data from New Frontier Data says that if the legal marijuana market continues to grow unimpeded by the federal government, the industry would create more jobs than the manufacturing industry by 2020. Continue reading
Colorado’s Buck, Beauprez to speak at CPAC panel comparing wall, extreme vetting to heaven
DENVER – Two Colorado politicians will speak this Saturday at a session at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) titled, “If Heaven Has a Gate, A Wall, and Extreme Vetting, Why Can’t America?”
Rep. Ken Buck, Colorado’s Republican CO-4 representative, and former CO-7 Rep. Bob Beauprez, who most recently launched two unsuccessful bids for the governorship, are among five speakers on the panel, which also includes Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs, Mike Gonzales of conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, and Helen Krieble of the Vernon K. Krieble Foundation, who is also a Coloradan.
The panel is one of hundreds at the annual event, which has been under more of a microscope than usual this year after it originally invited Milo Yiannopolous to speak at the event, then rescinded its invitation to the alt-right blogger after he made comments advocating pederasty.
But the panel Buck and Beauprez will speak on has been jeered on social media for various reasons.
The official CPAC website lists Beauprez, who is the moderator of the panel, not as a former representative, but rather as a current one. It also says he represents Colorado’s 10th Congressional district, which does not exist.
And though Beauprez is Roman Catholic, the Pope even seemingly threw shade at the panel.
Jesus entrusted to Peter the keys to open the entrance to the kingdom of heaven, and not to close it.
— Pope Francis (@Pontifex) February 22, 2017
“Jesus entrusted Peter the keys to open the entrance to the kingdom of heaven, and not to close it,” Pope Francis tweeted.
Both Buck and Beauprez wrote on their Facebook pages that they would be speaking at the CPAC panel. Beauprez said he was “honored” to have been asked to participate.
Among other panels at CPAC: Facts, Not Feelings: Snowflakes, Safe Spaces and Trigger Warnings; and When Did WWIII Begin?
C-SPAN is streaming the conference through the weekend.
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White House compares recreational pot to opioid crisis, says DOJ will be ‘taking action’
WASHINGTON – White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said at Thursday’s daily press briefing that he expects the Department of Justice will be “taking action” against states that have legalized recreational marijuana, and at the same time seemingly compared recreational use to the nationwide opioid crisis.
“There’s a big difference between [medical] and recreational marijuana,” Spicer said. “And I think that when you see something like the opioid addiction crisis blossoming in so many states around this country, the last thing that we should be doing is encouraging people.” Continue reading
Bill that would launch study for Front Range rail line from Pueblo to Fort Collins passes Senate
DENVER – A proposal that aims to continue work toward a Pueblo stop on Amtrak’s Southwest Chief passenger train route, and to add a passenger train route from Trinidad along the Front Range to Fort Collins, cleared a Colorado Senate floor vote Thursday morning.
Senate Bill 153 is co-sponsored by Sen. Larry Crowder, a Republican who represents much of the area in southern Colorado the Southwest Chief runs through, as well as Sen. Leroy Garcia and Rep. Daneya Esgar – both Pueblo Democrats.
The bill would replace the Southwest Chief Rail Line Economic Development, Rural Tourism, and Infrastructure Repair and Maintenance Commission with a new commission, the Southwest Chief and Front Range Passenger Rail Commission.
The original commission’s authorization is set to expire July 1. Should the bill become law, a Type 1 transfer would be used to move the original commission to the new commission.
The new commission would be tasked with continuing the work the Southwest Chief commission has undertaken since its establishment in 2014, namely improving existing rail lines used by Amtrak and BNSF and extending rail lines between Pueblo and La Junta in order to eventually have Pueblo and Walsenburg linked to the Southwest Chief route, which runs from Chicago to Los Angeles.
The new commission would have 13 members, as opposed to the current 9. Five would be governor-appointees; five will be appointed by various metro planning organizations along the Front Range, and one would be appointed by the Regional Transportation District. The final two members, a CDOT employee and and Amtrak employee, would not be able to vote, but would sit on the commission and advise it.
Should the bill become law, the new commission would continue to be funded by grants, gifts and donations. Its members would not be paid for their work. Some would serve four years on the commission, and others would be limited to two years.
In addition to the Southwest Chief expansion, the commission would also be tasked with facilitating a plan to build a passenger rail line along the Front Range, which the bill says “may include” stops in Pueblo, Colorado Springs, Castle Rock, Denver, Boulder, Longmont, Loveland and Fort Collins.
The commission would have to present its plans for the proposed rail line to local government committees in both the state House and Senate by Dec. 1.
The bill passed the Senate Local Government committee by a 3-0 vote on Feb. 14 and cleared the Senate Finance Committee two days later by a 4-1 vote.
After three readings without amendments on the Senate floor, the bill passed the full Senate with a 24-11 vote Thursday morning. It now heads to the House.
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Bill that would have allowed lawsuits against ‘sanctuary city’ officials dies in House committee
DENVER – A bill that would have prohibited the establishment of “sanctuary cities” in Colorado and would have allowed individuals affected by such policies to sue the lawmakers who put the laws in place died in a House committee Wednesday night.
The House State, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee killed House Bill 1134 with a 6-3 party-line vote.
The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Dave Williams, R-El Paso County, told Denver7 Tuesday the bill would have forced politicians “to have skin in the game.”
“If they create the sanctuary city, then they would have to be responsible for the backlash and the follow to that,” he said.
The bill would have allowed for victims of a crime committed by an undocumented person to file a civil lawsuit or criminal complaint against the official or officials who created the “sanctuary” status in that jurisdiction.
It would have allowed people to seek up to $700,000 per person in injury compensation, and up to $1.98 million if two or more people were injured.
The bill also would have established the crime of “rendering assistance to an illegal alien through a sanctuary jurisdiction,” which would have been a class 4 felony.
But the bill saw staunch opposition from Democrats and other groups.
Kyle Huelsman, the policy manager for the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, called the bill unconstitutional.
“This is one of the most anti-immigrant and xenophobic bills that we’ve seen in the last decade,” Huelsman told Denver7. “Rep. Williams and (co-sponsor) Sen. Vicky Marble have gone to new extremes to push a radical anti-immigrant agenda in the State Capitol.”
Rep. Williams fired back at the Democrats on the committee who killed his bill in a news release.
“Democrats sent a clear message to Coloradans they are unwilling to accept any responsibility for policies that inhibit criminal illegal aliens from being reported to federal immigration authorities,” Williams said in the release. “If elected officials want to create a sanctuary city, they should be held accountable if those policies directly result in known criminals being released rather than deported.”
Boulder is the only city in Colorado that has officially proclaimed itself as a “sanctuary city.”
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