Kristin Des Marais crouches in the damp and shines a flashlight into the vast crawl space beneath the apartment building. The light sweeps across rocks and mounds of dirt, the glint of an empty tin can, a flash of tail. Eyes glare back, glittering and metallic, then disappear. A light,…
The movies teach us that there are good guys and bad guys — and then there are bad guys named Angel, as in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. But two new books by former Colorado prisoners trace wildly divergent paths through the thickets of crime and punishment –…
Halloween is long gone, but the Day of the Dead is a holiday that keeps on giving. An exhibit in the grand hall of the downtown Denver Public Library features staff-produced riffs on the tradition of decorated sugar skulls that provides — well, plenty of food for thought. We could…
Somehow Ron Angotti has survived his first two months in the helping business –despite running the cheapest, strangest and probably most imperiled thrift store on West Colfax. His Colfax Thrift Store, two blocks west of Sheridan, has become a bargain among bargains, a port in the storm for needy families…
Back in 2002 a Westword cover portrayed the ever-irascible Douglas Bruce as a pit bull. The story was about his long-running battle with Denver officials over dilapidated properties, but the image is still apt. Throughout his dueling with tax-and-spenders over the TABOR Amendment, his short but stormy career as a…
A newly launched website allows Colorado motorists to log on and report sightings of wildlife along the I-70 corridor between Golden and Glenwood Springs. While handy for alerting highway maintenance crews of roadkill, the backers of the site actually have more ambitious goals in mind. Visitors to I-70 Wildlife Watch…
The Department of the Interior just designated six renewable energy projects, including a 400-megawatt solar tower, as “fast-track” developments deserving of the highest priority. All six of the projects happen to be in California. Hard to believe that Interior Secretary Ken Salazar would ignore all the potential energy sources in…
In the movie The Dark Knight, the Joker conducts a nail-biting sociology experiment by rigging bombs on two ships — one loaded with ordinary folk, the other transporting prisoners. A detonator for each bomb is then placed in the hands of the opposing camps, who are invited to blow up…
Last month’s feature, “The Forgotten,” focused on clemency — an executive power that prosecutor-turned-governor Bill Ritter has been reluctant to use. We showed how modifying the sentences of even a handful of state inmates who’ve received draconian punishment, like the guy doing eighty years for burglary, could save the state…
It’s been at least a week since our fair state made it on any Most Livable, Charming, Fittest or Drunkest list. So thank heavens for the folks at ForbesTraveler, the “luxury travel authority from inspiration to reservation.” Its latest ingenious and largely predictable compilation of “America’s Prettiest Towns” does not…
The Colorado Supreme Court’s disciplinary judge has finally issued a ruling in the long-running saga of Mark Brennan, the pugnacious attorney who won a $1.2 million judgment against the City of Denver in 2006 — only to see it thrown out by Judge Robert Blackburn, who denounced Brennan for “boorish…
News that Denver Water is planning to jack up rates in 2010 by thirteen percent isn’t really news. Last year, the utility stuck the average residential customer with a $20 hike; this year it’s $40. Over the last decade, the amount the typical user in the city pays for this…
Trapped in surprise storm Bovine love trumps chill weather Moo cow asks: Got flake?…
In the long-foundering, ever-festering war on drugs, there’s just about zero truth to the idea of zero tolerance. As anyone who’s studied the prison population can figure out, certain groups dealing in illegal drugs can be targeted for harsh punishment, while other groups trafficking in the same drugs are all…
This week’s feature, “The Forgotten,” explores an option for cutting prison costs that Governor Bill Ritter hasn’t tried — clemency for prisoners who may have received excessively long sentences and pose little risk to public safety. The article explores some of the more obvious kinds of sentencing inequities — nonviolent…
Among Governor Bill Ritter’s hits and misses, few actions have drawn as much criticism as his proposal to release thousands of inmates months earlier than originally planned, thereby cutting millions of dollars from the state’s overstressed budget. The announcement sent convulsions of anxiety through Colorado’s crime-control industry. Police chiefs braced…
The lack of clemency actions by the Ritter administration contrasts sharply with Dick Lamm’s slew of pardons and commutations in the 1970s and ’80s. Perhaps Lamm’s most memorable move was freeing James Bresnahan, who at age fifteen had killed his parents, then gone on to study medicine and earn a…
This week’s Westword feature, “The Quality of Mercy,” looks at an option for cutting prison costs that Governor Bill Ritter hasn’t tried — reducing prison time for inmates who may have received excessively long sentences and are unlikely to pose a risk to public safety. The cases discussed in the…
For decades, energy companies and the federal government have tinkered with ways of trying to extract the vast hydrocarbon fuel reserves buried in rock in western Colorado and eastern Utah. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar still has lots of questions about the process — whether the current oil shale…
Governor Bill Ritter’s modest proposal to parole hundreds of inmates a few weeks or months before their mandatory release date, thereby cutting millions from the state budget, has become the political whipping boy for his most opportunistic critics, from GOP legislators to Weld County District Attorney (and Senate candidate) Ken…
Today, October 16, is National Feral Cat Day. This is not really a day of celebration; it’s more of a day of scolding and sobering statistics, since the growing phenomenon of feral cats has a lot to do with the human capacity to abandon domesticated animals. Thirty thousand cats are…
The Denver Public Library hosted a naturalization ceremony for more than a hundred new citizens from dozens of countries Thursday morning. The ceremony has been a tradition at DPL for more than a decade, and why not? As several speakers noted in welcoming the crowd of new Americans, citizenship and…
