Eleven Metro-Area Places Where Rent Is Higher Than in Denver

As we’ve reported, rent prices have been moderating in Denver and its neighboring communities during recent months, following a long period in which rental costs continued to go up and up and up in the Mile High City’s red-hot housing market. As recently as last month, year-to-year rent increases in Denver were ranked among the highest in the country. So it comes as a shock to discover that two bedrooms in Denver proper are now more affordable than comparably sized units in eleven other metro-area places.

Denver Post CEO Mac Tully Gives Up Ship Amid Paywall, Newsroom Shifts

Last night, January 16, Denver Post CEO/publisher and Digital First Media executive vice president Mac Tully announced that he will resign from his positions effective January 31. His announcement to staff, included below in its entirety, follows the reintroduction of a paywall at the paper for the first time since the Aurora theater shooting trial and the ongoing move of most newsroom journalists from the Post’s longtime downtown Denver headquarters to a printing plant in Adams County.

Columnist: Denver Post Paywall Raising Morale as Newsroom Moves Out of City

As we’ve reported, the Denver Post has put up a paywall over its content for the first time since the Aurora theater shootings trial. This change roughly coincides with most occupants of the paper’s newsroom moving out of Denver, to the Post printing plant in Adams County, and editorial page editor Chuck Plunkett, who penned a weekend column about the two subjects, believes the paywall is making plenty of staffers feel better about relocating.

49 Denver Broncos Arrests Since 2000, Tied for Most in the NFL

At this writing, the weekend bust of Denver Broncos receiver Carlos Henderson on marijuana charges has not yet been entered into the NFL Player Arrest Database, a resource that aims to catalog all baller bookings since 2000. When the information about Henderson is added, the Broncos arrest number will hit 49, tied for the most of any team in the entire National Football League over that span.

Denver 420 Rally: New Complaint Against City Giving Permit to Euflora

Attorney Rob Corry has now filed a second complaint in regard to the Denver 420 Rally. He’d previously sued the City and County of Denver on behalf of rally co-founder Miguel Lopez, who lost his priority event status and was banned from putting on the event during the next three years for allegedly violating his permit by leaving Civic Center Park trashed. Now, he wants injunctive relief on behalf of another client, Michael Ortiz, who was initially granted a permit for April 20 only to have his application denied by Allegra “Happy” Haynes, Denver’s Parks and Rec director, and given instead to Euflora, a dispensary chain with very different plans for the gathering.

Bronco Carlos Henderson’s Pot Bust First for Team Member in at Least 17 Years

Upon learning that Denver Broncos receiver Carlos Henderson was arrested yesterday, January 14, on a marijuana charge, most NFL fans will likely assume that such busts are common for members of the team, given Colorado’s reputation as a cannabis mecca. But no: According to a comprehensive database of NFL players in trouble, Henderson is the first Bronco in more than seventeen years to be taken into custody for an alleged weed violation.

Double Murder at RiNo Bar: No Arrests, Police Ask for Help

Ten days after a double murder outside a bar on one of RiNo’s hottest blocks, no arrests have been made and no suspects have been identified. But the Denver Police Department is hoping to change that and is asking for the public’s help in identifying the killer or killers of two fathers, Guillermo Ornelas and Jose Herrera-Cabral.

Adam Lee’s Widow Upset by Silence Over His Loveland Ski Area Death

On December 28, forty-year-old Loveland Ski Area employee Adam Lee died from crushing chest injuries while working on the Magic Carpet, a motorized beltway used to teach kids how to ski. More than two weeks later, Erika Mackey Lee, Adam’s wife, says her grief has been compounded by a lack of information from the resort about the circumstances that led to his death.

Denver TV Stations Won’t Join Donald Trump in the “Shithole”

Yesterday, President Donald Trump inadvertently presented a dilemma for U.S. media outlets, whose executives had to decide how they should report about him calling certain African nations “shithole countries” during a January 11 meeting with senators over immigration policy. In the end, many national outlets went into the shithole with Trump, while plenty of local TV stations, including numerous ones in Denver, did not.

Illegal Pot Grows in Colorado and One Candidate’s Plan to Wipe Them Out

As we’ve reported, George Brauchler, 18th Judicial District DA and candidate for Colorado Attorney General, opposed Amendment 64, the 2012 measure that legalized limited recreational marijuana sales in the state, and he doesn’t think its passage has done anything to eliminate violent crime associated with pot. As AG, however, Brauchler says he would defend the state’s cannabis laws against threats from the likes of Attorney General Jeff Sessions while at the same time using a new strategy to attack the proliferation of illegal grows across Colorado, many of them allegedly associated with foreign drug cartels.

Denver Post Puts Up Paywall for 1st Time Since Aurora Theater Shooting Trial

This week, the Denver Post put up a paywall around the vast majority of its material for the first time since April 2015, when the paper opened access to all of its digital and mobile content so that more readers could see its coverage of the Aurora theater shooting trial. Now, the only way folks who’ve grown accustomed to reading the Post online for free during the past two-years plus can see all the articles they’d like is by paying to subscribe to either the electronic or print edition of the publication.

Rupert Murdoch May Buy Fox31 Before Group Ripped by John Oliver Can

The announced purchase of Denver’s Fox31 and CW2 by the controversial Sinclair Broadcast Group, which was memorably ripped by HBO’s John Oliver for allegedly forcing its hard-right ideology on affiliates while attempting to build a conservative media empire capable of becoming a stealth Fox News, may not happen. Fresh reports suggest that in a bid to win FCC approval for its May 2017 purchase of 42 outlets owned by Tribune Media, Sinclair is on the cusp of selling ten of them, including the two Denver outlets, to 21st Century Fox and mogul Rupert Murdoch, who, in a surprising twist, suddenly looks to some observers like the lesser of two evils.

Mailing Marijuana Out of Colorado: Are Your Odds of Getting Caught Going Up?

In “Mailing Marijuana Out of Colorado: How Likely Are You to Get Caught?,” published circa November 2015, the Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area’s Tom Gorman estimated that 90 percent of illegally shipped cannabis packages weren’t being found by postal inspectors. More than two years later, figures from a pair of recent analyses maintain that hundreds more pot-packed parcels are being intercepted than in previous years even as our Ask a Stoner columnist suggests that successfully mailing weed out of state is still a snap if proper precautions are taken.

32,000-Plus Demand Resignation of Rep Steve Lebsock, Alleged Sexual Harasser

At 9 a.m. today, January 10, at the Colorado State Capitol, attendees of a rally are expected to call for the resignation of Representative Steve Lebsock, a Thornton Democrat accused of sexually harassing at least eleven women, including fellow rep Faith Winter and lobbyist Holly Tarry. The group will be led by Erin Hottenstein, a Fort Collins resident whose petition calling for Lebsock to step down has been signed by more than 32,000 people at this writing.

New Evidence Stops Trial of Police-Body-Slammed Video Star Michaella Surat

A mistrial has been declared in the case of Michaella Surat, a Colorado State University student who was charged with obstruction and resisting arrest after an April 2017 incident during which her body-slamming by a police officer was captured in a viral video. The reason? New evidence has been discovered by the defense team, led by attorney David Lane, and after learning about it, Judge Joshua Lehman dismissed jurors so prosecutors could review it in more detail.

Mile High Stadium Naming Clusterf*ck and Revenge of the Nerds

This week, crews are removing Sports Authority signage from what has been known in recent years as Sports Authority Field at Mile High, presumably because the Denver Broncos are sick of playing in a stadium emblazoned with the name of a company that declared bankruptcy in March 2016 and liquidated all its assets a few months later. Since acquiring stadium naming rights in August of that year, Broncos executives have tried and failed to line up a new sponsor, and a branding expert says the type of tech companies most able to afford the $10 million per year the team wants are hesitant to get involved in a business relationship that could well conjure painful personal memories.

Convicted Wife Killer Harold Henthorn’s Freedom Bid Ends, Suspicions Don’t

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal by Harold Henthorn, who authorities say killed his second wife, Dr. Toni Henthorn, by pushing her off Deer Mountain in Rocky Mountain National Park in 2012. In so doing, the jurists let stand a July 2017 affirmation of previous rulings by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, which rejected Henthorn’s arguments regarding what his writ to the court calls “the doctrine of chances.” Specifically, the document, on view below, maintains that the original court biased the jury against him by allowing testimony about the suspicious death of Henthorn’s first wife, Lynn, and a serious accident suffered by Toni the year before her death.

Unite Colorado’s Plan to Snuff Out Partisan Political Bullsh*t

Although politically engaged folks seem to be at odds over just about everything these days, there’s one thing on which they agree: The current system, in which Republicans and Democrats spend a lot more time arguing than getting things done, is a mess. But Unite Colorado aims to change that, at least here, by way of an ambitious plan to back independent legislators who pledge to put the people’s business in front of endless bickering that accomplishes nothing.

JonBenét Family Lawyer Says Lawsuit Rulings “Pave the Way for Justice”

In October 2016, Burke Ramsey, older brother of JonBenét Ramsey, who was murdered in Boulder on Christmas Day of 1996, filed a $150 million lawsuit against Dr. Werner Spitz, a Michigan-based forensic pathologist who theorized on the CBS program The Case of: JonBenét Ramsey that Burke had killed JonBenét with a blow to the head. A separate $750 million lawsuit against CBS followed, and while Spitz and the network asked that the cases be tossed, Michigan Judge David Groner has now allowed each to move forward in what Ramsey family attorney Lin Wood sees as a much larger victory than representatives for CBS are willing to acknowledge.

Rescinding Cole Memo One of Eleven Ways Trump May Try to Kill Legal Pot

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s announcement about rescinding the Cole memo, an Obama-era Department of Justice document that provided some legal protections for businesses operating in states that allow and regulate cannabis sales, has shaken the marijuana industry in Colorado and beyond. But Justin Strekal, political director for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), isn’t surprised by this action. As we noted last July, Strekal believes an op-ed from the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation enumerating eleven ways the administration of President Donald Trump can kill legal cannabis is being used by Sessions and company as a crackdown guideline, and junking Cole is fifth on the list.

Part of Rashaan Salaam’s Post-Suicide Heisman Sale to Benefit CTE Research

Today, January 8, bidding begins on the 1994 Heisman Trophy awarded to the late CU Boulder star Rashaan Salaam, who killed himself in a Boulder park circa December 2016. Salaam’s brain wasn’t tested for signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, a brain disease associated with former football players, including sufferers who met tragic ends, because of religious reasons. However, a portion of the trophy sale’s proceeds is being set aside for CTE research.