16th Street Mall Mishandle

Although those ordinances are geared toward panhandlers rather than good Samaritans, Hergenreder isn't the first to complain about being treated roughly by cops while helping out. On January 31, Cherie Swenson was also returning movies to the McDonald's on the 16th Street Mall when she saw a drunk man shivering in a wheelchair outside the Taco Bell. She made a detour into Ross Dress for Less, bought a fleece blanket for five bucks, and walked up to 61-year-old Antonio Reyes, or "Cuba," as he's known on the mall. There were a couple of uniformed cops nearby, but she didn't think anything of it. "It wasn't obvious that the police were interacting with him," she says, "and since there's always so many police on the 16th Street Mall, I wasn't going to stop."

Stack told a different story on the ticket he issued to Swenson for interference. She stepped between the officers and Reyes, for whom they had a signed complaint for trespassing at Taco Bell, and tried to hand him the blanket. Stack wrote that he and Tinnin "told the defendant several more times to back away and to stop interfering or she would be arrested."

While the cops were focused on Swenson, Reyes rolled off. When Stack caught up with the wheelchair, Reyes tried to pull out his penis in order to urinate on Stack, according to Swenson's ticket. In the hubbub, Stack dropped Swenson's ID.

Swenson picked up her ID and started walking off. When Tinnin told her to hand her ID over again, Swenson refused and was placed under arrest. For the first time in her life, she spent a night in jail.

"I was hungry and it was intimidating," she remembers. "I hadn't been convicted of any crime, and people were really rude to me. They wouldn't give me any information. The cell was overcrowded and dirty, and the water fountain was disgusting."

Eventually Swenson pleaded guilty to the interference charge in exchange for a deferred sentence. If she stays out of trouble for the next six months, the charge will stay off her record.

But until then, she has no plans to stay off the mall. "I have a distrust for police now," Swenson says, "but not the homeless. When I see someone in need that I feel like I want to give to, I'll still give to them."

Both the DPD and downtown business groups say they're helping the homeless in their own way.

"There are many things that the DPD has done very innovatively with the homeless to make sure we are serving both communities — the homeless community, which is often underserved, and the other community that's not always so comfortable with the homeless community," Dilley says. In fact, the DPD has designated two officers to do homeless outreach, and their policing responsibilities include putting the homeless in touch with resources to get them off the streets. "There are very few cities in the nation that have anything like what we have," she adds.

According to a survey just released by the Downtown Denver Business Improvement District, pandhandling is way down on the mall. That could be because of more resources for the homeless — or more policing of the homeless and their would-be helpers. In addition to six new foot-patrol officers that Denver added to downtown streets in March, the Downtown Denver Business Improvement District has been funding extra Sunday foot patrols with off-duty officers since April 22.

Hergenreder got the bum's rush a few weeks before those patrols started, and it was enough to put an end to any do-gooding on the mall. "I don't think I'll ever give money to anybody again, even during the day, because I'm afraid to," she says. "Not down here on the mall, anyway. Not ever."