The Colorado Department of Corrections doesn’t adequately train parole officers overseeing the electronic monitoring of high-risk parolees — such as absconder Evan Ebel, who murdered DOC director Tom Clements and another man this year — and needs to develop more consistent and comprehensive programs for treating and tracking offenders headed…
David Gunn knows he’s stepping into the crossfire. He knows the gun-control folks are likely to view him as a crank while gun owners denounce him as the Antichrist. But the former gun shop owner is an inventor by inclination and has been a firearms buff ever since he was…
“I’m way better up here than I am in person,” Gil Jones told his congregation from the stage at the Village Church last spring. Many critics of the controversial preacher — the subject of this week’s cover story, “The Prodigal Pastor” — would agree with that assessment. Jones, who was…
This week’s cover story, “The Prodigal Pastor,” focuses on Gil Jones, a dynamic preacher who built two modest, youth-oriented “seeker” churches into thriving megachurch operations, then abruptly stepped down amid complaints about his relationships with women in his congregation — and is now embroiled in similar controversies at his latest…
Boring churches have pews, hymnbooks, organs and stained-glass windows. Hip churches have guitars, rock videos, podcasts and piercings that aren’t limited to that dude on the cross. Both in its message and its setting, the Village aspires to the hip, if not the edgy. Launched just seven months ago, the…
Gun enthusiasts have long accused Colorado’s Democratic leadership of “following the script” established by major gun-control advocacy groups, such as Mayors Against Illegal Guns (MAIG), in their campaign to pass legislation expanding background checks and limiting magazine capacity — two measures that now have state senators John Morse and Angela…
The long-simmering battle over the future of a major hunk of southeastern Colorado may have taken a giant step toward resolution in Pueblo yesterday. A senior Army official assured ranchers that the Pentagon has no plans to expand the sprawling, 367-square-mile Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site — and might even rescind…
Contrary to what you read in the papers, the legal battle over the artist Christo’s controversial “Over the River” project — which involves suspending translucent, silvery fabric panels at intervals along a 42-mile stretch of the Arkansas River — isn’t about to go away any time soon. In fact, the…
A former police chief’s analysis of a 2007 police shooting during an auto-theft sting — one that left an unarmed nineteen-year-old suspect paralyzed for life — contends that Arvada police detective Bill Johnson’s use of deadly force in the incident was “unwarranted, unnecessary and extreme.” The report, prepared in support…
All the major players among the region’s natural gas companies are gathering in Denver this week, celebrating the resurgence of their industry thanks to the advent of hydraulic fracturing technology — and pondering why public opposition to fracking in Colorado and elsewhere is so fierce. It’s a tectonic mystery no…
Four years ago historians of bad behavior got a rare glimpse into Denver street life and drug culture of the 1950s-1990s with the posthumous publication of Vato Maldito: My Life of Crime, by John “Bubbles” Gallegos, a local heister and heroin fiend. Now underground filmmaker and provocateur Raoul Vehill, who…
Last week we reported that Representative Jared Polis had gone to court to try stopping a gas drilling operation on property adjacent to a farm he owns near Berthoud. The congressman abruptly withdrew that lawsuit, but that doesn’t mean he’s resigned to getting fracked. Instead, he’s put out a four-minute…
Oil and gas execs are gearing up for next week’s 25th annual Rocky Mountain Energy Summit in Denver, a four-day back-slapping celebration of the boom in hydraulic fracturing — or the “Shale Revolution,” as the true believers call it. But even as the industry ogles the vast reserves of natural…
A coalition of several dozen grassroots consumer, environmental, business and farming groups is pushing for the resignation of Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission director Matt Lepore, after his off-the-cuff comments last week referring to anti-fracking activists as essentially rich and clueless. Meanwhile a fracking critic who could be described…
It’s no secret that private, for-profit prison operators such as Corrections Corporation of America pay their employees far less than what correctional officers earn in the public sector. But Republican state senators have managed to put thousands of state workers on their guard, as it were, by suggesting that the…
They don’t have James Hibbard to kick around any more, but at least one of the more embarrassing goofs he was known for still seems to be a problem — if not a tradition — down at the Adams County coroner’s office. Two and a half years after the combative,…
Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission director Matt Lepore says he made an “improper leap” last week in suggesting that anti-fracking activists are affluent and consequently unconcerned about rising energy costs. Those comments prompted jeers and scoldings from grassroots groups pushing for tougher regulation of the hydraulic fracturing process used…
Update to our update, July 18, 4:10 pm: In response to Judge Robert Hyatt’s ruling, below, Governor John Hickenlooper has signed an executive order designating September, 10, 2013, as the date for the recall elections of state senators John Morse and Angela Giron. “We appreciate that the court acknowledged we…
On paper, the redevelopment of the old Marriott hotel at Hampden Avenue and I-25 looks like a dream deal for southeast Denver, complete with luxury apartments boasting “curated amenities” and a “lazy river” winding through the place. But Holly Ridge residents say that the project has been a nightmare for…
The knock on the door came at ten minutes before ten on a Monday night in January, just as Al Michaud was thinking about going to bed. He started to get out of his chair to see who was there. His visitors were way ahead of him. Three large young…
The acquittal of George Zimmerman in the fatal shooting of Florida teen Trayvon Martin has sparked protests and prayer vigils and a seemingly endless discussion about race and guns, self-defense laws and justice in America. One of the oddest responses to cross our desk comes in the form of an…
The Denver District Attorney’s Office is still sorting out its response to a fatal shooting on South Glencoe Street last week. It may well be that the death of 29-year-old Charles McLaughlin, who allegedly fought with the male occupant of a home and attempted entry before he was shot, is…
