This is how Department of Corrections spokeswoman Liz McDonough describes the events of last June at the Colorado State Penitentiary, during which close to a dozen inmates were forcibly “extracted” from their cells and charged with offenses ranging from disobeying a lawful order to assaulting staff and engaging in a…
For the moment, Sergeant Attila Denes of the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office is a prisoner of his own department’s top-notch security. He waves gamely through the glass of the county jail’s medical center, trying to signal the deputies in an electronic control booth eight feet away to open the door…
Dressed in shorts and a short-sleeved golf shirt, his face flushed with sun and wind, Dave Liniger roams his Denver Tech Center offices this sultry summer morning with more than the usual bounce in his step. When you own the company, you can wear whatever you want to work, and…
Two attorneys can live in a town where one cannot,” proverb collector V.S. Lean noted a century ago. Colorado’s booming economy has brought a corresponding surge in the number of practicing attorneys in the state–now estimated at around 20,000, with actual attorney registration pushing 28,000. And with the disputatious tide…
Everyone heard the explosion. It sounded like someone had detonated a cherry bomb behind the apartment. A man named Bud opened the back door to see what the hell was going on. Big mistake. There were three of them in the parking lot, three wild men lit by the midnight…
Eleven men sit in a circle, giving each other the feather. Three feathers, to be exact–stiff, brightly colored plumes that are passed from hand to hand, twirled and talked about. Each man says something about the person who is to receive the feather and then passes it on, until it…
Therapist Nancy Lantz asks Gary to recite the rules for men who attend her domestic-violence treatment group. “You have to be on time,” Gary says. “No missing classes. No violence, no drugs, no firearms, no alcohol. You got to pay. And if you call your wife a bitch”–he nods at…
Krystal was getting ready to go to her weekly batterer class when her husband threw a glass of water in her face, called her a slut and took her car keys away from her. No wife of his was going to be counseled about domestic violence–not without a fight, anyway…
In those places that tourists come from–Dubuque, Topeka, Lincoln, Rapid City–they’re already gassing up the Winnebagos and planning that Memorial Day weekend trip to the Colorado high country. Some will consult road maps and dining guides, but for a certain breed of summer visitor, there’s no better research source than…
Joseph C’de Baca can see where this is going. He was supposed to be the third speaker on the agenda for the Denver Public Schools monthly public forum, but school board president Sue Edwards keeps calling other names instead. Magnet schools, anti-smoking campaigns, fair pay for janitors–the speakers come and…
Last year, under pressure from the federal government, the Colorado General Assembly finally passed a measure that had been kicked around for seven years: a law authorizing the state to suspend or revoke the professional licenses of accountants, dentists, acupuncturists, nurses, real estate agents and other white-collar types who owed…
The whole mess may have started with an argument over carpets. Or maybe it had to do with a few hundred dollars’ worth of phone calls. No matter how it began, though, the dispute between Rabah Khatib and Herbert Wasserman just keeps getting more expensive–and the fate of downtown Denver’s…
On the morning of December 17, 1992, a rangy freshman named Jacob Ind was pulled out of his first-hour class at Woodland Park High School by counselor David Greathouse. Concerned about Ind’s emotional stability, Greathouse had arranged for the fifteen-year-old to meet with a mental-health specialist from a Colorado Springs…
Last Christmas wasn’t merry for Arlee Martin and her daughter Rose Warren. A teenage employee of Foley’s Cherry Creek department store not only refused to wait on the pair but allegedly spewed racial slurs at them and attacked Warren. The two black women were so shaken by the encounter that…
The first time Russell Welty heard about the Year 2000 Problem–also known as the Millennium Bug or, in programmer jargon, Y2K–it sounded simple. Too simple. The problem, stripped down to its essentials, is this: Most computers on the planet are programmed to calculate dates in a two-digit format–for example, 02/14/98…
Make no mistake about it, the inmates in the Colorado Department of Corrections are paying dearly for their crimes. So are their families. Just look at their phone bills. One of the privileges prisoners lose when they go to the slammer is their choice of long-distance carriers; their calls to…
He lurks in the bad dreams of hungry prosecutors and hidebound judges, a caped avenger in bolo tie and maroon beret. The cameras catch him exiting the courtroom in the eye of the media whirlwind, a feisty bantamweight with a large voice–a voice so thunderous when raised in outrage that…
Smiling, frosted-haired matrons, their teeth capped in orange and blue. A naked man in a barrel making a heartfelt plea for playoff tickets. Nightly weather bulletins on the field conditions in Kansas City or Pittsburgh, pre-empting the local snow report. If it all sounds vaguely familiar, then consider yourself a…
The following are excerpts from a diary kept by William Minnix, a convicted felon transported from Ohio to Colorado last July by Transcor America to face a charge of parole violation. Minnix claims the trip covered twenty states in twenty days. May 27: Arrested in Cincinnati, OH. June 20: Extradition…
When William Minnix was arrested in Ohio last summer, he thought he knew what to expect. He knew he would be extradited to Colorado to face a charge of violating his parole on a felony theft conviction. He also knew that the 1,000-mile trip back to prison, shackled in a…
A kiss is still a kiss. A sigh is just a sigh. And the allegations of sexual harassment leveled against a prominent educator at the University of Colorado continue to multiply as time goes by. It’s been two years since secretary Jennifer Miller filed a lawsuit against the CU Board…
Somewhere beneath the tall grasses of Rocky Flats, not far from the small streams that wind through the buffer zone surrounding the former nuclear-weapons plant, a Preble’s meadow jumping mouse is taking a well-deserved nap. Its fate is being decided elsewhere. The mouse–which weighs less than an ounce, sports a…
