Crime & Police

William Scott Planer, who was accused online of violent activity and affiliation with white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups in the Capitol Hill neighborhood late last year, has been arrested in Colorado Springs. He was initially charged with a misdemeanor for placing an anti-Semitic sticker on the door of a synagogue, but he is currently being held on a $500,000 bond related to a felony charge in California, where he allegedly attacked a protester during a white supremacist rally in California last year.

Attorneys representing Austin Holzer, who killed Deputy Derek Geer last year after allegedly warning him, “Dude, you’re gonna get fuckin’ shot,” have filed paperwork suggesting that they may claim self-defense in the case.

According to a just-released report from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, crime in the state circa 2016 was up in every major category, including homicides, rapes, robberies, burglaries and motor-vehicle thefts. The percentage increases over the previous year vary from 0.8 percent to 22 percent.

Violent crime has gone up in Denver during the first half of 2017 as compared to the same period last year. But there’s a wide variation in the number of these offenses from area to area. Denver Police Department statistics for all 78 officially designated city neighborhoods, as shared below, show that two of them didn’t register a single violent crime through the initial six months of this year, while one was the setting for more than 150 offenses in this category.

Earlier today, on the morning of July 10, an inmate was killed at Denver’s main downtown jail. The incident, which a source says involved inmate-on-inmate violence, took place mere hours before speakers at a press conference scheduled to take place outside the facility are expected to demand an investigation into the death of Marvin Booker, who died at the jail on July 9, 2010, nearly seven years ago to the day.

The 2008 murder of Angie Zapata, a transgender teen from Greeley, stands as both a horrifying example of violence targeting the LGBTQ community and a precedent-setting case for federal hate crime laws. Now, Angie’s story, which we’ve told in a shattering Westword feature and numerous followup posts, is going national by way of “Lost Angel,” an episode of the Investigation Discovery series Murder Calls that debuts tonight, July 10.

A new report from the Prison Policy Initiative delves deeply into Colorado’s “free” tablet program and concludes that the arrangement strongly favors the private company supplying the devices, at the expense of the inmates.

Jamaal Edwards, who had previously been found guilty of second-degree murder for killing John Shoeboot in January 2015, has now confessed to culpability in the death of James Clyde Brown during the same incident. But his plea in the Brown case was to manslaughter, not murder, and the admission doesn’t add one day to his sentence for actions that he summed up to investigators by using the two-word phrase, “Shit happened.”

At a press conference that ended moments ago, a Denver Police Department commander confirmed that the two people shot by Englewood or Littleton officers on Santa Fe Drive after a suspected carjacking and chase early this morning were both women. One is dead, while the other is in critical condition at this writing. In addition, a spokesperson said it’s unknown at this point if the suspects shot at police before cops on the scene opened fire or if a weapon was found in or near the stolen vehicle.

More than a decade has passed since the still-unsolved murder of Denver 420 Rally founder and groundbreaking Colorado marijuana activist Ken Gorman. But he hasn’t been forgotten. Indeed, current rally organizers meeting to talk about appealing the City of Denver’s three-year ban of the event brought along Gorman’s ashes, treating them like the equivalent of holy relics. And the mere mention of Gorman triggered both deep emotion over his loss and anger that his killer or killers have yet to be held responsible for their actions.

A carjacking in Littleton prompted a police chase that crossed multiple jurisdictions before culminating in an exchange of gunfire in Denver that left one suspect dead and another injured. Part of northbound Santa Fe Drive, where the shooting took place, remains closed at this writing.

Andrea DiFillipo, LICSW, will be hosting a Facebook Live event this Thursday, June 29, at 5:30 MST for Denver residents on behalf of the new anti-cyberbullying smartphone application, Social Judo.

Roman Morales originally claimed to have been insane when he fatally strangled two-year-old cousin Donnie Ro’Mello Romero Jr. at a Lakewood apartment in September 2015. But the jury hearing the case ultimately found Morales guilty of first-degree murder under the theory that his bizarre behavior, including claims that he’d somehow been ordered to kill the child, was actually a symptom of psychosis spurred by meth use.

A fire at the former home of Donthe Lucas, a suspect in the disappearance of Kelsie Schelling more than four years ago, is being investigated as potential arson, raising speculation about a potential link to her case that police are trying to dampen. In the meantime, a fire department spokesperson confirms that the current residents of the house were home at the time the blaze erupted and sprang into action to put it out before more permanent damage was done.

Christian Gulzow, the Denver-area death metal scenester accused of murdering Brian Lucero in the parking lot of Torchy’s Tacos on May 23 while wearing white facial makeup and gloves with blades protruding from the fingers, was reported to police last year for threatening to kill another local musician, Akira Jadexx. However, no action appears to have been taken against Gulzow as a result of this contact, and he continued to harass Jadexx intermittently until mere months before his arrest for Lucero’s slaying.

Days after revealing that CU Buffs head football coach Mike MacIntyre would make a $100,000 donation to a domestic-violence fund to acknowledge mistakes made related to assault accusations against former assistant coach Joe Tumpkin, the University of Colorado’s Board of Regents has approved a five-year contract extension that will give him a raise of nearly $1 million per annum, plus an additional $100,000 on the last day of 2021, when the pact expires. The timing of these announcements suggests that mea culpas delivered earlier this week were intended to serve as cover for the head coach in the matter involving Tumpkin, who remained on the CU payroll for nearly a month after MacIntyre first spoke to the victim of what she describes as more than 100 assaults.

Denver police officers have arrested a man suspected of unlawful sexual contact on the 16th Street Mall and are currently looking for more potential victims in at least the third incident of its type over the past two years at the iconic shopping stop and tourist attraction.

Today is World Elder Abuse Awareness Day, and yesterday, June 14, Denver District Attorney Beth McCann and Denver Police Department Lieutenant Adam Hernandez announced new initiatives to combat elder and at-risk adult abuse, which includes abuse of those suffering from intellectual and mental disabilities.

Adams County District Attorney Dave Young has announced his intention to charge the fifteen-year-old suspected of murdering Thornton’s Kiaya Campbell, age ten, earlier this month as an adult. By doing so, he’s following in the footsteps of many previous Colorado prosecutors who’ve taken alleged juvenile killers to adult court. Below, see fourteen examples of what happened when they did.

On Monday afternoon, Mayor Michael Hancock and Executive Director of Public Safety Stephanie O’Malley stood on the steps of the City and County Building, along with many community members, to announce the initiative Safe Haven.

In an extraordinary attempt to save the job of CU Boulder head football coach Mike MacIntyre, who is credited with turning around a gridiron program that’s struggled since a recruiting scandal in the early 2000s, the university has suspended chancellor Phil DiStefano for ten days and mandated that MacIntyre and athletic director Rick George make $100,000 donations to a domestic-violence fund over the mishandling of abuse charges against ex-assistant coach Joe Tumpkin.