City Council's Van Cise recommendation comes amid other controversy

Philip Van Cise.

In this cyber-space, Alan Prendergast has written on several occasions about the campaign to name part of Denver's new justice complex after Philip Van Cise, a gangbusting district attorney who fought corruption and the Ku Klux Klan during the 1920s. Learn more by reading Prendergast's 2008 feature article "Scourge of the Underworld" and posts such as "No Justice for Van Cise?" and "A Van Cise Reprise in the Justice Center Debate." Yesterday, Van Cise supporters got some good news: The City Council's safety committee formally suggested that the detention facility be named in Van Cise's honor. But there's no telling at this point if the recommendation to Mayor John Hickenlooper, tasked with making the final decision, will hold up. A dispute over the lack of a Latino name on any part of the complex caused a giant brouhaha that dominated page one of today's Denver Post and pushed the Van Cise nod to the bottom of the article in question.

For Van Cise and his backers, the fight for belated recognition just got a lot more compliated.