Blogs

The fact that the Denver District Attorney’s Office actually filed aggravated assault charges and arrested Denver Police Officer Chuck Porter on May 8 shows how serious the allegations against him are. The incident on April 18, which occurred in the lower Highland neighborhood near Chubbies on 38th Avenue, sent sixteen-year-old Juan Vasquez to the hospital with broken ribs, a lacerated liver and other injuries -- all after Porter, a gang unit officer, allegedly stomped on him.

The arrest warrant for Porter, released May 9, states that about 9:30 p.m. officers spotted Vasquez drinking what appeared to be alcohol. He ran when officers tried to talk to him, but was quickly caught after a brief chase. Two other officers witnessed Porter jump up and down on Vasquez's back three to five times while the teen lay stomach-down on the ground, according to the document.

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Have you been injured in an auto accident? If so, call attorney Frank Azar, "The Strong Arm." He’s been fighting insurance companies in Colorado for years and he’ll get you a $25,000 settlement. Then, you can turn around and sue Frank Azar (profiled by Westword in 2002) for half of a million dollars, claiming he pressured you to take less than you were due. 40-year-old Shawna Jimenez of Colorado Springs did just that and now an El Paso County jury has awarded her $145,000. Thanks, Frank Azar! " – Jared Jacang Maher

The Denver Film Society has announced that executive director Scott Rowitz will be taking off for a position at the California Film Institute. Rowitz has held the post since 2002 and has overseen significant growth in general ticket sales as well as increased attendance at the Starz Denver Film Festival, which jumped from 19,500 in 2000 to 45,000 in 2007. Last November, festival founder Ron Henderson stepped down as artistic director of the annual event. A search of a new executive director is in the works. Until then, Starz FilmCenter Development Director Arpie Chucovich will fill in as honcho. –- Jared Jacang Maher

Six years ago, developer Paul Lambert put together the biggest, gaudiest monstrosity in the 2002 Parade of Homes. With its three kitchens, eleven bathrooms, Roman spa and casino, swimming pool and waterfall, the $4.1-million Villa Bellagio was the buzz of Douglas County. But its over-the-top luxury also drew fire from Lambert's subcontractors over unpaid bills, and from homebuyers unhappy with Lambert's company, Dorian Homes, as we reported here.

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After months of speculation, the temporary occupant for the vacant lot that comprises much of Block 162, the dilapidated downtown block whose purchase and planned redevelopment by developer Evan Makovsky made waves last summer, has been determined. And it’s a tent.

And not just any tent. A mega tent, called the Peak, capable of hosting concerts, trade shows, banquets and other special events. One whose dimensions are 160 feet by 120 feet and that will reach 50 feet into the sky, with the capacity to seat 1,500 to 2,000 people – making it one of the biggest tents in the world.

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Oh, and, while technically not a Wetboy, William Spencer is down with their wacky style, which they hope to show off on their MTV reality show pilot:

On April 26, ultrarunner Tony Krupicka, profiled this month in my feature "Miles & Miles," added another triumph to his remarkable string of first-place finishes in major endurance races. He smoked the field in the Zane Grey 50, a steep, rocky trek through fifty miles of Arizona's Tonto National Forest.

Krupicka had a bruised foot and trouble with his "proprioceptive feedback," lost the trail entirely at one point, jumped over two rattlesnakes and negotiated a mess of downed trees on one of the most challenging fifty-milers around. Yet he still finished in just over eight hours -- ninety minutes ahead of the nearest challenger and eleven minutes off the course record. His account of the race can be found on his blog.

What's next for the Tarzan of the Plains? Possibly the Colfax Marathon (organizers are wooing, Krupicka seems undecided), then the big 100-mile Western States Endurance Run in June. -- Alan Prendergast

Two weeks after a Lincoln County judge yanked 18th Judicial District and state prosecutors off a death penalty case, citing several ethical violations, the Office of the Colorado Attorney General has filed its own motion to withdraw from the case.

The motion gives no reasons for the request and is hastily captioned "Motion for Withdrawl." But it's a clear effort by members of the AG's Capital Crimes Unit to wash their hands of the mess. District Attorney Carol Chambers has said she'll appeal Judge Stanley Brinkley's ruling, which removed all employees of her office from the prosecution of Alejandro Perez, a state inmate accused of killing another prisoner at the Limon Correctional Facility in 2004. Previous coverage can be found here and here.

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If you didn’t get your three-wheeled fix from “Wheels of Fortune,” here’s even more of everything you wanted to know about pedicabs but were afraid to ask.

I would've been remiss if I’d written the story without trying to interview Tony Wheeler, one of the global authorities on rickshaws. While Wheeler is best known as the co-founder of the Lonely Planet line of travel books, he also has a bit of a rickshaw fetish. In 1998, he authored Chasing Rickshaws, a guide to the rickshaw industry and culture in various Asian cities from Agra, India, to Yogtakarta, Indonesia. The beautifully illustrated guide is a kick even for those with no interest in pedicabs; the book delves into the sociological and economic complexities of these ubiquitous Asian taxis and even provides graphic schematics of the different vehicle variations. Unfortunately, Wheeler was so busy in his never-ending globetrotting that he couldn't respond to the questions I e-mailed him in time to be included in the story. Instead, you can find his answers below.

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Slide show of the CU solar house as well as other houses from the 2007 Solar Decathalon.

Just in time for Earth Day, the 2007 University of Colorado Solar Decathlon team is opening their house up for tours from 4 to 7 p.m. tonight. A team of CU architecture and engineering students spent two years designing and building a zero-energy house for the international competition. CU had won the only two previous solar decathlons in 2002 and 2005. In October, I followed the team to Washington D.C. where their house was displayed on the National Mall, (“Partly Sunny,” November 2007). Since the contest, the students have had to find a place to put the house on campus after the first planned location fell through because it would have cost the already over-budget project too much to crane the structure onto the main campus. They settled on the CU Research Park instead and have since been putting the house back together and tweaking its complex mechanical systems. Now their work is ready for the spotlight again. After today, the house will be open from 1 to 5 p.m. every Saturday until the end of May. Eventually, the house will be put on permanent display by Xcel Energy.

For information and directions, go to solar.Colorado.edu.
-- Jessica Centers

Note to self: Avoid extended stays in federal high-security penitentiaries, especially on weekends. Most prison riots tend to happen on weekends, when staffing is bare-bones and the week's grievances have heated to a boil. Last Sunday's melee at the U.S. Penitentiary Florence, in which guards fired on inmates and killed two, is a case in point. A nonfatal fracas last year involving inmate-on-officer assaults, during which the staff almost lost control of the entire facility, also came on the weekend.

Senator Ken Salazar has renewed calls for the Bureau of Prisons to add personnel at the Florence complex. State representative Buffie McFadyen isn't so sure it's just a staffing issue, though she has railed against the BOP's penny-pinching approach to its high-security prisons time and again.

Just adding more bodies probably won't solve the problem at USP Florence, a deeply dysfunctional prison with a violent history. It's a gang-ridden hellhole in a system that won't even acknowledge that it has a gang problem (the BOP prefers the term "security threat groups" and insists the STGs are on the run). For detailed accounts of past mismanagement, see our Crime and Punishment archives, particularly "Marked For Death" and "Cowboy Justice". The place is emblematic of system-wide overcrowding, bungling and gang wars; the real shocker isn't last Sunday's violence, but that there haven't been more eruptions like this one.

On a related note, a jury in Lincoln County just handed 18th Judicial District Attorney Carol Chambers another defeat in her effort to revive the death penalty in Colorado. As reported here, a judge removed Chambers' office from the capital prosecution of inmate Alejandro Perez in the murder of another prisoner at Limon, citing ethical violations. And now Perez's co-defendant, David Bueno, has been sentenced to life for his role in the homicide; prosecutors had sought the death penalty in that case, too. But violence within prison walls is such a murky, messy affair that even the most gruesome killings, such as the Rudy Sablan disembowelment case at USP Florence that 's currently being tried in federal court, rarely result in the death penalty. Maybe juries have figured out what Chambers hasn't: that spending the rest of your life inside one of our higher institutions of punishment can be a fate worse than death. –- Alan Prendergast

Promotions were announced at the Denver Police Department last week, including one for District Three Commander Tracie Keesee, who will now head research, training and technology as a division chief. This is good news for the groundbreaking research Keesee has led into how racial bias plays into police shootings. Keesee hopes to use the information to improve training methods. To hear more about Keesee and the DPD’s involvement in police shooting studies, check out Westword’s recent feature article “Target Practice.” – Jared Jacang Maher

If you want to work out in style, you head to the Denver Athletic Club. From the seafood medley served up in the club tavern to the shoe-shine stand, this 124-year-old institution is where the snobs go to sweat. It would seem obvious, therefore, that the DAC would be an ideal stomping ground for “First Lady of Service” Mary Louise Starkey, who, as the head of the Denver-based Starkey International Institute of Household Management, is synonymous with the swanky world of super-butlers. But it seems that Starkey isn’t welcome at the club – at least not anymore.

A very reliable source recently spotted a delinquent list posted in the lobby of the athletic club listing members who haven’t paid their dues. The number-one name, owing more than $1,700 – three times as much as anyone else – was Mary Starkey-Karim. That’s most likely Mary Louise Starkey, since she married a man named Adil Karim several years ago. It appears that Starkey’s gym membership is as mismanaged as several former students and teachers allege her butler school is. Starkey is currently facing second-degree assault charges for allegedly attacking one of her students last year; she’s due in Denver District Court on May 27 for a disposition hearing.

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An audit of how on- and off-duty work hours, as well as overtime hours, are tracked for officers at the Denver Police Department was released Thursday, April 17, nearly three years after it began. But it may not prove too useful because the police department has since changed the system that it uses to log officer hours.

One of the main problems discovered after the auditor’s office tracked fifteen officers (of the department’s 1,400) and how they account for their work hours found that the police have eight different ways of tallying them, including off-duty hours in uniform. Of the eight, just five are kept in the same accounting system (some systems are still done on paper), which makes it hard to know if officers are exceeding the department’s 64-hour limit, or double-dipping -- calling in sick to work other jobs and collecting two checks (see cover story).

The audit (see it here), however, didn’t take into consideration the department’s new time-tracking software, TeleStaff, because it only had a small amount of information about it. What little information the auditors were able to obtain about the new program indicated that it isn’t deal either, because it’s more of a scheduling program than a time tracking one.

Plus, it’s still not fully implemented.

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The trial of Rudy Sablan for the gruesome 1999 murder of cellmate Joey Estrella at the high-security U.S. penitentiary in Florence gets underway this week in Denver's federal court. It's only taken nine years — speedy by government work — for the case to get this far, but some interesting revelations should be in store soon.

Some time in the next few days, prosecutors will play for the jury the horrific video footage taken by corrections officers who responded, belatedly, to a disturbance in the Special Housing Unit of USP Florence one October night. As reported in more detail here, cousins Rudy and William Sablan got into a rather serious disagreement with Estrella in the cell they all shared during a long night of drinking and playing cards. By the time the horrified officers arrived, Estrella's entrails were on display in the blood-soaked cell, and the defiant, intoxicated cousins were mocking their captors and the corpse.

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