Crime
As incidents involving body cameras increase, top manufacturer pushes them for all police
DENVER – Questions about the purpose of police body cameras and when their captured content should be publicly released have been renewed after the chief of police for Fort Collins said Sunday he wouldn’t release body camera video of one of his officers slamming a woman to the ground during an arrest until after an investigation.
The Fort Collins Police Department is one of a handful of Colorado law enforcement agencies that have bought body cameras for their officers, and one of few in the state that has pledged to outfit all of its officers with the technology. Continue reading
Gorsuch could cast key votes on these high-profile cases, could take up Colo. cake shop case
DENVER – Colorado’s Neil Gorsuch is now the ninth U.S. Supreme Court justice, and he will immediately be thrown into several high-profile cases in which he could cast the deciding vote.
The Supreme Court has for more than a year operated with just eight justices after Justice Antonin Scalia died unexpectedly in February 2016.
First up for Gorsuch and the full-bench court will be a case out of Missouri involving a church’s claim that its religious freedom is being violated by the state’s ban on public money going to religious organizations.
In Church of Columbia v. Pauley, the church argues that the state’s denial of public money to help build a playground violated the U.S. Constitution.
Gorsuch could also be called on to decide six cases argued last year should the other eight justices not be able to come to a majority conclusion. He would be called on to participate in new hearings on the cases and possibly break a 4-4 tie, but cannot issue decisions in any cases that do not end in a tied vote.
Among those cases are one involving a Mexican family suing a U.S. Border Patrol agent who shot their son across the Texas border.
There were two finalized 4-4 votes that resulted from Scalia’s death: one that involved public unions, and one that involved the detainment of undocumented immigrants, according to the New York Times.
The AP reports that those cases included one involving the rights of detained immigrants, and others involving discrimination involving housing and redistricting.
And the Supreme Court is set to hold private conferences on April 13 to decide what other cases it might soon hear.
Among the possibilities is the case involving the Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, whose owner, Jack Phillips, has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review his case after a lower court ruled that Phillips discriminated against a gay couple who wanted a wedding cake in 2012.
Phillips has long claimed that as a Christian, he has the religious freedom to deny business to same-sex couples.
The Colorado Supreme Court last August declined to review the case, agreeing with a Colorado Court of Appeals decision that said the shop could continue to enforce its religious beliefs, but not while operating as a business in Colorado.
The U.S. Supreme Court could also take up a gun rights case out of San Diego in which the plaintiff argues the Second Amendment allows people to carry guns openly outside of their home, as well as a voter rights case involving voter identification and redistricting out of North Carolina at the April 13 conference. Four justices would have to vote to take up each case for a full court hearing.
Gorsuch, 49, is now the youngest Supreme Court justice, and Republicans hope that he will tip the majority back to conservatives, as was often the case with Scalia on the bench.
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Bellco Credit Union sued for alleged mortgage loan discrimination against women on maternity leave
DENVER – Greenwood Village-based home loan lender Bellco Credit Union faces accusations it broke federal fair housing laws by not giving mortgage loans to women while they were on or about to go on maternity leave.
Bellco Credit Union was sued by the Denver Metro Fair Housing Center in March in U.S. District Court of Colorado for allegedly discriminating against people based on their sex and familial status, the suit says. It was assigned earlier this month to a judge, and a scheduling conference in the case is set for May 26.
Read the lawsuit in full by clicking here.
According to the suit, Bellco has continued to deny mortgage loans to women who are either on or facing impending maternity leave until the women return to work for at least 30 days, which DMFHC says is a direct violation of both state and federal fair housing laws, as well as underlying rules for loans issued by Fannie Mae.
Bellco has more than 20 branches across Colorado.
Over a period of several months last year, DMFHC used five women to test Bellco’s rules by applying for mortgage loans either while they were already on maternity leave, or by saying they were about to go on it.
The women were all white in order to control the test, the suit says, and all had credit scores in the mid-700s, household incomes with two earners and money in their savings. Two of the women were not on our about to go on maternity leave so as to control the test, the suit says.
In all three cases in which the women said they were on or about to go on maternity leave, loan representatives from Bellco told the women they would have to return to work and provide one month’s worth of pay stubs in order to close on a home, despite some of them having alternate incomes from their husbands and, in one case, $72,000 in savings, according to the suit.
In one case, one of the Belco workers “unequivocally communicated that women on maternity leave must return to work as a threshold condition to potentially qualify for a home mortgage loan from Bellco,” according to the suit.
But the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has issued numerous guidance memos over the past seven years showing that women do have the right to obtain a mortgage loan while on maternity leave.
From 2010 to 2014, HUD received approximately 190 complaints regarding home loans and pregnancy or parental leave, around 40 of which were settled by the end of 2014, according to the suit.
When HUD settled with Houston-based lender Cornerstone Mortgage Company in 2011, an assistant secretary for HUD said that explicitly.
“Pregnancy is not a basis to deny or delay a loan. It’s just that simple,” HUD Assistant Secretary for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity John Trasvina said at the time. “Mortgage professionals may verify income and other resources and have eligibility standards, but they may not single out women on maternity leave to deny or delay loans that they are otherwise eligible for.”
Under the federal Fair Housing Act, people seeking home mortgage loans are protected from being discriminated against based on their sex or familial status (including pregnancy) if they can “demonstrate that she intends to return to work and can otherwise continue to meet the income requirements to qualify for the loan.”
And in 2014, HUD said that “borrowers scheduled to be on leave at the time the first mortgage payment is due may rely upon any combination of income received during leave or liquid assets not otherwise required for the loan to meet the underwriting standards,” according to the suit.
The test that DMFHC undertook met all the return-to-work requirements and minimum loan requirements necessary under law, according to the suit.
Just last July, Citizens Bank settled with HUD over accusations similar to those levied now against Bellco. And Fannie Mae, which underwrites guidance for Bellco, said in 2013 that “a lender should consider a borrower’s income while on leave” and in some cases in which the family leave payment is less than a woman’s normal income, that a lender “should take into account the borrower’s savings as available to supplement the borrower’s income.”
“Given this public guidance from HUD and Fannie Mae, Bellco should have known that its policy is unlawful,” the suit says.
The suit asks a federal judge to enjoin, or block, Bellco from continuing its practices. DMFHC claims it has been injured because it has had to “divert scare time, money and resources” to investigate Bellco in order to meet its missing “of eliminating housing discrimination and promoting housing choice for all people in the Denver metropolitan area.”
“Bellco knew or should have known that its policy of denying home mortgage loans to women who are using maternity leave was unlawful and illegal,” the suit says.
It also asks the judge to award both punitive and compensatory damages for Bellco’s alleged violations of the Fair Housing Act and Colorado Fair Housing Act, as well as attorneys’ fees and other reasonable costs.
“The denial of home mortgage loans to women who are otherwise credit worthy because they on maternity leave is not only unlawful, it severely limits women and families with children the ability to purchase or refinance a home and all the benefits that come with homeownership,” said DMFHC Executive Director Arturo Alvarado.
Bellco issued a statement Monday in response to the lawsuit saying the lawsuit has no merit:
“For more than 80 years, Bellco has served as a trusted partner to our members in this community. Bellco has never knowingly engaged in any discriminatory lending practices of any kind. In particular, Bellco’s policies forbid any kind of discrimination based on the sex or familial status of applicants, including pregnancy and maternity leave. Our attorneys are investigating the specific allegations in the complaint and will respond to them in court. But we are confident that the lawsuit has no merit.”
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Denver officials ask ICE to ‘respect’ courts, schools
DENVER – Denver’s mayor, city council and legal representatives sent a letter Thursday to the local U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office requesting agents stay away from “sensitive locations,” including schools and courthouses, while performing their duties.
The letter asks ICE officials to stay in line with an October 2011 ICE memo called “Enforcement Actions at or Focused on Sensitive Locations” that agents “avoid unnecessarily alarming local communities” and to take caution and care when enforcing federal immigration law near the “sensitive locations.” Continue reading
ICE agents arrest 21 in four-day sweep in Colorado
DENVER – U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested 21 people in Colorado and five in Wyoming in an enforcement raid on undocumented immigrants that took place March 31-April 3.
ICE says all 26 people arrested had prior criminal convictions, and that 23 of them had previously been convicted of possessing or selling illegal drugs, domestic violence, DUI, illegal entry, larceny or sex offenses.
The agency gave no names of those arrested.
The 21 arrested in Colorado were arrested in various cities:
- Arvada: 2
- Aurora: 11
- Commerce City: 3
- Denver: 1
- Frederick: 1
- Thornton: 2
- Yuma: 1
The five arrested in Wyoming were all taken into custody in Jackson.
ICE says that all the people were arrested were men between the ages of 18 and 56. Eighteen were Mexican nationals; four were Honduran; two were Salvadoran; one was from Costa Rica and one was from Indonesia.
The agency noted four specific cases of people who were arrested in the roundup who had previously been convicted of serious crimes or multiple DUIs.
ICE says all of them men arrested “were amenable to arrest and removal under the Immigration and Nationality Act” and that the agency “frequently encounter[s] other aliens illegally present in the United States” while conducting such operations.
“They are evaluated on a case-by-case basis, and, when appropriate, they are arrested by ICE officers,” the agency says.
The announcement came on the same day many of Denver city officials sent a letter to the ICE Denver field office asking ICE agents to avoid “sensitive locations” like courthouses and schools when conducting their operations.
The latest operation comes as ICE has started putting out weekly updates targeting cities across the country that it says are “uncooperative” with President Donald Trump’s new immigration orders, the first of which targeted several cities in Colorado, including Denver.
It is part of an effort to strip federal funding so-called “sanctuary cities” that don’t cooperate with ICE agents, though Boulder is the only Colorado city with an official proclamation on the books that it is a sanctuary city.
And Attorney General Jeff Sessions recently called out a case in Denver involving a spat between Denver Sheriff Department officials and ICE agents over the release of an undocumented immigrant in December who later allegedly killed a man.
And at least two Denver-area undocumented women have sought refuge at Denver churches to avoid deportation. Churches have also often been considered sensitive locations.
“Our ICE enforcement operations improve public safety by removing criminal aliens from our communities, and drunk drivers from our roads,” said Jeffrey Lynch, field office director for ERO Denver. “This was a focused four-day operation, but our routine operations occur daily.”
ICE says most of those arrested in the latest sweep now have either pending deportations or will be deported once their charges have run the course through local or federal court systems.
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New report shows drastic across-the-board increases in Colorado’s heroin use
DENVER – A new report released Thursday that studies heroin use in Colorado shows a huge spike in heroin seizures and hepatitis C transmissions among young users in the state.
The report, “Heroin in Colorado,” was compiled by a wide array of public health, drug enforcement and other officials and prepared by the Heroin Response Work Group. It’s the first of its kind in Colorado.
It is broken down into seizure and arrest data, overdose data, data on Naloxone use, disease transmission data, neonatal data, exposure calls and other treatment and user information.
The study covered the time period between 2011 and 2015, and saw jumps in most categories related to the illicit drug that has made a widespread comeback across the country that some have called an “epidemic.”
Among the key findings:
- A total of 70 percent of users surveyed in the Denver Metro Treatment Client Survey say prescription painkillers “played a role” in their decision to use heroin.
- 61 percent of those surveyed in the Denver survey said they had overdosed on heroin before. Of those people, the median number of overdoses they had experienced was three.
- Heroin-related deaths in Colorado doubled from 2011 to 2015, from 79 deaths to 160 deaths.
- Age-adjusted heroin overdose deaths increased by 93 percent over the same time period, and hospitalization rates jumped 41 percent.
- Heroin-related emergency room visits doubled from 4.45 per 100,00 people in 2011 to 9.28 per 100,000 in 2014.
- Colorado law enforcement agencies have seen a massive spike in heroin seizures. In 2011, there were 20, but there were 427 seizures in 2015 – a 2,035 percent increase. The amount of heroin seized jumped 1,562 percent from 2011 -2015, from 16.1 pounds to 268.7 pounds.
- The number of heroin-related arrests jumped from 743 in 2011 to 4,575 in 2015 – an increase of 515 percent.
- Reported new hepatitis C cases jumped from 379 cases in 2011 to 729 in 2015. The report attributed many of the new infections to needle-sharing among users.
- The yearly average price for a gram of heroin in Denver has dropped significantly, which the report attributes to a greater supply. It was $255.20 per gram in 2012, jumped to $308 per gram in 2013, but has since plummeted to just $123.12 per gram in 2015.
- At the same time, heroin purity levels in Denver dropped from 31.9 percent in 2012 to just 17.1 percent in 2015.
- Age-adjusted overdose rates for heroin, opioids in general, and all drugs are higher in Colorado than the U.S. averages.
- Pueblo County has the highest age-adjusted death rate due to heroin, and southern Colorado has higher rates than the rest of the state.
Some of the data was also released in January in the Substance Abuse Trend and Response Task Force’s 11th-annual report.
“Too many Colorado families have been hurt by the heroin epidemic,” said Lt. Gov. and Chief Operating Officer Donna Lynne. “This first-ever report provides the sobering statistics and serves as our call to action to do all we can to help our citizens avoid its use and provide support to those on the front lines of battling its misuse.”
“People are dying from opioid overdoses at an alarming rate across the country and here in Colorado,” said Colorado Attorney General Cynthia Coffman. “Every one of the people we lose to an overdose is somebody’s loved one and their addiction and subsequent death not only impacts them and their families, it affects our community as a whole. Colorado must be proactive in tackling this heroin crisis, and this report provides us with comprehensive data that can help us to focus our state’s resources where they are most needed. My office will continue to work collaboratively with stakeholders to combat this growing issue.”
To read the full report, click here.
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Longmont driver who killed 8-year-old on bike sentenced to 150 days in jail
BOULDER COUNTY, Colo. – A Longmont man who pleaded guilty to careless driving and false ID possession in the death of an 8-year-old girl who killed when she was hit while riding her bike was sentenced Tuesday to 150 days in jail.
Kyle Couch, 21, will serve two years of probation after he completes his jail sentence, which a judge also Tuesday denied to defer until Couch finished this semester at college.
He was originally charged with vehicular homicide, DUI and a slew of other charges for allegedly running over and killing the young girl, Peyton Knowlton, as she rode her bike across a crosswalk with her stepfather last May. Couch stayed at the scene after the crash.
But prosecutors dropped most of his charges in March in exchange for the guilty plea on the lesser charges.
Investigators had originally said that Couch was high on marijuana at the time of the crash, something his defense attorney disputed and prosecutors decided they were unable to prove, according to the Boulder Daily Camera.
Catherine Olguin, a spokesperson for the Boulder County District Attorney’s Office, said the judge also added a restorative justice participation program to Couch’s sentence, which could allow Couch to communicate with Knowlton’s family and apologize should the family choose to participate.
He apologized to the family during Tuesday’s hearing.
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Tennessee man climbed fences to pet tiger at Denver Zoo, police say
DENVER – A Tennessee man apparently on a cross-country trip was cited in March after he allegedly climbed over a fence at the Denver Zoo and was able to get close enough to the tiger exhibit to pet one of the big cats while it was sleeping.
Matthew Swearingen, 34, was cited by the Denver Police Department for criminal trespassing after the incident, in which he is accused of jumping a public barrier fence at the zoo’s new tiger exhibit.
The zoo says the tiger that was touched was sleeping in the overhead catwalk of the newly-opened “The Edge” tiger area, but that Swearingen “never accessed the exhibit and neither he, nor the tiger, were harmed.”
Swearingen’s Facebook profile says he’s from New York and lives in Washington, D.C., but a DPD report says he produced a Tennessee ID when he was taken into custody.
On his page, he says that he is on a cross-country bicycle trip, though at least one picture shows him on an airplane.
On March 26, eight days after he was taken into custody, he wrote on Facebook that he “pet the tiger at the zoo” while recounting his time in Denver.
The zoo says it is “currently evaluating this area to determine if anything additional needs to be done to discourage this illegal behavior from happening again.”
A mugshot for Swearingen was not available because he was cited and not booked.
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Colorado bill would establish new juvenile sexting punishments, keep teens from facing felony
DENVER – Major changes could be coming for Colorado teens caught sexting if a new bill introduced in the Colorado Legislature becomes law.
Rep. Pete Lee, an El Paso County Democrat, introduced House Bill 1302 on Tuesday.
The bill would create two new charges related to sexting involving teens: posting private images by a juvenile and possessing private images by a juvenile.
Posting a private image by a juvenile would be a class 2 misdemeanor, punishable by between 3 and 12 months in jail upon conviction.
But it would become a class 1 misdemeanor, punishable by between 6 and 18 months in jail, if a person posted the image with the intent to harass or distress the depicted person, if they had a history of doing so, or if they distributed photos or videos of three or more juveniles.
Possessing a private image by a juvenile would be classified as a petty offense, but it could be classified as a class 2 misdemeanor if the person in possession of the image had pictures of three or more different juveniles.
The new laws would not apply to people who were “coerced, intimidated, or harassed into distributing, displaying, publishing, or possessing a sexual explicit image of a juvenile.”
And the bill leaves open the possibility for courts to allow people convicted of possession to enter into a counseling program, and for district attorney’s offices to establish diversion programs for first-time offenders. Jefferson County already has a similar program.
The focus on teen sexting would also extend to schools under the bill.
It directs districts to have their school safety resource officers and center to have lessons available “regarding the dangers and consequences of sexting for school districts to use” that would include information on how students could avoid being charged under the new laws should they unwittingly become involved in a sexting incident.
Specifically, under the proposed new laws, people would be able to get out of the possession charge if they “took reasonable steps” to destroy or delete the image within 72 hours of receiving it, or notified law enforcement or school officials within that same time period.
Both new laws would apply to people who either posted or possessed the image of a juvenile without their consent.
Under current law, anyone engaged in juvenile sexting without someone’s consent is liable to be charged with sexual exploitation of a child. But it is rare that teens are ever charged with the crime, which carries a mandatory sex offender registry requirement.
A similar bill was introduced in the Legislature last year but failed to reach the governor’s desk.
The new laws would make it so juveniles would not face the sexual exploitation charge if the conditions of either new proposed law is met, or if a person is between 14 and 18 years of age, or less than four years younger than the person.
In December 2015, officials announced no charges would be filed in a sexting case that involved dozens of Canon City Middle and High School students. And in April 2016, prosecutors in the 4th Judicial District said they wouldn’t charge five Pine Creek High and Challenger Middle School students who were caught sharing photos of a partially-nude juvenile.
The bill is set for its first hearing in the House Judiciary Committee on April 11 at 1:30 p.m.
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Authorities conclude landfill search for missing Charlene Voight after 4 months
LITTLETON, Colo. – After four months of combing through a Commerce City landfill, authorities have concluded the search for evidence in connection with the disappearance of 36-year-old Charlene Voight, Denver7 Investigates learned exclusively Wednesday.
The conclusion of the search comes after the Littleton City Council approved $500,000 in December to continue the search, which started last November.
And though crews didn’t find exactly what they were looking for, they did discover pieces of evidence that could help in the ongoing search for the missing woman.
Case background
Voight was reported missing by her family last July 8 after they hadn’t heard from her since the final days of June. She had moved to Colorado from California just weeks before disappearing in order to live with her boyfriend, Jeffrey Scot Beier.
Voight’s car was found abandoned shortly after she was reported missing, and was linked to a property that Beier had bought days before Voight was last seen.
Denver7 Investigates first reported there was suspicious blood spatter on a headboard inside an apartment police searched in regards to the case; a mattress was missing from the apartment, and a portion of carpet had been cut out and removed from the apartment, according to authorities.
Making the case even more complicated, Beier was arrested July 12 for an alleged sexual assault that happened July 1, allegedly against a different woman.
But those charges were later dropped on Sept. 2, when prosecutors said they had to do so in order to avoid giving evidence about the ongoing search for Voight to Beier’s defense team.
And Beier had a history of domestic violence involving an ex-wife and Voight. He pleaded guilty in 2007 to threatening to kill his ex-wife, then served time in a domestic violence case involving Voight in 2013.
In November, authorities started searching the Tower Landfill in Commerce City for either Voight’s body or the missing mattress. Beier, who ran a dumpster business, had been placed at the landfill around the time that Voight disappeared, Denver7 Investigates first reported at the time.
New developments in case
On Wednesday, law enforcement sources confirmed to Denver7 Investigates that the landfill search concluded March 10 after four months.
It was funded by $500,000 the Littleton City Council appropriated in December – another facet of the case that has not been previously reported.
And though the search did not turn up Voight’s body or the missing mattress, law enforcement sources tell Denver7 Investigates that they did find some of her clothes.
That clothing is now undergoing forensic DNA testing to see if authorities can find anything that might link a suspect to her disappearance.
Littleton police continue to work with multiple local and state agencies to try and find Voight. Anyone with information on her disappearance is asked to call the department at 303-794-1551.
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