New police monitor unveils plan to revamp discipline
Denver’s new police monitor Wednesday unveiled for the City Council a proposed revamp of the police disciplinary system that he said would result in 80 percent of internal-affairs investigations being completed within 105 days.
Under the plan, monitor Richard Rosenthal expects 75 percent of all complaints to be resolved in 30 days. He also hopes to have 75 percent of all informal investigations completed within 30 days. All internal-affairs investigations of more serious charges are supposed to be completed within 150 days, he said.
AURORA
Brothers surrender
in sex-assault cases
Two Aurora brothers wanted on suspicion of sexually assaulting two girls on separate occasions turned themselves in Tuesday, police said.
Christopher James Henderson, 21, and Michael Henderson, 22, surrendered at Arapahoe County District Court.
Details about the surrenders were unavailable.
Earlier this month, Christopher Henderson was accused of demanding sex from his former girlfriend and choking her and tying her up when she refused. He’s accused of then going into another room of his apartment and sexually assaulting the ex-girlfriend’s 12-year-old sister at knifepoint.
His brother, Michael, is accused of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl in the same apartment in the 16800 block of East Idaho Circle three months earlier.
DENVER
Apparent suicide at jail investigated
Authorities are investigating the apparent suicide of a 43- year-old inmate at the Denver City Jail, said sheriff’s department spokesman Sgt. Darryle Brown in a prepared statement.
The victim, a man who had been arrested about two hours earlier, was found hanged in his cell about 4 a.m. Wednesday during a cell check by deputies at the downtown facility, Brown said.
Attempts were made to revive the man before he was taken to a hospital, where he was declared dead, Brown said.
The name of the man, who had been arrested on charges of disturbance by telephone and threats to injure, wasn’t released pending notification of family.
DENVER
Prison-gang trial nets first conviction
The first trial involving a member of a Colorado white-supremacist prison gang resulted in the conviction of Ralph Dickey, 31, on charges of racketeering and methamphetamine distribution and manufacturing.
Dickey is the first of a dozen defendants to go on trial in connection with the 211 Crew’s gang activities. Dickey’s trial lasted almost two weeks. The jury was out less than an hour before returning the guilty verdicts. Dickey could receive a maximum prison term of 36 years when he is sentenced in March.
Last January, 22 members of the 211 Crew were indicted after an 18-month investigation. The top leaders and associates were indicted for racketeering, accused of making money selling guns and drugs, and using violence inside and outside of prison to collect debts, rectify imagined slights and track down former members who had deserted the organization.
COLORADO
CSU, CU researchers aid warming study
The world’s tundras will lose species and change shape if climate change continues to increase temperatures, a team of researchers reports in today’s Nature.
The scientists studied changes in plant populations at 11 sites in northern, alpine and Arctic regions where small greenhouses warmed plots of land a few degrees higher than normal. Such warming is consistent with most 50- to 100-year climate projections.
After just two growing seasons, mosses and lichens began to disappear, and grasses and shrubs began to dominate, the team reported. Overall, plant cover increased in the plots, a trend that could amplify warming because plants can help capture heat at the Earth’s surface.
The authors include Julia Klein at Colorado State University’s Natural Resources Ecology Laboratory and Paul Lee Turner at the Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado-Boulder.
DENVER
Family sues motorist in firefighter’s death
The family of a volunteer firefighter who was struck by a vehicle and killed while directing traffic around a 2004 accident filed a lawsuit Wednesday in federal court contending that a 17- year-old who was speeding caused the firefighter’s death.
According to the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Denver, Christopher Gunja was traveling at 52 mph when he struck Penrose firefighter Michael Lynch, 32, who was wearing a reflective vest and carrying a light. The impact threw Lynch 136 feet, according to the lawsuit.
BOULDER
Dust shower linked to asteroid breakup
A massive space explosion showered dust over the ancient Earth 8.2 million years ago, according to a new study.
Scientists for the first time were able to link the timing of an extraterrestrial dust shower and the breakup of a massive asteroid in the belt between Mars and Jupiter.
California Institute of Technology scientists found the chemical signatures of extraterrestrial dust in 8.2-million-year-old ocean sediments in the Atlantic and Indian oceans. Their Boulder colleagues were able to link the dust shower to a swarm of modern asteroids that likely formed from a collision also 8.2 million years ago.
The asteroid involved was probably 100 miles wide and blown apart by some kind of impact, said David Nesvorny of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder.
The research is published in today’s Nature.
VAIL
Forest Service, resort agree to trade land
Vail Resorts and the U.S. Forest Service agreed Wednesday to swap land, putting hundreds of acres of wildlife habitat in public hands and giving Vail the chunk of land it needs for its redevelopment project.
The Forest Service gets 475 acres at Vassar Meadows south of Eagle and 135 acres at South Game Creek north of Minturn in the deal, and Vail gets about 5 acres of land near the base of the Vista Bahn.
GYPSUM
Racist sign on bridge removed on MLK Day
Authorities were forced on Martin Luther King Jr. Day to remove from a bridge a tarp with a racial epithet written on it.
The sign hanging over U.S. 6 in Gypsum, which said “Happy Commie Day” and included a slur against blacks, was reported to police about 7:30 a.m. Monday, the Eagle County Sheriff’s Office said. It was removed 20 minutes later. The incident was not being investigated further.
