Aspen
From the plastic red-and-white-checkered tablecloths to the $6.95 daily special, Little Annie’s Eating House serves as a microcosm of the “real” Aspen.
The clientele has changed little in the 33 years the rustic wood restaurant has squatted between two much fancier buildings on Hyman Avenue.
It’s remained a place for longtime residents and average working folks to have a cheap après-ski beer-and-a-shot at a bar hung with plush monkeys, to bring their families for chicken-fried steak, and to rub shoulders unobtrusively with some of this town’s glitterati.
That’s why the biggest drug bust in Aspen since 1994 has created such a stir. It centered on the kitchens of Little Annie’s and another nearby locals’ hangout, the Cooper Street Pier. Ten people, mainly service workers, were arrested on suspicion of possessing or selling cocaine.
The 5 ounces of cocaine seized in the Dec. 2 raids is almost beside the point in the controversy that has spun out of the incident and made Aspenites examine their changing – and often clashing – attitudes toward drugs.
Some residents view the war on drugs as a waste of resources. An increasing number say the town needs stricter enforcement to send a message about drug use to their children. Another faction is in an uproar over how the raids were carried out, saying they were misdirected and involved overkill.
The controversy has highlighted an evolution in Aspen since the early 1970s, when “Mr. Big” dealers trolled the streets dispensing cocaine to the rich and famous and to fast-living Aspenites.
Now, authorities say, much of the dealing has moved to Aspen’s kitchens and its service workers. The buyers, they say, are most often the 20- to 30- somethings seeking a stimulant to stay up late at one of the 80 licensed drinking establishments and still hit the slopes early or show up for work.
Aspen’s former party crowd is now raising children, cheering at soccer games and running to aerobics classes rather than staying out until the wee hours. Many second-mansion owners have passed into their more conservative 50s. The high rollers generally attend private, catered dinners rather than hit the bars.
And the European and Scandinavian youths who used to wash dishes and serve food as a necessary means to ski have been replaced at the minimum-wage jobs by Latinos who often work double shifts to send earnings home to Mexico.
“Aspen is not the party town it was,” said Pitkin County Sheriff Bob Braudis, who has observed Aspen’s shifting dynamics for 37 years – 20 of them as the county’s top peace officer. “Aspen is much healthier than it was 30 years ago. The drug commerce has declined enormously.”
Others say the party goes on.
Aspen Police Chief Loren Ryerson, who has seen the number of reported drug-related cases jump from 45 in 2004 to 72 in 2005, called the drug dealing that led to the Dec. 2 busts “open and pervasive.” He said strangers were being approached to buy drugs.
Little Annie’s business manager, Mike Otte, said he doesn’t doubt that there is drug activity in the town’s restaurant kitchens, but he said he never witnessed any in Little Annie’s.
“I’m not tolerant about drugs,” Otte said, “and I think a lot of our staff feels the same way.”
Intolerance toward drugs does seem to be growing in some Aspen strata.
“I don’t like the laissez-faire attitude about it – ‘let’s just pretend it’s not happening and maybe it will go away,”‘ said Dr. Melanie Dean, a part-time resident who also has homes in California, Florida and New Mexico.
But at a nearby table in Aspen’s Zélé coffee shop, Basalt arborist Matthew Franzen called the bust “absolutely, completely nuts.”
“It was such a lowbrow move from the Police Department,” said Franzen, who advocates decriminalizing drugs and treating addiction as a medical problem.
Working on tips from undercover drug buyers, 53 officers from the Drug Enforcement Administration; U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement; the Colorado Department of Revenue; the Aspen, Snowmass and Grand Junction police departments; and several other local agencies went into Little Annie’s and Cooper Street during a Friday happy hour. They wielded warrants and shouted orders at the patrons and employees. Some had guns drawn.
That might not be fuel for an uproar in some places. But the city of Aspen has had a written policy, and a longer de facto policy, that its police officers do not carry out any undercover operations. Police must cooperate, though, with other agencies that do so.
Former Police Chief Tom Stephenson said he drafted that policy in 1993 to clarify Aspen’s drug-enforcement attitude when some officers and residents pushed for undercover drug stings.
Another sore point for critics of the raid was that the sheriff was left out of the loop – some say intentionally.
Ryerson said he overlooked telling Braudis even though the two have offices directly across the hall from each other. Outside officers were brought in for the raid, but Braudis’ deputies were not used.
At a recent City Council meeting to gather citizen comment on the raid, officials agreed to retain the no-local-undercover policy. But the council directed Ryerson to spell out how he will improve communication with the Sheriff’s Office.
Jeffrey Sweetin, special agent in charge of the DEA division that includes Colorado, said he came away from the meeting heartened by the changing attitudes in Aspen, though he was heckled at times.
“People are ready to draw the line in the sand and say Aspen doesn’t need this (drug-dealing),” Sweetin said.
He said he plans to heed the unusual-for-Aspen call from some for more drug enforcement. He also plans more community education about how his agency operates, as well as continued undercover operations.
“Attitude-wise, it’s just not been cool to want drug enforcement in Aspen,” Sweetin said. “We’re going to be uncool.”
Aspen Mayor Helen Klanderud said the bread-and-butter population of Aspen – those who frequent Little Annie’s – are likely to continue to ask, “How do we want to deal with drugs in this community?”
She said she expects one thing to come of those discussions: Most Aspen residents do not want gangbusters raids like those that just happened.
“We can work with the federal agencies,” she said. “But when they come here, at least do it the Aspen way.”
Staff writer Nancy Lofholm can be reached at 970-256-1957 or nlofholm@denverpost.com.
