It’s an area of Denver so addicted to crack cocaine that owners of a 7-Eleven convenience store just gave up after police warned them two years ago to take steps to make it harder for drug dealers to ply their wares inside the store.
Instead of installing costly security systems and new lighting, the owners of the store on Pearl Street closed up shop and ceded the area to the drug dealers.
Now the city of Denver has declared war on the sins of the Capitol Hill neighborhood, intersected by East Colfax Avenue, a road Playboy magazine once called the “longest, wickedest street” in America.
The city, on the advice of a team of consultants, has made the Capitol Hill area – bounded by Broadway, East 17th Avenue, Downing Street and East 13th Avenue – the site for one of two pilot projects to test new crime-fighting strategies.
Now hope is starting to stir in an area so used to cynicism that residents once anonymously launched a website called CrackStreet.com that mimicked the look of an official city home page.
“I think it’s much more than just a police approach,” said Kathi Anderson, president of the neighborhood group the Unsinkables, which conducts citizen patrols of Capitol Hill. “This is a multifaceted agency effort. I’m much more hopeful than I have been in the past that this is really going to work out.”
While the other initiative in the southwest Denver neighborhood of Westwood has received more attention over its “broken windows” policing approach, a 27-member task force has quietly been sifting through crime data to come up with solutions in Capitol Hill.
If successful, the plan for Capitol Hill, which is being crafted by law enforcement groups, city officials, business owners and residents, could spread to other areas.
In Capitol Hill, officials are using an approach known as problem-solving policing. The approach was developed in the late 1970s by Herman Goldstein, a professor at the University of Wisconsin.
Goldstein held that crime problems can be solved only after careful, in-depth study, including an analysis of crime- data trends. Police rigorously study data on offenders and on where crime occurs before deciding on tactics. They focus on solving problems rather than just reacting to them.
“Police historically have focused on incidents,” said George Kelling of the New Jersey-based Hanover Justice Group consulting team, hired by Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper to come up with police reforms. “But most often, incidents are examples of a problem. They have a history and will probably have a future.”
The task force still is analyzing the problems of Capitol Hill and hasn’t come up with a plan yet, but some suggestions are starting to come to the fore.
Police may step up the use of tough abatement plans that force private businesses to take steps to reduce crime on their premises or face closure. Adding more surveillance cameras along public streets also could come into the mix.
Public telephones might become scarcer in the area to discourage loitering. Police also point to the example of one bar owner on Colfax who succeeded in driving away drug dealers by installing speakers outside that played classical music.
John Miller, the night manager of the Nob Hill Inn tavern, listened when police officer Brian Norwell urged him to put up speakers playing classical music outside the establishment about six months ago.
Miller said drug dealers had been clustering outside the bar, harassing his customers.
“I was afraid to even lock up at night, it was so bad,” he said.
One dark morning after he finished closing up his bar at 2 a.m., a group of drug dealers threatened to jump him. They dispersed after two of his friends poked their heads around the corner.
After the classical music went up, the drug dealing moved on to other areas of Colfax, Miller said.
The broken-windows policing in use in Westwood relies on an aggressive crackdown on nuisance crimes, such as graffiti, with hopes of driving away disorder and crime. But the Capitol Hill initiative is devising a more comprehensive approach aimed at addressing the underlying reasons for crime.
“I can’t just arrest my way out of this problem,” said Deborah Dilley, commander of the District 6 police station, which encompasses the Capitol Hill area. “We’ve made hundreds and hundreds of arrests for dope. For every one I arrest, there are five more waiting to take their place. This is not a clean, easy fix.”
The problem-solving approach was used in Boston in the 1990s when public officials joined forces with the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University to tackle youth violence.
The team approach in Boston tracked where youths were getting guns and also found that a small minority of gang members were responsible for the surging homicide rate. Police started arresting those who were supplying the guns illegally. Police and probation officers also began visiting the homes of youths on probation at night.
In the years before the Boston intervention, the city averaged about 100 homicides a year. In 1996, the first full year after the effort, the toll fell to 43. In 1998, it declined to 35.
So far, the crime statistics for the Capitol Hill neighborhood show police must attack what they describe as an open-air flea market for drugs and prostitution.
In three blocks alone – the 1400 block of Broadway, the 400 block of East Colfax Avenue and the 500 block of East Colfax Avenue – police responded to 3,771 calls for service from the start of 2004 through April of this year. During that time, they made 990 arrests for drug sales or drug use.
“It’s whoever is out there that has it, they’ll sell it to you,” said Sgt. Tony Foster, who is in charge of a tactical team that attacks neighborhood crime in the area.
Dilley said that eight years ago, crack-cocaine deals in Capitol Hill mostly happened in crack houses and flophouses. Then police persuaded landlords to use leases that could evict tenants for drug use.
“Now the dope dealers and buyers are doing their deals on the street,” Dilley said.
As the problem shifted to public spaces, police began to use new strategies. Surveillance cameras have gone up in the 400 block of East Colfax.
Police have been conducting undercover drug buys in businesses along Colfax. Once a buy occurs, they can file public nuisance abatement plans with the property owners. If the owners don’t comply and more drug arrests occur, the city can padlock the business.
So far this year, police have filed nuisance abatement plans against four Colfax businesses: Harry’s American Bar & Grill, McDonald’s, the Royal Host Motel and the China Kitchen Restaurant.
“There’s a big difference between taking care of your business and turning a blind eye to … (what is) going on around you,” said Lt. Donna Starr- Gimeno, in charge of the police public nuisance abatement unit.
The action is getting the attention of business owners who aren’t in a mood to give up, like the 7-Eleven on Pearl Street did.
At a 7-Eleven farther east on Colfax, an intercom system controlled by cashiers can trigger a blast of patriotic march music outside.
Workers are sprucing up the Royal Host Motel, where much of the second floor is shuttered after a patron sparked a fire in his room this year. Plans are underway to remodel the motel and eventually reopen it as a franchise of a national motel chain.
Inside Harry’s American Bar & Grill, manager Bryan Knight has posted photos of four people police busted in undercover crack-cocaine buys. Knight is putting up “no loitering” signs. He also took down a public telephone outside the bar at the urging of police, who said drug dealers were using it as an excuse to hang out.
“Basically, we’re helping the police do their job,” Knight said. “But we’re also helping ourselves to keep our business open.”
But the Colfax element is hard to break.
At the 7-Eleven along Colfax, a manager recently confronted a young woman standing on the corner, selling herself to men, cashier Nazir Din said.
“She said, ‘This is my business, and that is your business,”‘ Din recalled.
Donnell Tankxley said he’s been homeless on the streets of Colfax for the past six months. He said he’s seen the drug deals and the prostitution.
“Colfax ain’t ever going to change,” he said.
Staff writer Christopher N. Osher can be reached at 303-820-1747 or cosher@denverpost.com.
