A crime-fighting effort by Denver police is drawing protests in the Cole-Whittier neighborhood from some residents who say officers are unfairly targeting minorities and the poor.
“It’s been effective in other parts of the city and other parts of the country, and we still stand behind it,” Denver police spokesman Sonny Jackson said Tuesday.
This week, some residents aided by the Colorado Progressive Coalition have been placing leaflets on doors to denounce “broken windows” policing.
The policing effort aggressively targets small crimes such as loitering, graffiti and public drunkenness as a way to prevent more serious crime.
Denver police have credited the program for helping to bring down crime numbers in many parts of the city recently.
“We all want safer neighborhoods to live in and are concerned about violence, but we are also concerned whether that violence is coming from gangs or abuse from authority,” said Lisa Calderon, a Cole resident and legal- and social-policy director for the Safehouse Progressive Alliance for Nonviolence.
Also, the Colorado Progressive Coalition is surveying residents about their experience with police and asking neighbors what they believe are alternatives to the beefed-up patrol presence.
Police District 2 Cmdr. Rhonda Jones said the initiative in Cole-Whittier is not called “broken windows” because that name sometimes connotes negative feelings.
Jones said the police-community partnership began a month ago, and since then, more warnings than citations have been handed out.
“That increased visibility plus neighborhood participation has made it uncomfortable for criminals in the neighborhood,” she said. In the past month, no one has complained of racial profiling, Jones said.
Other community groups, such as Metro Organizations for People, or MOP, have supported broken-windows policing in other Denver neighborhoods.
Karla Loaiza, an MOP member who helped form Cole-Whittier Against Crime, said working with the police is the only way to hold them accountable.
MOP also plans to survey neighbors about their concerns about crime. Denver police are providing the group with regular updates, including crime and arrest data.
“We are also concerned with the racial profiling and harassing of minorities, and that is why we are in communication with police,” Loaiza said.
Higdon Armstrong, a 39-year- old African-American resident of Cole, said he is used to being singled out by police but understands why people feel safer when there are more patrols.
“I’ve learned to live with it because we are around a lot of crime,” he said.
The broken-windows effort reduced crime by 24 percent when implemented in the Westwood neighborhood last year, Loaiza said. Arrests increased in Westwood by nearly 50 percent, police said.
Calderon filed a complaint with the Denver police monitor against officers last year, claiming that her teenage son, who is black, was roughed up by police for mistakenly crossing crime- scene tape while walking home from school. “Who is he more concerned about? The gangs or the police?” she said. “When he walks home from school, he has to look out for both.”
She says the city should beef up after-school programs, alcohol and drug recovery centers, and other programs instead of police presence. She also disputes that “broken windows” is a credible theory and referred to studies that say it doesn’t work.
Staff writer Felisa Cardona can be reached at 303-954-1219 or fcardona@denverpost.com.
