A Latino activist group is asking for an independent investigation into whether an immigration enforcement office is needed in Greeley, despite the claims of U.S. Sen. Wayne Allard.
Latinos Unidos of Northern Colorado already has told Colorado’s other U.S. senator – Ken Salazar – that it opposes the relocation of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office to Greeley. ICE investigates criminal activities of illegal immigrants and often assists in their deportation.
In addition to the independent probe, Latinos Unidos on Monday requested that Allard and a top-ranking immigration official meet with them to explain why they want an ICE branch in the city.
Allard attached an amendment to a homeland-security funding bill last July that required officials to study the need for ICE offices in Greeley and Colorado Springs. Allard spokesman Steve Wymer said Monday that the senator has heard “loud and clear” from local law enforcement that an ICE office is needed.
AURORA
PETA unhappy with CU prof’s methods
Animal rights activists say a local panel that supervises animal research has failed to protect research animals at the University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center from pain and unnecessary death.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals says a CU professor, who studies chronic back pain in workers, unethically used cats in his research, failing to anesthetize them before surgery.
Moshe Solomonow performed surgeries on cats treated with chloralose, his publications indicate, and PETA staff say the drug – a hypnotic, not an anesthetic – wasn’t used at high enough doses to knock cats out before surgery.
The University’s Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee approved the research originally, and allowed it to continue after investigating a complaint in recent months, PETA said.
Solomonow has received funding from the National Institutes of Occupational Safety and Health and has published research in peer-reviewed academic journals.
CU spokeswoman Sarah Ellis said the research was approved by the federal government and underwent several layers of review.
DENVER
Ritter signs sex-ed, gay-adoption bills
Gov. Bill Ritter signed 26 new laws Monday, including one letting gay couples adopt each other’s children and another requiring schools to include science in sex-education courses.
House Bill 1330 from Sen. Jennifer Veiga, D-Denver, and Rep. Alice Madden, D-Boulder, lets any two unmarried people adopt each other’s children.
Gay individuals already were allowed to adopt in Colorado, but a state Supreme Court ruling barred same-sex couples from qualifying for step-parent or second-parent adoptions.
House Bill 1292 requires school districts to include science-based material, including emergency contraception, in sex-ed classes. The measure from Rep. Nancy Todd, D-Aurora, and Sen. Sue Windels, D-Arvada, forces school districts that teach only abstinence to change their curriculum or drop sex ed.
Parents still have the option of excusing their kids.
The governor still has 200 bills from the legislative session to consider by June 4.
BOULDER
Churchill supporters file formal charges
Twelve tenured college professors from the University of Colorado, Cornell University and other institutions filed formal charges Thursday of academic misconduct against the members of the Standing Committee on Research Misconduct that investigated controversial CU ethnic-studies professor Ward Churchill.
“The group asserts that the case against Churchill is not supported by the facts, that evidence was selectively gathered and the basis for the attempt to fire Churchill is political rather than any actual violation of academic standards,” said Ken Bonetti, spokesman for the faculty group.
The committee’s report supported allegations that Churchill committed academic wrongdoing, including plagiarism and fabrication.
The committee’s report is the basis on which CU president Hank Brown will decide what, if any, punishment Churchill will face.
LAKEWOOD
30 felony counts for burglary suspect
A man suspected in a string of residential burglaries and vehicle thefts in south Jefferson County while residents were asleep has been charged with 30 felony counts.
David Heckman, 31, of Lakewood was charged Monday with 19 counts of second-degree burglary, five counts of aggravated motor-vehicle theft, two counts each of criminal trespass with an auto and giving false information to a pawnbroker, and one count each of theft over $15,000, criminal impersonation, and misdemeanor drunken driving and obstructing a peace office.
Heckman was arrested May 2 after he fled state troopers who were investigating a stolen Mercedes, police said.
He is being held on $100,000 bail.
DENVER
Ex-detective must pay restitution in case
A former Denver police narcotics detective, convicted of making false statements in federal bankruptcy court, has been sentenced to five years’ probation.
Federal prosecutors agreed to drop five charges in the case of Joseph Rael, who was arrested by FBI agents last fall after a six-count federal indictment accused him of forging his police officer wife’s signature to apply for U.S. Bankruptcy Court protection.
He was trying to reorganize finances and pay off gambling debts. U.S. District Judge Wiley Daniel ordered Rael to pay back $14,252 to his wife.
DENVER
School panel seeks variety throughout city
A list of schools to be closed or changed may be presented to the Denver Public Schools as early as August or as late as November, board members were told Monday. According to the committee’s draft report, the district should provide a “variety of academic environments in each sector of the city.”
The district has created special, high-performing schools, such as the School of the Arts, but it has been “less successful in producing good, reasonably performing local schools,” the report said. Schools with new special programs should not be considered for further change unless at least two years of academic and enrollment results are available, the report said.
