A week after the Summer of Peace was declared in Denver, a car screeched down our street about 2:30 a.m. Its occupants had stolen a pile of river rocks from the landscape nearby and threw them at cars parked on the street, smashing windows, denting hoods, scraping side panels and leaving thousands of dollars in damage.
At least no one was hurt, the neighbors said, as we swept broken glass and gave statements to police.
Then two days later we had another encounter with Denver police.
An officer stopped at my daughter’s northwest Denver home to question her about a shooting that had occurred earlier that day on her block. She thought it was fireworks in the alley, she told him.
Knowing it was gunfire was a lot more upsetting.
So I had to agree with the Rev. Leon Kelly last week when he told me, “There’s been a lot of drama in the ‘hood this summer.”
No kidding.
Kelly, who has spent 23 years working with gangbangers in Denver, said he thinks the violence this year “has been a lot more aggressive than it was in the last two or three years.”
But Jeremy Bronson, special assistant to Mayor John Hickenlooper, said crime, particularly violent crime, is down in Denver.
Kelly rejects that analysis.
“I know we’ve got a convention coming up and we want to preserve the city’s image,” he said, “but it’s been violent.”
The city’s official count of gang-related homicides in 2007 is two, Kelly said. “My list is 13.”
On top of that, his phone rang all day on July Fourth with reports of assaults, stabbings and shootings.
“None of that was in the newscasts,” he said, “nothing. If you don’t live in the ‘hood, you don’t know it exists.”
Kelly defines “the ‘hood” as the West Denver and East Park Hill neighborhoods primarily.
Only when violence spills over into other neighborhoods or when a fight breaks out at City Park during a jazz concert do people take notice, he said.
Gang activity as well as ordinary hooliganism usually peaks in the summer, said Regina Huerter, director of crime prevention for the city. Longer days, warm weather and loose schedules for adolescents contribute to the increase.
That’s why the City and County Building is lit up with a “Summer of Peace” sign and why the city is hyping its latest crime-prevention campaign.
Kelly is skeptical.
“Summer of Peace is a good saying,” he said. “But one of the big problems I’m dealing with is a lot of my kids are coming out of the joint with felony convictions. They can’t get jobs, can’t get a place to live. A lot of frustration exists with a lot of these guys, and a lot of work needs to be done.”
The money that poured into gang intervention programs from the city, state and federal governments in the 1990s is gone, he said. “Last summer we had a little money from the feds and I had six employees. We tripled our workload. Now the money’s gone. What am I supposed to do?”
Kelly railed about public priorities that emphasize building prisons and jails at the expense of programs for job training, education, counseling, drug treatment and efforts to keep kids out of gangs.
“I get tired of hearing that we don’t have the money,” he said. “We’re still burying kids. They’re still dying and nobody even hears about it.”
Huerter said the “Hoopin’ After Dark” program on Friday nights at three recreation centers in Denver is a sincere attempt to address the problem.
The Summer of Peace campaign also is trying to enlist public involvement in keeping the streets safe, she said, and law-enforcement efforts have been heightened at festivals, crowded parks and wherever gang activity has been reported. “We’re working hard.”
“Now, I’m not trying to blemish the image of the city,” Kelly countered, “but after so many years here I’ve established myself in certain areas and I hear things. I hear a lot of things.”
Members of the police gang unit hear some of the same things, he said, “and they say, ‘Reverend, you can say things we can’t.”‘
What Kelly is saying now is that “the problem is bad.”
And for all the victims during this, the Summer of Peace, lighting up city hall just isn’t going to cut it.
Diane Carman’s column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Reach her at 303-954-1489 or dcarman@denverpost.com.
