The Insiders The Colorado Department of Corrections has spent millions of dollars in recent years to accommodate its new crop of “special needs” inmates–youthful offenders charged as adults but deemed too green to do hard time; elderly prisoners grown fragile in the joint; and the chronically mentally ill, who now…
Jim Lucero opens the small white booklet to a crude map with black boxes representing buildings, most of which no longer stand. Facing north, he points first to a gray stone structure across Iliff Avenue and then to its corresponding mark on the map. “That was the Dora Reynolds school,”…
The following account of a day in the life of a Colorado inmate housed at the Karnes County Correctional Center in Texas was written by Garry Izor, who is serving a life sentence for murder. “A day in the life of a pod begins at 6 a.m., when the overhead…
Doug Gertner became a convert to the secular religion that bloomed around the Grateful Dead when he first saw the band in concert during the early Seventies. Yet as transfixed as he was by the music, he was equally taken by the sight of certain audience members. “I was wandering…
The Colorado governor’s mansion is the closest thing to a palace the Centennial State has, and a silk-stocking state commission aims to keep it that way. Members of the Executive Residence Advisory Commission meet periodically to pass judgment on draperies and fuss over frayed carpets. For example, the commissioners recently…
I pity the fool: On August 1 radio newscasters were predicting a blistering weekend. But the temperature shot up sooner than expected, when Peter Boyles, host of the early blabathon on KTLK-AM, got an unexpected call that morning from First Lady Wilma Webb, who said she’d phoned not because she…
When a Colorado prison inmate brought suit against the Department of Corrections four years ago alleging discrimination against disabled inmates and claiming that the prisons fail to comply with the Americans With Disabilities Act, lawyers with the Colorado Attorney General’s office denounced the charges as erroneous and “premature.” They were…
While assorted waterbugs from Romania and Belarus and the suburbs of Cleveland bounded all over the mat and flung their tiny bodies back and forth between the uneven parallel bars, we had the whole thing explained to us on the boob tube by…John Tesh. Now it’s a good bet that…
Plutonium has a half-life of 24,000 years, give or take an eon. The saga of Colorado special grand jury 89-2 could stretch almost as long. On August 1, 1989, Judge Sherman Finesilver impaneled the state’s first-ever special grand jury, charged with evaluating the evidence seized when the FBI raided the…
Stir Crazy After reading the third installment in your prison series (Karen Bowers’s “Bad Ol’ Boys,” August 1), I threw down my copy of Westword in disgust. Isn’t anyone else as outraged as I am over the special treatment these criminals receive? I just wish that all the elderly people…
The Insiders It’s not easy getting old in prison. But in Colorado, it’s getting easier. The number of elderly felons being held in the state prison system is expected to soar dramatically in coming years, as an increasing number of life sentences continue to tick away. And, afraid of being…
Three weeks ago an unlikely group of lawyers, representatives from the Environmental Protection Agency and a private investigator met with prosecutors from the Colorado Attorney General’s office. The purpose of the gathering was to decide whether it was worthwhile, or even possible, to bring criminal charges of polluting against a…
The timing of Colorado Attorney General Gale Norton’s sudden intervention into the Lloyd’s of London securities case last week wasn’t half as odd as the timing of Norton’s last-minute return of contributions from Lloyd’s investors to her U.S. Senate campaign after a planned meeting became controversial. Last month Norton took…
An inventory of the disappearing tattoos of Nina Bonifacio: 1. On Nina Bonifacio’s right wrist–when she makes change in her job as a Target checker, you can see it very well–is the word “payasa,” injected under her skin in bluish ink by a friend five years ago. Nina was thirteen…
The name game: Pat Bowlen should send a big bouquet to Charlie Lyons and the rest of Ascent’s front line. Compared with the prospect of an Arapahoe County Avalanche (or an Alabama Avalanche, for that matter), the Broncos owner’s demand for a new stadium suddenly seemed all warm and fuzzy…
Volatile black activist Alvertis Simmons says he’s leaving his job of three years as the mayor’s neighborhood-watch coordinator to wage his own fight against the myriad social problems he sees facing Denver. “I’m looking forward to leaving the city,” he says enthusiastically from his sixteenth-floor office across the street from…
Howard Cobb drove trucks for nearly thirty years without an accident. His wife, Marion, worked as a bookkeeper, raised their three kids and kept the home fires burning. Three years ago he landed his best-paying job ever, making on-time deliveries crisscrossing the country for Mountain City Meat Co. Inc. of…
All right, then. Stay home. Seriously. Don’t even bother with the road games. Forfeit the damn road games. That way, you guys will save the club a couple of million bucks in airplane tickets, and you’ll always be able to have your eggs cooked the way you like them. You…
Prostate Your Case As one of your faithful–and no doubt oldest–readers, I am voicing my objections to your two new cartoons. In your July 25 issue, both “The City” and “Callahan” included cheap shots at those of us in our so-called golden years. Westword’s younger readers should know that we…
The Insiders There is a private garden in the Colorado prison system, a place where convicted killers can tend flowers and summer vegetables alongside rapists, burglars and thieves–all in the name of mental therapy. The small but immaculate plot sits behind the gates of the state’s newest penitentiary, a facility…
If you decelerate just past the 20th Street exit going north on I-25–although you really shouldn’t, as this creates “curiosity slowing”–you will see a simple sign: Fortieth Anniversary Valley Highway. One recent Friday morning, a time capsule was buried beneath the sign. Assembled on a grassy bank just east of…
The husband of Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell’s top aide, Ginnie Kontnik, lobbied Campbell’s office for a reported $10 million appropriation earlier this year, but the dream died before reaching the floor of Congress. And now the lobbyist, Lewis Kontnik, has resigned from his post as president of the Colorado Bio/Medical…
