Crime & Police

Ever Valles, one of two men arrested after the February 7 RTD light-rail station murder of Tim Cruz, is due in court today after being formally charged with murder and more by the Denver District Attorney’s Office. The case has garnered national attention, especially in the conservative press, thanks to the revelation that Valles, who’s from Mexico, was released by the Denver Sheriff Department in December 2016 after his arrest for another crime despite him being targeted for deportation.

The Aurora Police Department is actively investigating a murder attempt allegedly committed by Richard Darling a year before his 2015 arrest for an incredibly brutal Halloween night slaying in which he’s accused of dismembering and “filleting” the body of his victim before stuffing it into a barrel and setting it ablaze.

The latest attempt to repeal Colorado’s seldom-used death penalty was defeated in a committee hearing Wednesday evening — after emotional testimony from families of homicide victims on both sides of the issue that underscored how deeply divided the state remains on the issue of capital punishment.

By the end of 2017, the Colorado Department of Corrections plans to distribute electronic tablets to every one of its 19,000 inmates.

The delay in approving a contract extension for University of Colorado Boulder head football coach Mike MacIntyre has everything to do with domestic-violence accusations against Joe Tumpkin, one of his assistants.

What are arguably the two most shocking crimes to take place in Denver during this still-young year followed over the next couple of weeks, and both had RTD connections. Against this backdrop, we reached out to spokesman Scott Reed to ask how RTD is responding to these two shootings.

Michael Radelet, author of a book on the history of executions in Colorado, talks about the latest push to ban the death penalty in the state.

If passed, a new bill will create a Colorado domestic violence fatality review board and mandate that agencies throughout the state gather and share details about fatal and near-death domestic-violence. The result, state senator Lucia Guzman believes, will be a more complete picture of this particularly horrific crime. “After we have that,” she says, “we can hopefully move into a prevention mode.”

Nathan Valdez, the nineteen-year-old wanted for the killing of Tim Cruz, 32, at the 12th and Sheridan light-rail station on February 7, has been taken into custody. He is being held on suspicion of first-degree murder.

How many hit-and-runs are there in Denver? We analyzed Denver Police Department traffic-accident data for the first six days of February, and by our count, a staggering 99 hit-and-runs took place over that span, including 22 of them on a single day.

The February 1 press conference about the arrest of Joshua Cummings in the execution-style killing of RTD security officer Scott Von Lanken took place on an upper level of the Denver Police Department administration building. Afterward, I rode an elevator toward the ground floor with DPD public-information officer Doug Schepman and another man. As we descended, the man asked, “Do the elevators here always smell like weed?” Schepman laughed. “Some days, it’s worse than others,” he said.

Stalking or sexual assault victims living in a rental apartment where the crime took place aren’t legally allowed to break their lease even if they live dangerously close to the perpetrator in question. Individuals in this situation are forced to choose between financial ruin and being traumatized again and again in a residence where their physical safety and mental well-being are at risk.

Dan Williams has been sentenced to two years of probation for shooting and killing two bear cubs outside his Evergreen home in September 2015. However, his punishment in the court of public opinion has been much worse.

On February 9, former University of Colorado Boulder defensive coach Joe Tumpkin is scheduled to appear in Adams County court for a preliminary hearing related to multiple counts of assault related to domestic violence accusations. But thanks to an exposé in Sports Illustrated, CU Boulder is already on trial in the court of public opinion over its handling of the Tumpkin matter, and the fallout is capable of undermining a program that took more than a decade to recover from a recruiting scandal whose ripples recently revealed a past sex assault investigation targeting new Broncos head football coach (and former CU Boulder assistant) Vance Joseph.

Did Joshua Cummings, who’s now been formally advised of a first-degree murder charge naming him in the execution-style slaying of RTD security officer Scott Von Lanken, ask for a beer at the conclusion of his initial court appearance?

A new study of Denver police shootings between 1983 and 2012 concludes that approximately 47 percent of them were questionable, 18 percent were problematic and just 35 percent were what co-author Robert Durán considers to be legitimate.

Much more information has emerged about Joshua Cummings, the 37-year-old man who is suspected in the execution-style murder of RTD security officer Scott Von Lanken late on Tuesday, January 31. The former head of a Texas Jiu-Jitsuka academy who had recently moved to Colorado, Cummings expressed antipathy for police in multiple posts that remained online even as reports surfaced that he reportedly had “Muslim documents” on his person when he was taken into custody and spoke in what sources described as “an Arabic language.”

The Denver Police Department has arrested Joshua Cummings, 37, for the execution-style murder of an RTD contract security officer. Investigators say they’re currently looking into the possibility that the officer was targeted because of his uniform, which is described as looking similar to those worn by members of the DPD.