Denver PD, still crazy after all these years

I've lived in Colorado for 6 years now almost to the day and in that time I have been amazed at the progress the city and state have made. Both were well into an upswing when I arrived in 2002 and both have continued in an overall positive arc the last 6 years. There are minor quibbles here and there but overall I like the direction (social, cultural, political, development) my city and state are headed in.

The one area that is glaringly dragging behind the rest is the Denver Police Department. They haven't gone on one of their patented shooting sprees in a while but they still come across as an amateur that lacks leadership. It's an issue that I haven't studied in depth so I can't give a laundry list of fixes that are required but it certainly appears as though the issues are part of the culture of the Denver PD and not as a result of a rogue Chief or Mayor. Don't get me wrong, both of those parties share blame for not getting to the root of the issues within the department but the problems didn't start under Whitman or Hickenlooper.

I was downtown on Saturday to have a nice dinner and see my city before the national and world media spotlight began to shine. The police presence was so overwhelming it was borderline absurd. Police everywhere, roving the streets in bands of 8-10. Cops hanging off the sides of SUVs with their machine guns glinting in the sun cruising the streets. It was a completely unneccesary show of force.

Today we see two stories that demonstrate to me that the Denver PD is really not at all ready for a "prime time" event like the DNCC. The more serious story is from Aaron Silverstein at Square State reporting on what may have happened in the mass arrest incident last night,

I took a walk through Civic Center Park and spoke to veteran activist Keith
McHenry about what he saw last night. McHenry was one of the original founders
of Food-Not-Bombs, and has a colorful history that includes two years in prison
for charges including, "felony conspiracy to distribute free food in violation
of a court order."

McHenry says he saw the undercover cops right away. They were all body
builders in new black t-shirts wearing new bandanas and playing the role of
agent-provocateurs trying to goad the crowd to follow them into a confrontation
with the police on the West side of the park.

According to McHenry the planted police entered the street and the
readied riot police pushed them back into the park from that side. As the crowd
then tried to move to the East a second wall of officers closed from that side
and started hitting protesters with pepper spray and making arrests.

Later he said he saw the body builders standing around a police van
with uniformed officers, chatting together and watching the proceedings.

I hope that this incident gets further attention from the main stream press and that their is follow-up on these very serious allegations. If the DPD was actually engaged in this type of behavior then we have a problem and one that will not be rectified by a few "oops, we're sorry" statements from Whitman and Hickenlooper.

The second story comes from Polster redstateblues who has been covering the convention for Pols. It's a far more minor incident but I think it reflects that lack of professionalism that plagues the DPD,

Walking around today I spotted something that caught my attention. On 16th St.
in between Blake and Market there were two white Denver Police Department vans full of police officers. I wouldn't have given them a second thought, but there
were bumper stickers slapped on the back of both vans. Both stickers said:
"Obama For Rockstar, McCain For President". This begs the question: is the DPD
allowing political messages to be presented on official department vehicles? If
not, who put those stickers on the vans, and why do they think that it's ok?

The DPD tried to chalk it up to the actions of passers-by and not the cops themselves but redstateblues is rightly suspicious of that excuse,

I don't think so though, there were several officers hanging around, and they
obviously saw.

Unprofessional. Strutting around like cowboys. This is not the image we want to convey to the world of our great city. It's time we had a police department that reflected the world class city that Denver has become.