Lisa Calderon, a community activist, who helped spearhead community involvement in the recent controversial Citizen Oversight Board appointment process, said organizations she works with have yet to be contacted by that Mayor’s office on the appointment of the safety manager.

Last week David Edinger, special assistant to the Mayor, told the Colorado Independent that there was nothing intentional about any lack of community outreach. He said it was a matter of time pressure and logistical constraints.

“I am pretty uncertain as to how [citizen input] is going to look and if that is even going to happen,” Edinger said. “I am going to try to at least explore the possibilities.”

Calderon, a member of Fix Our Broken Policing Campaign and the Colorado Progressive Coalition, said neither Denver groups have heard anything on how the selection process will work or if there will be a community component.

“I think it would be extremely problematic if the city fails to have community representatives as part of that process.”

The manager of safety  is appointed by the mayor to oversee mostly police and fire operations. Al LaCabe, current Denver safety manager, is retiring. La Cabe has been widely celebrated in the community as a champion for Denver residents and fair to law enforcement.

Edinger said the selection process was progressing. He said the city had narrowed the field to 20 from 90 applications. Edinger said the city was working out a date to begin asking applicants to appear before a selection committee. He said he’d like to reach out to the community in timand was working out how to do that effectively given the time constraints.

“I think that it would be helpful to both provide the community with a chance to be part of [the process] as well as an opportunity to gather some additional information from that setting prior to the final interviews by the mayor,” Edinger said.

Yet, he said, it’s vital to fill the position quickly and that ensuring community input was often complicated and time consuming.

Calderon isn’t buying that argument at all.

“I think that it is a smoke screen to say that it is moving too fast to have community involvement. They have the structure to pull in community involvement if that was really their will…. [Edinger's office] has already been working with community members on the Citizens Oversight issue. So they have a pool. They just need to quickly identify names of people who are highly thought of in the community on issues of policing concerns. It would be a matter of drawing those people into even the finalist interviews. So I think that it is really more of the will to incorporate city voices and not necessarily the logistics or the expediency that’s at issue here.”

Edinger said citizen input would most likely come during finalist interviews, before the safety manager candidates meet with the mayor, who will make the final decision on who to appoint.

Calderon supports Division Chief Tracie Keesee.

“She has worked very well with working with community groups by hearing their concerns about changing the culture of the Denver Police Department. She is one of these people who is looking to truly change the culture of the Police Department and so I am sure she’s drawing her share of internal opposition.”

Got a tip? Freelance story pitch? Send us an e-mail. Follow The Colorado Independent on Twitter.

Code Pink member Alicia Forrest arrested by Denver police during the Democratic National Convention. (Photo/Jason Kosena)

The Denver city attorney’s office dropped criminal charges Wednesday morning against a Code Pink demonstrator who was videotaped being slammed to the ground by a baton-wielding Denver Police officer during a protest at the Democratic National Convention, The Denver Post’s Howard Pankratz reports. Alicia Forrest, a 22-year-old Arizona resident, faced charges of interfering with police and could have been sentenced to a year in jail, her defense attorney said.

Forrest was “whisked away” by police after an officer ordered, “Back up, bitch,” and shoved her to the pavement in Denver’s Civic Center Park on Aug. 26, according to the Rocky Mountain News videographer George Kochaniec Jr., whose video of the incident sparked outrage and an independent review of the police officer’s use of force.

Here’s the video:

In September, Denver District Attorney Mitch Morrissey decided against filing charges against Officer Scott Stewart, finding Forrest grabbed Stewart’s baton and disobeyed an order to back up as another protester was arrested. Forrest “failed to comply with repeated lawful police orders to move back,” Morrisey’s office said. “She then grabbed an officer’s baton, pushing it away. The officer pushed back, using the baton, and the woman fell to the ground.”

In the video, Forrest can be heard saying, “Do it again,” before Stewart strikes her in the chest with the baton, sending her sprawling. Moments later, he says, “What the fuck’s wrong with you?”

“If the First Amendment stands for anything, it stands for the right to peacefully protest without being bashed violently with a baton by a police officer,” Forrest’s defense attorney, Dan Recht, said in a statement Wednesday.

After police disputed whether the 30-second video accurately depicted the scene surrounding Forrest’s arrest, Kochaniec posted a three-minute, uncut video with narration describing the events and a momentary pause when he says he repositioned his camera.

Code Pink is a women-led grassroots movement whose pink-clad members engage in street theater to promote peace and social justice.

Forrest’s criminal charges were among the last to be resolved after Denver police arrested 154 demonstrators during the DNC, according to Brian Vicente, the director of the People’s Law Project, a group that organized legal defense for the bulk of protesters.

“Quite a few pled guilty,” Vicente said, “but 63 fought the cases. Of those, our attorneys won 41 of the cases and the city convicted 22.” Eight of the convictions were deferred judgments, Vicente said — basically guilty pleas that erase from defendant’s records after a period without additional arrest. Roughly a half dozen cases are still pending, Vicente said, including defendants who never showed up for trial. More than 40 attorneys volunteered through the group to defend demonstrators.

The back of a commemorative DNC T-shirt sold by the Denver Police Protective Association bears the slogan 'We Get Up Early to Beat the Crowds - 2008 DNC.' (Photo/Ernest Luning)

The group called for an investigation into the T-shirt and asked officials to “discipline” those involved. In addition, the group demanded that “police training regarding civil liberties be reevaluated, because it clearly has not achieved its intended effect.”

The front of a commemorative DNC T-shirt sold by the Denver Police Protective Association bears the logo '68 with a slash through it, representing opposition to demonstrators' interest in reviving the spirit of the 1968 Democratic National Convention. (Photo/Ernest Luning)

Nearly 2,000 of the shirts have been distributed, a DPPA employee said Thursday afternoon, and 100 more are on order. The shirt was given away to Denver Police Department officers and has been sold to officers from other departments for $10.

Denver Det. Nick Rogers, vice president of the police union, told the Rocky Mountain News on Thursday he hadn’t received any complaints about the shirts and said it’s common for Denver police to produce commemorative T-shirts after big events.

During the DNC, police arrested 154 protesters. On Tuesday, the Denver District Attorney declined to prosecute a Denver officer caught on videotape shoving a Code Pink demonstrator to the ground with his riot baton during the DNC.

From the Recreate 68 statement:

The people of Denver were assured by the city that it would respect First Amendment rights during the DNC, and that that police officers were being trained to do so. The actions of police during the DNC, which involved numerous violations of people’s right to freedom of speech and assembly, put the lie to those promises. And now this appalling, tasteless t-shirt shows why. The members of Denver’s police union clearly have no respect for the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution.

Here’s the video shot by the Rocky Mountain News of a Denver officer slamming a Code Pink demonstrator to the ground:

“Our police and Public Works crews engineered an extraordinary behind-the-scenes collaboration preceding and during the Democratic National Convention which thwarted plans of those intent on disrupting our city,” Hickenlooper said in a press release, referencing stock piles of potentially hazardous material that the police confiscated before and during the Convention. “We are extremely proud of these two agencies for their intelligent planning and performance.”

Yesterday, District 10 City Council member Jeanne Robb added to the accolades, calling the police work “cool-headed,” in a newsletter to her constituents.

So far, only at-large City Council member Doug Linkhart has voiced his skepticism about the law enforcement, questioning whether it was necessary for riot-ready cops to move throughout the city hanging onto the exteriors of SUVs.

“I don’t know if that was necessary,” Linkhart told The Rocky Mountain News last week. “I would only bring out the heavy artillery when we need it.”

But while city leaders seem largely content with the police effort, many protesters and their lawyers aren’t. Today, members of Re-create 68 announced their intention to file suit against the city and the officers for violating their constitutional rights to peaceful protest by using excessive force.

The Denver Police Department (DPD) made 520 prostitution-related arrests in 2007, according to DPD officials, which would average out to 10 a week.

But law enforcement officers typically have their hands full with the extra security associated with conventions and use fewer, rather than more, resources to crack down on sex-trafficking during political conventions.

Prostitution arrests in areas surrounding the 2004 Boston DNC and the 2000 Los Angeles DNC dropped from the same time the respective previous years because law enforcement was concentrating on security issues rather than prostitution busts, according to a Boston Herald report in 2004.

Colorado Pols blogger redstateblues snapped pictures Tuesday afternoon of two shiny white DPD transport vans parked downtown and surrounded by uniformed cops, displaying curious bumperstickers:

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 blogger contacted DPD and asked. Lt. Ron Saunier called back with this response:

“Our official policy is not to have any political bumper stickers attatched to any department vehicles…. I am making an attempt to reach out to the commanders to make an effort to find these vehicles, and when they do, they will remove the material from the vehicles.”

Redstateblues says the lieutenant went on to speculate vandals might have slapped on the McCain stickers without the cops’ knowledge, but the blogger was skeptical:

I don’t think so though, there were several officers hanging around, and they obviously saw. I sincerely hope that this is an isolated incident.

Turns out it wasn’t an isolated incident, as Politics West’s Kirk Mitchell reports:

A Denver visitor filed a complaint against a Denver police officer for putting a pair of John McCain bumper stickers on his motorcycle.

But more troubling, said Warren Jones, 32, a Grand Junction music teacher, was the intimidation he said he felt when he asked the officer about the sticker.

“He got very belligerent,” said Jones, a Barack Obama supporter, about a Tuesday incident a block from the 16th Street Mall. “It really kind of unsettled me.”

Saunier restated DPD policy but this time didn’t suggest vandals might have defaced the motorcycle cop’s ride, probably because the cop reacted menacingly when Jones asked him about the McCain stickers:

After [Jones] asked the officer about the bumper sticker, he said the policeman approached him menacingly with his hand on his gun. He said the officer chided him by saying, ‘You don’t like democracy? It’s my right.’”

He said the officer told him that because the “police commissioner” supported McCain he could display any bumper sticker he wished to. Other officers also made fun of him, he said.

“It was really weird,” he said.

Saunier said the officer could be guilty of discourtesy, in addition to violating city policy by displaying a political bumpersticker, and could be disciplined.

Redstateblues later said he saw two vans with “bumper sticker-shaped glue prints,” though he couldn’t be sure they were the same vans he’d photographed earlier because they sped off.

The blogger discussed his story Thursday morning with KCFR’s Adam Burke. Listen here..

The whole thing is just weird — and I would think unconstitutional as well, though I’m sure arguments about public safety will win out in the end, even if they’re exaggerated or fabricated. Things could have turned out much worse, and very well might in the coming days, but I fear expectations on both sides have created a highly volatile situation. Cops expect protesters to go nucking futs, and protesters expect the same from police. I guess one side was proved at least partially right last night.

In other news, law enforcement officers stopped a real threat yesterday with the arrest of four people suspected in a plot to kill Barack Obama. One of the suspects even jumped out of a 6th story window to avoid capture by police. These are the sorts of things you worry about with an African American candidate, but never fully comprehend until something like this happens.

From one of the suspects, as quoted by Channel 4 News, “He don’t belong in political office. Blacks don’t belong in political office. He ought to be shot.”

And yet I love this country, especially because, as Michelle Obama put it last night, of what it should be:

And Barack stood up that day, and he spoke words that have stayed with me ever since. He talked about the world as it is and the world as it should be. And he said that all too often we accept the distance between the two, and we settle for the world as it is, even when it doesn’t reflect our values and aspirations.

But he reminded us that we also know what the world should look like. He said we know what fairness and justice and opportunity look like, and he urged us to believe in ourselves, to find the strength within ourselves to strive for the world as it should be. And isn’t that the great American story?

The promise of our nation remains unfulfilled, and will forever remain unfulfilled, as we continue to reach for better than what we are. Protesters, police, bigots, and Obama — all Americans, and all just people.

Read Jeff’s latest commentaries.

Colorado Independent’s blog-i-nist (blogger-columnist) Jeff Bridges has worked in Democratic politics for the last 10 years, serving as communications director for two congressional races in Colorado and two governors races in the Deep South. Bridges also worked for Sen. Ken Salazar as a legislative assistant in DC, and currently serves on the board of directors for New Era Colorado and the Colorado Conservation Voters.

(Photo/Jeff Bridges)

Don’t get me wrong, I’m no fan of the Recreate ’68 crowd, and just because a majority of people disagree with their extreme views doesn’t make this a “sham democracy,” as one sign I saw recently claimed. It actually makes it a pretty functional one. So does the fact these folks can say and do wacked out stuff within earshot of the delegates — you know, the people who actually decided to participate in our electoral process.

Due respect to the men and women in blue, but I’m starting to get a little creeped out.

There goes the helicopter again…

Read Jeff’s latest commentaries.

Colorado Independent’s blog-i-nist (blogger-columnist) Jeff Bridges has worked in Democratic politics for the last 10 years, serving as communications director for two congressional races in Colorado and two governors races in the Deep South. Bridges also worked for Sen. Ken Salazar as a legislative assistant in DC, and currently serves on the board of directors for New Era Colorado and the Colorado Conservation Voters.

However, residents were warned: “Please understand that we will not have the capability to respond to emails or phone calls, this includes the weekly security report,” the email reads. “Once the dust clears, your neighborhoods will be our number one priority.”

Oddly enough the memo says the dust won’t clear until Sept. 3 — five days after the convention ends — when Ballpark police will resume normal operations.

Just two days before the start of the Democratic National Convention, the video is also not likely to prompt grins at Gitmo on the Platte.

Westword reporter Jared Jacang Maher highlights many of the lowlights of the video, in which the commanding officer, Sgt. Arthur Hutchinson, lays out insults to a group of young police recruits who are standing in a circle.

“Is the real reason you came on here is because you just wanted to have access to 1,400 guys to fuck?” he says to one young female. “You wouldn’t? Why not? All the other police women do. That’s the only goddamn thing these women think about is fucking all the time.”??

He orders several African-American recruits to sing “Camptown Races” while doing a tap dance. “All you fucking niggers tap dance,” he says.

Hutchinson goes on to call another African-American “a chimpanzee,” “the missing link,” and orders a white recruit to “hold his leash.”

According to Westword, Hutchinson joined the DPD in 1964 and retired from in 1991 after directing the Gang Unit. He went on to be the chief of the Eagle Police Department for a year and, from 1996 to 2005, was the chief of the Blackhawk Police Department.

There’s more vile — probably much more than you really want to read and see — over at Westword.