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Family of slain East High student accuses DPS of negligence in failing to protect students

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:46 GMT

Luis Garcia. (Photo courtesy of the Garcia family)The family of the East High student fatally shot outside the school earlier this year is accusing Denver Public Schools, district leaders and the city of negligence in failing to protect students — including by removing armed police from the school.An attorney representing the family of Luis Garcia made the allegations in a legal notice preceding a wrongful-death lawsuit that was released by DPS on Friday, three months after the shooting, which remains unsolved by the Denver Police Department.In the four-page document, the family’s attorney accused DPS of negligence based on a lack of security, not providing enough student parking and the “willful and wanton removal” of Denver Police Department school resource officers from East.  Garcia, 16, was shot while sitting in his car outside of Denver’s largest high school on Feb. 13 and died more than two weeks later, on March 1.The attorney representing Garcia’...

Insurance, building codes, helicopters: Colorado’s 11 new laws to protect residents from wildfires

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:46 GMT

Gov. Jared Polis signed a suite of wildfire prevention and recovery-related bills Friday, clearing the way for the state to stand up a new emergency insurance plan, standardize fire-resistant building codes and buy a $26 million firefighting helicopter.The 11 bills were all passed during the 2023 legislative session, which ended Monday. They represent the legislature’s ongoing efforts to protect the state from wildfires, which Polis called a “year-round reality in Colorado,” nearly three years after the worst fire season in the state’s history and 18 months after the Marshall Fire swept through Boulder County.The measures cover insurance, disaster preparedness and evacuation modeling, and the tinder and wildfire mitigation workforce. Flanked by fire officials, legislators and firefighting equipment, Polis signed the bills in four cities and towns across the Front Range.“Strategic investments on many different fronts is really what we need to be doing,&#...

Denver-based software company Poppulo laid off 80 employees as tech industry downsizing continues

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:46 GMT

Poppulo, a Denver-based software development company, laid off 80 employees at the end of April, including 20 workers in Colorado.The move follows downsizing in the tech industry that started in 2022, with impacted companies including Twitter, Microsoft, Dell Technologies Inc. and Meta Platforms Inc., the owner of Facebook and Instagram. But other Colorado sectors aren’t immune to layoffs either, with the energy, cannabis and manufacturing sectors also taking blows earlier this year.Although inflation is steadily slowing, and the U.S. isn’t in a recession yet, the economic forecast for 2023 remains shaky.“We made the difficult decision to reduce our global workforce by approximately 12%,” said Eoin Byrne, chief people officer at Poppulo. Founded in 2011, the company specializes in communications and workplace technology.With its headquarters at 1221 Broadway in Denver, Poppulo also maintains offices in Massachusetts, Ireland and England. Out of the laid-off e...

“I will watch it like a hawk:” Restored Ninth Street home to honor displaced Aurarians unveiled by CU Denver

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:46 GMT

One day in November, University of Colorado Regent Nolbert Chavez walked from his office to the Centennial House at 1050 Ninth St. on Denver’s Auraria Campus, arriving to find a hawk lying dead on the front porch steps.“Its body was still warm,” Chavez said.The hawk was a frequent visitor and symbol of security Chavez had come to admire after months of checking on the progress of the Centennial House — the first home restored on the Auraria Campus’s historic Ninth Street. Chavez has shepherded the Ninth Street restoration, promising displaced Aurarians like Rita Gomez, who grew up at 1050 Ninth St., that he will take care of their former neighborhood.Ninth Street is a strip of homes on the downtown Denver college campus that was spared at the time of the former Auraria neighborhood’s destruction to create the higher education complex. Thirty-six square blocks, more than 300 homes, were demolished beginning in 1972. Fourteen original Victorian-styl...

Shrimp farming in landlocked Colorado? A few residents are “giving it a shot”

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:46 GMT

Jessica Littlefield and Oswald Duarte‘s hobby farm in Calhan is a place where sheep roam, horses run, chickens flock – and, soon enough, where shrimp will swim.“We are giving it a shot,” said Littlefield, co-owner of Rocky Mountain Shrimp Co. “There’s not a right way to grow shrimp, but there are a whole lot of wrong ones.”If all goes according to plan, the pair will order tens of thousands of Pacific white shrimp in the late summer or early fall for their first harvest.In the landlocked state of Colorado, the couple are newcomers in the niche industry of indoor shrimp farming. They’re not the only ones in the state to try their hand at the task – but just a couple have succeeded at the expensive, time-consuming job.The shrimp that ends up on American dinner plates typically arrives frozen from foreign countries, including China, Thailand and Indonesia. They’re raised on outdoor farms in tropical climates. But the traditional process h...

Kazakhstan’s progress faces many headwinds; the West should not be one of them

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:46 GMT

The escalation of geopolitical tensions linked to the Ukrainian crisis has highlighted two main opposing camps of countries — an Alliance of Democracies on one side and a Group of Authoritarian Regimes on the other - writes Luc Rodehefer. A number of countries have resisted choosing sides, however, as they strive to balance their national interests with international developments while simultaneously advocating the need to maintain peaceful diplomacy and global connections.While the number of these so-called “in-between” countries abound (particularly in Latin America, Africa, and South and Central Asia), only a few of them have upheld an outspoken commitment to the principles of multilateralism and non-violence. One of these is Kazakhstan, which, through its rhetoric and actions, has consistently demonstrated a commitment to international principles enshrined in the UN Charter despite severe challenges to the country’s economy and stability brought on by recent global developments....

49ers rookie minicamp: Moody’s mental strength, Brown’s starting potential, Bell’s catches

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:46 GMT

SANTA CLARA — A southeasterly, 6-mph breeze came off the Alviso wetlands. The sun reflected off Josh Moody’s shiny black cleats. A leather, NFL-branded football lied in wait.Moody’s right foot stepped forth and launched that ball through the uprights, over a net and into the 49ers’ player parking lot.The legend was born.Okay, too much hyperbole, too soon. Friday, however, introduced the 49ers’ rookies to their practice field.No one comes with more scrutiny – and with an assured starting role – than Moody, who tops the following list of things we learned at the Class of 2023’s rookie minicamp:MOODY’S MENTALSMoody’s first kicks showed why a third-round pick seems fair for Robbie Gould’s replacement. It won’t be all sunshine and field goals forever, however. “I’m going to miss. It’s inevitable,” Moody said Thursday as the rookie class convened.Mentally overcoming a miss – and making pressure-packed kicks – is what the 49ers need right away from the 23-year-old “Money Moody,” as h...

Kurtenbach: If this is the end of the Warriors dynasty, remember it for what it was — incredible

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:46 GMT

LOS ANGELES — If this is indeed the end of the Warriors’ dynasty, don’t remember the way it ended.No, remember all the incredible moments that came before Friday’s loss to the Lakers.Remember the four titles in eight years, starting with the baby-faced Dubs’ improbable but convincing run to their first title in 2015 and perhaps culminating in Steph Curry’s brilliant NBA Finals last June.Remember the early games of the 2014-2015 season, when Steve Kerr’s new offense was taking shape in Oakland. This was basketball being played in its highest form, and it would spoil everyone who regularly watched it for years to come.Remember Klay Thompson’s incendiary performances — 37 points in a quarter, 60 points on 11 dribbles, 14 made 3-pointers — that turned Oracle Arena into a basketball tent revival.Remember Draymond Green’s defensive brilliance — a singular and unique force at stopping opposing teams — and his near-cosmic ability to affect win...

Mathews: ‘Being a live ghost’ on the struggling streets of East Oakland

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:46 GMT

Kiara Johnson, 17, lives at the Regal-Hi apartments on High Street in East Oakland — for now.She doesn’t have the money for next month’s rent. She can’t rely on parents — her dad’s dead and her mom’s in prison. For work, she begs for shifts in a liquor store.She can’t support her older brother, who won’t get a job, or care for Trevor, her 9-year-old neighbor, whose mother has disappeared. So, Kiara has started doing sex work.How does she cope? She walks around Oakland. “When there is no choice, the only thing you have left to do is walk,” she says.Kiara Johnson isn’t real. She’s the fictional central character and narrator of the novel “Nightcrawling,” by 21-year-old Leila Mottley.Oakland author Leila Mottley at the Lakeview branch of the Oakland Public Library in 2022. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group)Nightcrawling is a bestseller, with a page-turning plot involving sex-trafficking, housing displacement, mass incarceration and police scandal. But the book’s real mag...

Opinion: Our failure to treat people with psychosis is killing them

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:46 GMT

Compassionate involuntary intervention for people suffering from untreated psychosis is getting an undeserved bad rap these days.Opponents, including disabilities rights groups, push a fear-mongering narrative that frames any kind of lifesaving medical treatment for people unable to consent due to the effects of their brain disease as “forced,” “coercive,” “brutal” or “tortuous.” They push an agenda that no treatment is better than any kind of lifesaving involuntary care.In effect, they are promoting the status quo. Do we, as a society, want to continue to leave very sick, treatable people deteriorating, suffering and dying on our streets and in our jail cells, and ultimately winding up in the morgue? I certainly do not.We should be striving towards a common goal of saving the lives of people sick with severe treatable neurological brain diseases, like schizophrenia and other psychosis spectrum disorders. Today we know what we didn’t know in the 1960s when California legislation, kn...