SandBox Comments: GarCo Sheriff "Local Law Enforcement Agencies Uncover Latino Gang Auto Theft Ring"

Garco Sheriff releases the information on the multi-agency bust of  a local Latino Gang Auto Theft Ring:

"NEWS RELEASE
Local Law Enforcement Agencies Uncover Latino Gang Auto Theft Ring

Garfield County, Colorado: A series of motor vehicle thefts in Denver and on the western slope that occurred between October 25 and October 30^th, 2011 have been identified as gang-related.

After further investigations, it was determined the crime spree was a product of three gang members living in Garfield County.

All three juveniles are validated Sureño gang members. Jason Alexis Gamez-Banda, 14 years of age, is currently facing charges of aggravated motor vehicle theft (class 4 felony), theft (class 4 felony), carrying a concealed weapon (class 2 misdemeanor), possession of a handgun by a juvenile (class 2 misdemeanor) and first-degree criminal trespass (class 5 felony). Luis Jurado, 16 years of age, is currently facing the charge of aggravated motor vehicle theft (class 4 felony). The third juvenile is still under investigation and is not currently facing felony charges.
No further information will be released on his identity. I.C.E. Homeland Security Investigations is assisting inthe investigation of the gang members involved. I.C.E. has placed a hold on 14 year old Jason Alexis Gamez-Banda.

From what we know about the crime spree at this time, the three Sureño gang members are believed to have stolen seven cars total; five from the Pitkin/Garfield County jurisdictions, one from the Steamboat Springs area and one from the Denver area. They are also believed to have entered eight vehicles, stealing miscellaneous electronics and one handgun. The handgun was recovered from Gamez-Banda while attempting to steal another vehicle in New Castle, Colorado.

He was apprehended and held at gunpoint by the vehicle’s owner until officers from the New Castle Police Department and deputies from the Garfield County Sheriff's Office arrived and took him into custody.

During the initial stages of the investigation of Jason Alexis Gamez-Banda, by the Carbondale and New Castle Police Departments, the Carbondale Officer recognized what he knew to be gang related information. The officer immediately notified the Garfield County Sheriff's Office T.A.G.Deputy, who used his resources, database and informants to help identify the other suspects. This resulted in a joint investigation, which involved: T.A.G., Carbondale Police Department, Aspen Police Department, New Castle Police Department, Immigration Custom Enforcement and the Garfield County Sheriff's Office. The joint investigation has led to the recovery of the previously mentioned stolen vehicles.

According to Garfield County Sheriff Lou Vallario, the outcome of this investigation demonstrates the importance of the cooperation between local and federal law enforcement agencies such as I.C.E. Homeland Security Investigations Operation Community Shield Task Force. It also demonstrates that dangerous criminal gang activity is present in our communities and how a cooperative law enforcement approach with our citizens is crucial to eradicate this criminal element.

Law Enforcement would like to remind its citizens to remove their keys and lock their car doors.

Recently documented vehicle thefts, including the above, involved unlocked vehicles, and some with the vehicles keys inside. In an effort to prevent these types of crimes, please remember to remove valuables and secure your vehicle. Whenever possible, park your vehicle in a location that is well lit and has high visibility.

November 4, 2011

SandBox Comments: Colorado Statesman "Controversial vacancy committee meeting gives Neville the nod to succeed Kopp"

"A Republican vacancy committee on Thursday night denied veteran state Rep. Jim Kerr, R-Littleton, a promotion to the upper chamber by the narrowest of margins and instead chose activist Tim Neville to take over for retiring Senate Minority Leader Mike Kopp. But the proceedings turned sour after the 60-58 vote was confirmed in a supervised recount as Kerr supporters charged that a handful of Republicans who should have voted hadn’t been notified of the meeting..."
(Ernest Luning)

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SandBox Comments: Red State "Julia Louis-Dreyfus and the Big, Bad Pipeline "

"But what makes Julia’s opposition to the pipeline and “Big Oil” so ironic is her very name, Louis-Dreyfus.

Louis Dreyfus, you see, is one of the world’s largest commodity trading firms. It is run by Julia’s bio-dad, Gérard Louis-Dreyfus..."

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"Truth goes through three stages. First it is ridiculed. Then it is violently opposed. Finally, it is accepted as self-evident."

SandBox Comments: Glenwood Springs Post Independent "Council critical of new library design concept"

What happened to all the new-found love between the Library District, Downtown Development and Glenwood Springs City Council for all these months?

All those glowing reports in the paper and during council meetings on how well everyone was talking together now, all tensions gone and the planning was 'going great!'?

Will these architects work for free as they go back and redo the entire plan?  How are we going to pay for this?

Anyone who is in construction (BTW, Councilman Gamba...where have you been to let it get this far and be totally wrong? You know better.) knows you can't put this many people together without somebody checking constantly for who's on first and what's on second.

Looks like it should fit at The Meadows?   Maybe that's a Freudian slip on the architects part because they may have it down in observation that all this fuss over the 'Eighth and Cooper Project' really wasn't 'going great!' after all.

Sorry, everybody but this one is way too hard to swallow.

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"Truth goes through three stages. First it is ridiculed. Then it is violently opposed. Finally, it is accepted as self-evident."

SandBox Comments: Steamboat Today " Few details released about Steamboat Springs raid"

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SandBox Comments: Aspen Times "Paul Nitze: Cases lost the day they were filed"

We aren't sure if Paul Nitze, up on The Aspen Times, is now a former prosecutor or not.

He’s always been a favorite of ours because in our view, he’s one of those unapologetic liberals who actually walks a sort-of, kind-of middle line.

Something always appreciated by Independent Conservatives. 

His columns have always been political based and only once before has SandBox seen Nitze comment on his profession.  It was the Secure Communities column. 

He appears every other Saturday, up on The Aspen Times.  His column is usually published here on SandBox when he writes.

You see, the reason he's a favorite is because rational, logical liberals are just so very hard to find. 

His columns are anticipated and SandBox wishes he would consider writing more often.    

His column today is written from his ‘prosecutor with a pen’ style.


"...It's actually worse than that. If you don't have a strategy, litigation is a game of chicken that you have already lost.  That lesson was not absorbed by Aspen's chief deputy district attorney, Arnold Mordkin, who lost his cases against Marlin Brown and Erik Peltonen on Thursday....

...Mordkin was quoted as being “disappointed,” after yesterday's ruling, but that makes no sense. That's like saying you're “disappointed” you lost a baseball game after walking over to the umpire and forfeiting....

...That is how you keep a case from turning into a game of chicken....

...You do all that work because you owe it to the taxpayers not to waste their money on a dead-end case. You do it because charging someone criminally can ruin his life no matter what happens to the case; the stain of a criminal indictment lasts forever. You do it for the victims, who deserve the best effort you can muster....

...Lawyers for the Feuerbachs and Rittenours, the surviving relatives of the Lofgren family, will try to obtain the grand jury transcripts and use them in their civil lawsuits against Brown, Peltonen and others. Even if it is completely inadvertent, criminal charges that were defective on their face will now provide ammunition in a civil lawsuit..."
(Paul Nitze)

 

There is always a culture present that grows out of elected officials in any community.

 

Election cycles change, offices change and the leadership culture of the day shifts and changes.

 

There is a great deal of talk lately on getting the politics and the money out of areas that bring security to the lives of the folks.

 

People seem to be just sayin that they want more predictable, secure lives and they’re bone weary of the sprint just to stay at the top.

 

They seem to say that they could care less about the culture of any politician, any leader or any social platform that is aimed at forcing them to join in any one given ideology.

 

Especially when that ideology is aimed at their day-to-day security and such ideology results in irretrievable actions or errors that affect their lives.  At this moment, $500 million dollars to Solyndra with a potential $1 billion that might have come along behind it comes to mind.

 

Citizens are the one dynamic that really does not ever shift nor actually change.

 

To moderate news commentary is to facilitate commentators, not the news story.  There is no ability in this 9th to deny that they have created a culture in the district that in part, demands front and center stage.  In the world of fighting crime that is not always seen as a bad thing.

The political dynamic of the 9^th is easy to spot.

 

District Attorney Martin Beeson arrived on the scene by crafting a strategic political campaign to toss Colleen Truden.  Basically amounted to shooting himself out of a cannon  and waging what ended up as a recall war.

 

He made no effort nor does he apologize for not making the effort to let the folks have a chance to get to know him first.  Is that  fault?  A strategic error?  Or is it just a good man who knows himself well and feels as though everyone else should automatically be able to know the same.

 

Or is it simply a man who saw that his particular and unique skills, his way of being were potentially needed?  So he stepped up into a leadership role.  Where his political credit is at now and coming back to haunt him, is that whatever it was that made him initially go down the path of becoming the most powerful elected official in a three county radius without anyone knowing the man is what people see first.

 

He then moved rapidly on to greater ambitions and set himself up to race for the third congressional. 

 

Conservatives began to feel some unease at this point.  Which is a publicly known fact as one of the reasons Beeson dropped out.  Lots going on.

 

Politics at that level of national race is a marathon and could their sprinting D.A. stay the course?  Remembering back to the tone of commentary around the state after he tossed Truden, there was a general consensus that it probably wouldn’t matter that he was pretty much still a stranger to most. 

 

What kind of law enforcement we ended up with was for sure going to be at front and center stage anyway.

 

During roughly the same time frame, Garfield County Sheriff Lou Vallario vaulted himself into another part of the district political stage.  Ousting Dalessandri, Sheriff Lou has chosen a culture of careful planning and attention to details.  In the eyes of the folks out here in commentary, the pace he brings to the culture of the 9th is more of a fast walk.  Sheriff Vallario has a style far different than Martin Beeson.  The Sheriff takes his time, making the time, to connect with the job better than anyone ever has before him.  Yet his issue politically is roughly the same as Beeson.  The majority of the folks don’t know him personally, he is definitely not a politician.  After brutal campaigns, Vallario has now changed that and things seem to be going smoother for him.  A compassionate man with a tendency to wear his heart on his sleeve while his bulldog tenacity is visible instead.  GarCo Sheriff has actually become a culture within a culture.

 

Pitkin County contribution to the now starting to simmer culture of this D.A. was to see a very, very similar to Martin Beeson leadership style in former Pitkin County Sheriff Bob Braudis.  While at the same time these were two men so different from each other and worlds apart on ideology.  The icon that was Braudis enjoyed the same staff loyalty as Beeson.

 

If ever there was a connection not noted, it’s that one.  That they are two men who were really very much alike in many ways.  One of the ways that is proven is to observe the volatile degrees of attention from the public that both men command.

 

Insert newbie Joe DiSalvo to take over for that end of an era in PitCo as Braudis retired.  A new Sheriff who has a style that's somewhat hopelessly undefined at this time.  The question folks seem to have with DiSalvo is where does he fit in?

How does one sum up the political atmosphere of the 9th as we rapidly approach campaign declarations?

Again, Paul Nitze does that very well in his column today:

"...Building inspectors can face civil liability for failing their duties, but this may have been the first time in American history that an inspector was charged with criminally negligent homicide for this type of mistake. So it's fair to say that Mordkin was already swimming upstream when he decided to bring criminal charges.

And he doubled down by using a grand jury to bring the charges. These days, grand juries are more common on the big screen than in real life. In most states, Colorado included, grand juries are used sparingly. They have fallen into disuse because they suck up a lot of prosecutorial resources, but also because judges can view them with suspicion.

When a district attorney brings charges at the outer edge of the law via a grand jury, as Mordkin did here, it can look like he's bypassing normal procedure because he fears a judge might throw out the case. When a grand jury brings an indictment, the magistrate judge who would normally make a probable cause finding is cut out. It's also true that unusual cases are well-suited for grand juries, because they need the kind of preliminary investigation that grand juries provide, but it remains a risky business."
(Paul Nitze)

With that said, 'SandBox Nanny' observes a similar view as she had when the tragic case of little McKenzie Webster-Brown was in the news.  Her view at the time (now archived to hard copy) was the only public view in local media that spoke up reminding us all that we can't judge.  We can't know.  Not unless we have both sides to the story and know the heart of the people involved in order to know intent.  The elected seat of a prosecutor is held to the highest standard.  But that does not mean that prosecutors and law enforcement do not have the right to not be judged until the entire story is known. 

 

She can find nothing in the Nitze op-ed piece on Lofgren today that she disagrees with. 

 

Yet, she still finds a measure of wisdom in her commentary yesterday on the story itself.  Arnold Mordkin deserves privacy for his apology to the family.  The family deserves privacy as all move forward searching for peace.

It's good to hear in the Aspen Daily News follow-up today that D.A. Beeson is not going to allow this to move back into the courtroom and instead opt for letting the family move on.

Arnold Mordkin does owe an explanation to the general public in Paul Nitze' eyes.

SandBox agrees.

 

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"Truth goes through three stages. First it is ridiculed. Then it is violently opposed. Finally, it is accepted as self-evident."