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July 10, 2020 12:19 PM UTC

A Few Words On Rich White Suburbs Behaving Badly

  • 21 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

Two stories on separate issues out of the wealthy southern suburbs of Denver, Colorado today tell a story together that we think says a lot about the disconnect between political conservatives in America today and reality–political and otherwise–going into the 2020 general elections.

The first, as the Denver Post’s John Aguilar reports, is from Greenwood Village, one of the richest (and whitest) suburbs along the Front Range:

Backlash has been swift since The Denver Post reported Wednesday that Greenwood Village’s elected leaders had passed a resolution stating that the city would “in all cases defend any police officer in any suit or proceeding brought under (Senate Bill 217) and pay or indemnify its police officers against all expenses” incurred from a legal challenge to officer conduct.

The suburb south of Denver, through its attorney and mayor, told The Post that it would never find a police officer to have acted in bad faith. Greenwood Village is seeking to protect its officers from personal liability even in cases when officers knowingly behave unlawfully — in contradiction to the new police reform law, which says officers can be on the hook for up to $25,000.

Greenwood Village’s highly controversial decision to swear off a key trigger for police accountability within their municipal boundaries was swiftly condemned by Attorney General Phil Weiser, and Marianne Goodland at the Colorado Springs Gazette reports that Black Lives Matter protesters descended on the city soon afterward:

Greenwood Village is 84% white, less than 3% Black and about 5% Hispanic. But on Thursday, the latest edition of Black Lives Matters protests came to this community of just over 15,000, where the median income is more than $127,0000 and the median home price is just shy of $900,000…

The resolution is illegal, said activist Terrance Roberts, a representative of the group Front-Line Party for Revolutionary Action of Aurora, who also claimed that Black people are not welcome in Greenwood Village.

Up until Greenwood Village took this provocative action in defiance of the law just passed in Colorado to address the front-and-center issue of police brutality, there were no significant protests in the city. There have historically been some troubling cases of police disregard for the rights of city residents, like the destruction of the home of city resident Leo Lech during a police pursuit of a criminal with only token compensation. But if the voters of Greenwood Village are upset at the sudden attention their quiet little ritzy suburb is getting, their first call should be to the elected officials who made their town a lightning rod.

Meanwhile across County Line Road in the bastion of COVIDiocy that is Douglas County, the time has finally come to throw off the tyrannical yoke of the Tri-County Health Department after the department instituted a mask “mandate” that municipalities can override if they want to. Ever since the pandemic first reached Colorado back in early March, Republicans in DougCo have raged over every kind of restriction necessary to contain the spread of the disease, to the point of inciting repeated acts of vandalism against Tri-County’s offices. But despite the resurgent growth of COVID cases in Colorado and across the nation, as the Aurora Sentinel’s Grant Stringer reports, a not-really mask “mandate” is the breaking point for DougCo commissioners:

Commissioners for the two counties covering almost all of Aurora have quickly thrown their support behind a region-wide mask mandate public health experts ordered Wednesday. The third county is threatening to divorce itself from the group.

The mask mandate, a work still in progress, prompted the Douglas County board of commissioners to now focus on leaving the long-standing, three-county health department and create one of their own.

“My fellow commissioners and I have directed staff to leave (Tri-County Health) and develop a public health department to meet the needs of our residents,” Douglas County Commissioner Lora Thomas said in a tweet Thursday. “We will also opt out of a mandatory mask order.”

That’s right, DougCo residents! The Republican governor of Texas may have ordered everyone in the Lone Star State to wear masks or face a $250 fine, but your board of rock-ribbed conservative Republican county commissioners are pulling your county out of the local health department and (apparently, it’s not clear yet) standing up a new health department, in the middle of a pandemic–because they think a mask “mandate” they are opting out of anyway is too much of an imposition.

The moral of these two stories? Within just a few miles of each other on the south side of the Denver metro area, you can find the worst possible official responses to the news events dominating the headlines on ready display. And though the issues may be very different, there is one common thread.

Horrifying tone deafness.

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21 thoughts on “A Few Words On Rich White Suburbs Behaving Badly”

  2. Marianne Goodland is a little off in her assessment regarding Greenwood Village.

    Reporting from Channel 9 News last night indicated that the protest was home grown by Greenwood Village residents. BLM activists didn't start it.

    1. Is that so?? When did Young Communist Commissar Tay Anderson move to Greenwood Village?

      Open your eyes. There is a plot underway to destabilize America before the election to hurt Trump. There is a rising crime wave across the nation at the same time Democrats are calling to disband the police. Soon we'll be hearing that only Sleepy Joe can save America from itself.

      The Deep State revolution is happening. Trump got too close and they are out to destroy him no matter how much America suffers. If Trump wins there will be violence in the streets BY LIBERALS that the good people of America will have to defend ourselves against. If Trump loses America as we know it is dead.

      If you are a conservative, stop spreading the lies of the enemy. Tay Anderson and his band of vandals are no homegrown Greenwood Villagers.

      1. Did you eat your Wheaties this morning nutlid?  Finish a nice long kleenex binge? You have been tiptoeing around your furher for months now, and now you're back to embrace him whole hog?  After gassing people who peaceably assemble, ignoring a pandemic, and allowing Putin to pay a terrorist organization (the Taliban) that this country went to war with in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 to kill American Soldiers, you are now back to say that you are all in?  Ignoring the fact that 130,000 Americans died because Trump did nothing, and you are back to all in after saying nothing about Trump for months?  

         

        But, now you're letting your moronic neo-Nazi freak flag fly.  Good on you, nutlid!   We can use you as an example of why it is in the best interests of Americans to kick Republicans out of office, starting with this blog's second favorite US Senator from Colorado and your favorite wannabe dictator, on down.

        1. @Moderatus: yes, I’m a conservative, along the lines of The Lincoln Project, Republicans for the Rule of Law, Republican Voters Against Trump, and the writers at The Bulwark dot com.

          Perhaps in the future, you could check out the 9News newscast before mouthing off. I’m confident in my conservatism. You don’t seem confident in yours.

          While I’m at it, maybe you should check this book out at your local library. It’s the study of the real “deep state:” Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right, by Anne Nelson 

            1. You can expect Nutlid to get more and more unhinged as we approach election day.  His half of the familial budget will be fine; he’s a federal civil servant and protected by his union (the irony) until retirement (with a gold-plated pension and health care).  

              The other half of the familial budget is derived from a presidential appointment; he can feel that gravy train coming to the end of its tracks. He’s not a disinterested party in the outcome of this election and he won’t go quietly into the night.  You can bet that if Ttump did shoot someone in the middle of 5th Avenue he wouldn’t lose our little troll’s support. 

              In the event his union wises up  OANN may need a remote journalist provocateur from the nation’s wilderness to demonstrate raking the forest or reporting on the boot-strappin’ Cliven Bundy clan. Maybe an in-depth report on the latest pedophile pizza parlor conspiracy. He’d fit right in. 

              1. Seeing part of Nutlid's gravy train coming to a stop is definitely a bonus reason for Dump losing.  Just like all MAGAts, they only care about themselves and the cruelty and hurting other people is the point. 

                I won't cry if our resident Covidiot takes a significant financial hit.

      3. Damn, Moddy.  You might want to get help.  Greenwood Village is a cesspool of white privilege, and always has been.  Remember the Ocrant murder coverup?  Yeah, they don't change.  The City Council is lily-white and tone-deaf, if not racist as fuck.  And now the City is going to indemnify cops who get a personal judgment against them, despite this statutory language: 

        IF THE PEACE OFFICER'S EMPLOYER DETERMINES THAT THE OFFICER DID NOT ACT UPON A GOOD FAITH AND REASONABLE BELIEF THAT THE ACTION WAS LAWFUL, THEN THE PEACE OFFICER IS PERSONALLY LIABLE AND SHALL NOT BE INDEMNIFIED BY THE PEACE OFFICER'S EMPLOYER FOR FIVE PERCENT OF THE JUDGMENT OR SETTLEMENT OR TWENTY-FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS, WHICHEVER IS LESS.

        So yeah, let's protect the cops that a jury or judge finds liable for violating citizens' constitutional rights.  It's people like the GV City Council, and you, that are precisely the problem.  

         

  3. Proud to not to be represented by the leaders of GV or DougCo. I'm assuming most residents must be mortified by their stupidity – but they elected them! 

    1. If there is any justice left, those forgiven years will be added to Trump's sentence when his days, weeks, months in court arrive after next January.

  7. The suburb south of Denver, through its attorney and mayor, told The Post that it would never find a police officer to have acted in bad faith.

    Even if a police officer does in fact act in bad faith? Damn. White people are really, really stupid.

    Greenwood Village is seeking to protect its officers from personal liability even in cases when officers knowingly behave unlawfully — in contradiction to the new police reform law, which says officers can be on the hook for up to $25,000.

    lol

    Remember when Trumplings were eating steak the way Trump likes it — burnt and covered in ketchup — to "own the libs"? This is like that, only stupider.

    But hey, congrats on deciding to fork over that sweet, sweet taxpayer cash to victims of authoritarian violence even when state law doesn't require it. Civil rights lawyers and their clients will surely thank you.

    1. Like the bad faith routinely displayed by GV police hassling people of color in a target parking lot.  I've witnessed this more than a dozen times

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