Englewood Story

Link: http://EyeOnEnglewood.com

Michael Knight, investigator, for District Attorney, Carol Chambers, contacted me to explain that their hands were tied as to prosecuting fraud. "Fraud" has certain elements to be proved, and one of those elements is to prove how the City Council or Manager had personally benefited or laundered money.

It was the position of the District Attorney that Englewood seemed to be doing what they were doing as a power play. Perhaps it was because City Manager Sears lived only four houses from us. Perhaps it was because the contractor we fired was Ron Noffsinger's fishing buddy, and because the guys sitting on Council were also his high school buddies. After all, this was exactly how small town politics worked.

Yes, "color" on the block may indeed be the motive of these people, making them rednecks, but fraud simply couldn't be proved yet. I contacted Colorado's Civil Rights Division. Protecting those of color was defensible, but the statutes applied only to landlords, loan officers, and real estate agents.

People knew what was happening was "wrong," but could it possibly be legal?

It appeared a block full of good ol' rednecks were gonna get away with railroading others out of town in the year 2008.

The Devil is in the details, they say. The D.A. sent my complaint to the Attorney General to see if there was anything they could do in that office. They suggested I contact my State Representative.

Follow up:

I discovered Steve Ward was in Iraq fighting another battle and was not available to me. Dianna Degette held office hours in the Englewood Library, courtesy of Gary Sears. She was going to be no help.

When Steve Ward returned from Iraq he told me to fight it politically, but I was a political novice. What was he talking about?

He told me a story about our City Manager's previous history when he worked for Steve Ward in another City. He said one day Gary Sears came to him asking to put a car for the fire chief into the City's budget.

When Steve Ward asked why he should do this, Gary responded because the City provided a car to the Police Chief, and therefore, the Fire Chief should also have that benefit.

Steve Ward looked at Gary Sears and replied. "Sir, we do not have a car purchasing situation. We have a car selling situation." Ward saved the City money, but he earned an enemy.

I still didn't understand how I could save my home and our mentoring of students with politics. I continued to research the law, the Englewood Charter, the City ordinances. And, I continued to show up for City Council meetings and purchase records of their secret activities.

When Ducky cleverly decided to cut off our access easement for taking out the trash between our garages, he did it by applying for a decorative picket fence. Then he proceeded to hammer rebar into the ground and wire up prefab sections of fence to it. This, the City deemed "within the meaning of decorative."

I called the police to tell them he had blocked off our access. They e-mailed each other and attorney Brotzman instructed Sam Watson, of the police force not to respond. This e-mail, along with scads of other damning communique, I later found through open records requests.

I paid for an appeal of the fence permit, but attorney Nancy Reid threatened the one person who had knowledge of the underlying issues sitting on the Board of Appeals, that if he didn't recuse himself from voting, she would file a complaint against him.

That person was Doug Cohn. I never knew the man before all the issues with Englewood came flying at us, but I attended Council meetings and watched Mr. Cohn taking notice of the issues on his own. He mentioned the irregularities of them to Council in public comments.

He even dared to warn them about the illegalities they were enacting as law in Englewood.

Though his voice was soft spoken, the power of his understanding of the issues and courage to help helpless Englewood Residents was deeply appreciated.

Yes, Doug Cohn, if allowed to keep his chair on the Appeals Committee that night, could have helped us, but he was threatened by the City Attorney and the Chairman of the Committee.

This is the same City Attorney I had filed a grievance against, controlling the Appeals Committee with Chairman, John Smith III, Esq. My, how the decks are stacked.

When the committee was seated and looking at pictures I had taken, I heard one of them say, "Is this the house?"

Then, Brook Bell, associate City Planner, presented the City's case. He mentioned some of the facts, while leaving out others such as: a fact that Ducky had returned to the City to amend his fence after we had paid for an appeal. The City allowed this, making our $200 dollars paid for the appeal worthless.

Mr. Bell's information packet was also missing the two different drawings of the first and second permits, and there were two other documents not included with the packets, all substantially prejudicing our case.

While reading the presentation prepared over that long month, the Chairman, John Smith, III, attorney at law, interrupted me repeatedly asking me not to read it, but to speak it. Finally, he refused to let me continue stating that he refused to listen.

Astounded, I objected to say "I believed I have the right to speak freely, however I choose to present my case." He refused me. I knew right then that I should have dumped all our bags of garbage in that room, and that would have told our tale much louder than words.

The Committee voted and we lost our appeal. Attorney Nancy Reid dismissed the extra police that the City had hired to oversee our appeal. I guess they figured that if they could make us irate that they could arrest us. I was thankful to have stuck to my script and kept my cool in the midst of losing this battle.

You can make a person crazy, but that still doesn't make them "criminal."

The City violated their own criminal codes as to harassment, terrorism, assault and damage to private property. "The People" violated the State's statutes regarding notorious easement rights, but Chairman Smith had specifically instructed the Appeals Committee to disregard any law outside of the City Code. In the end, he had prevented me from even presenting the City's codes.

I asked this police guard whether I could file a citizen's complaint that night. He said, "Not with me. I'm standing in for Sam Watson who is on holiday. I'll have him contact you when he returns."

Of course Sam Watson did not contact me, because he had been instructed not to respond to us. We were now in fear for our safety with the police protecting the City's terrorism and destruction of our privacy and our property.

Englewood had become a very scary place to live.