Friday, September 23, 2011
KDVR.com
Operation Mountain Guardian is a terrorism-based, full-scale emergency exercise scheduled to take place in numerous locations in the Denver metro area on Friday, September 23, 2011.
The exercise will involve first responders from 81 different agencies**, will be conducted at ten separate locations and will include loud noises, simulated weapons, smoke, emergency vehicles and other equipment that will be audible and visible throughout the day...[Full Article]
Labels: Colorado, Denver, drills, exercise, Operation Mountain Guardian, terror drills
Monday, August 16, 2010
Independent Denver Police Watchdog Says Officers Should Be Fired After Beating, Exaggerated Indicent Report
A pair of Denver friends have settled a lawsuit against the city after a controversial police beating that was caught on tape.
Beating victim Michael DeHerrera, 24, said he hopes the settlement will set the framework for the firing of the two Denver officers who threw him to the ground and beat him unconscious.
"It wasn't about money," DeHerrera told "Good Morning America," sitting next to his parents. "It was about making a point."...
[Full Article]Denver officials clash over police discipline after brutal video released
http://www.denverpost.com/commented/c...
Denver officials are deeply divided over the proper level of punishment for a police officer who was seen on video tackling and beating a 23-year-old man who was doing nothing but talking on a telephone outside a LoDo nightclub.
The video of Officer Devin Sparks repeatedly hitting Michael DeHerrera of Denver with a department-issued piece of metal wrapped in leather, picking him up roughly and slamming a car door on his ankle has prompted Independent Monitor Richard Rosenthal to push for the firing of Sparks and Corporal Randy Murr.
Rosenthal, who monitors police internal investigations, maintains Sparks and Murr are unfit for the force because they didn't tell the truth about the April 4, 2009 incident. Rosenthal also believes the use of force by Sparks was excessive. The Denver City Council earlier this year agreed to pay $17,500 to settle a federal lawsuit brought by DeHerrera alleging excessive force.
DeHerrera, in interviews, has described police as beating him unconscious. He said he woke up in a hospital bed, with stitches in his head, and a swollen head. He said he later was diagnosed with post-concussion syndrome.
"The video was so important because it showed everything that happened, regardless of reports or what's filled out," DeHerrera said in an interview. "The video speaks more than any of those words can."
He added: "I don't swing. I don't blade. I'm on the phone. The only thing I hold onto is my phone. When I go down, I'm out, and that's when he continues to 'get my compliance.'"
The incident was filmed by the police department's own High Activity Location Observation video surveillance system. Video released to the news media by the department shows DeHerrera doing nothing but talking on his phone with his father, a sheriff's deputy in Pueblo.
Rosenthal, in a report to be released on Monday, labels as "pure fiction" the police report from Sparks that describes his force as justified because DeHerrera "spun to his left attempting to strike me in the face with a closed right fist."
Police Camera Pans Away As Officers Subdue Suspect
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/...
Independent Monitor Richard Rosenthal is recommending that the officers be fired, but Denver new Manager of Safety Ron Perea only disciplined the officers for filing an inaccurate police report about the April 4, 2009 incident.
There are also questions of whether the police H.A.L.O. camera was attempting to cover up the incident since it panned away as the officers were subduing the man, identified as Michael DeHerrera of Pueblo
Labels: Colorado, Denver, police, police brutality
Saturday, March 13, 2010
LEADVILLE, Colo. — An American woman, who family members fear may have become a radicalized Muslim, was detained in Ireland this week in connection with a plot to assassinate a Swedish cartoonist.
The woman, identified by her mother as Jamie Paulin-Ramirez, 31, had become increasingly cut off from her family here and had been spending more time on the Internet since converting to Islam around last Easter, her relatives said.
After dressing in traditional headscarves, praying at a mosque in Denver and meeting with associates she had likely befriended online, Ms. Paulin-Ramirez — accompanied by her then 5-year-old son, Christian Carreon — had gone to live in Ireland in October, her mother, Christine Mott, said in an interview at her home here on Saturday. She said that she had been told that her daughter had been detained in Ireland, and that her grandson was in the custody of Irish officials...
Labels: Al Qaeda, Colorado, Denver, Ireland, Jamie Paulin-Ramirez, plot, radical Isalm, radicalized Muslim
Federal officials confirmed Saturday that a second suburban American woman had been apprehended in connection with a plot to kill a Swedish artist who angered the Muslim world with a derogatory drawing of the prophet Mohammad.
But authorities cautioned that Jamie Paulin-Ramirez, a blond-haired mother, may have been motivated by love for an Algerian Muslim man rather than by terrorist urges when she traveled to Ireland for a rendezvous in September.
Paulin-Ramirez, 31, of suburban Denver, was taken into custody by Irish police last week on the same day that U.S. prosecutors unsealed a criminal indictment against another fair-haired American woman who allegedly used the Internet handle "JihadJane" to recruit people to further the plot...
Labels: Al Qaeda, Colorado, Denver, Jamie Paulin-Ramirez, JihadJane, radical Isalm, radicalized Muslim
Friday, March 12, 2010
A former Transportation Security Administration contractor is being charged in Colorado for allegedly injecting malicious code into a government network used for screening airport security workers and others.
The malicious code, a logic bomb installed last October, was designed to cause damage and disrupt data on servers on an undisclosed date but was caught by other workers before it delivered its payload.
Douglas James Duchak, 46, had worked as a data analyst at the TSA’s Colorado Springs Operations Center, or CSOC, since 2004. The CSOC is used to vet people who have “access to sensitive information and secure areas of the nation’s transportation network,” according to the indictment. A source involved in the case said this involved screening of both passengers and workers at airports and other transportation facilities.
He pleaded not guilty in a Denver federal court on Wednesday and was released on a $25,000 unsecured bond. The indictment did not say whether the malware was crafted to erase or alter data, or simply disable servers...
Read More http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/03/tsa-worker-charged-with-attempted-sabotage#ixzz0hzo7J5n2
Sunday, February 21, 2010
PAST ARTICLES: Alphabet Agencies On The Move
Domestic Division Would Be Moved
The CIA has plans to relocate the headquarters of its domestic division, which is responsible for operations and recruitment in the United States, from the CIA's Langley headquarters to Denver, a move designed to promote innovation, according to U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials...
...The main function of the domestic division, which has stations in many major U.S. cities, is to conduct voluntary debriefings of U.S. citizens who travel overseas for work or to visit relatives, and to recruit foreign students, diplomats and businesspeople to become CIA assets when they return to their countries. It was unclear how many CIA employees would relocate to Denver under the plan.
Although collecting information on U.S. citizens under suspicion for terrorist links is primarily an FBI function, the CIA may also collect information on citizens under limited circumstances, according to a 1981 executive order. The exact guidelines for those operations are spelled out in a classified document signed by the CIA director and approved by the attorney general...
...Colorado has become a major intelligence hub since Sept. 11, 2001.
The Denver suburb of Aurora is home to the little-known Aerospace Data Facility. Located inside Buckley Air Force Base, it has become the major U.S.-based technical downlink for intelligence satellites operated by the military, the National Security Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office, according to military and government documents obtained by William Arkin, author of "Code Names," a book about secret military plans and programs.
About 70 miles away, the U.S. Northern Command, based at Peterson Air Force Base, in Colorado Springs, is tasked with homeland defense and has been increasing its domestic intelligence work...
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Spies Like Us: NSA To Build Huge Facility In Utah
Hoping to protect its top-secret operations by decentralizing its massive computer hubs, the National Security Agency will build a 1-million-square-foot data center at Utah's Camp Williams...
...The NSA bills itself as the home of America's codemakers and codebreakers, but the Department of Defense agency is perhaps better known for its signals intelligence program, which is reported to have the capacity to tap into a significant amount of the world's communications. The agency also has been the subject of significant criticism by civil libertarians, who have accused it of unwarranted monitoring of the communications of U.S. citizens. The NSA's heavily automated computerized operations have for years been based at Fort Meade, Maryland, but the agency began looking to decentralize its efforts following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001...
Labels: Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, Colorado, Denver, National Security Agency, NSA, Salt Lake City, Utah
Sunday, February 7, 2010
The federal government on Thursday launched a new program in Denver designed to increase childhood immunization rates. It is the first school-located program in the country to offer vaccines to all students, regardless of socioeconomic status, experts say.
Denver is one of two cities to test the program in elementary schools and the only city to test it in middle schools.
Labels: Colorado, Denver, immunization, vaccination, vaccine
A new program that brings together Denver Public Schools (DPS), Denver Health, the University of Colorado Denver and Kaiser Permanente Colorado will receive two grants totaling more than $1.6 million from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for a pilot program intended to increase childhood immunization rates...
Labels: CDC, Centers for Disease Control, Colorado, Denver, immunization, vaccination, vaccine
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