Self-Defense Seems to Be Legal in Denver

I can't really tell how the DA feels about that from the statement. Prosecutors won't charge resident who fatally shot intruder | Denver Gazette

According to Denver Police, a resident returned to an apartment inside One Observatory Park around 1 a.m. on July 21 and was startled by an intruder. The apartment building is on East Evans Avenue, just east of South University Boulevard.

The resident shot the intruder, who died at the scene, police said. The man, identified as 27-year-old Nelson Kimathi, died from multiple gunshot wounds, according to the coroner's office.

It took police from July to this week to get their investigation complete. To be fair, they may have been waiting on something from the autopsy.

It took the DA less than a week to make the self-defense call, so that's not too bad.

Nowhere in the statement, however, does the DA talk about justice, or individual rights. The statement only says, effectively, "We can't win this one, so we won't try."

Self-defense is Legal in Colorado

It took a long time for the DA to admit that. Stephan Long speaks publicly after DA drops all charges against him | Denver's 9news

The man who shot and killed two people on I-25 last year following a road rage incident spoke to the public for the first time since the Denver district attorney dropped all charges against him.

For 14 months, Stephan Long has claimed self-defense. The DA said the evidence matched what Long originally said and agreed it was self-defense. The office closed its case against Long.

14 months is a long time. I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact that DA HATES self-defense, or that Stephan Long is a young black man with dreadlocks. I'm sure the DA of Denver isn't racist. No. It was probably that the paperwork just got lost. Or something

Alexander Landau, founder and co-executive director of the Denver Justice Project said that's not enough.

"Because Beth [District Attorney Beth McCann], yes, you get the credit for finally dismissing this case but you also deserve the scrutiny for charging him in the first place. No new evidence was presented. Everything that led up to this dismissal was the exact same evidence you were looking at from day one," Landau said.

Click thru for Mr. Long's statement, and a statement from his mother. (Hat tip to Keep and Bear Arms.)

Self Defense In Denver

You can never be sure it will be tolerated in Blue Cities. Alleged home intruder shot, killed in Commerce City

OK, so Commerce City is only a suburb of Denver, not Denver itself. It is only about 5 miles downtown Denver. (Denver is in a different county.)

Officers were called to a home in the 5300 block of E. 64th Avenue sometime overnight Saturday and found a man dead inside the house.

The homeowner told police he shot the man after he was attacked during a home invasion.

Since the owner was injured (not seriously injured) by the guy he shot, it will be difficult for the most-extreme, gun-hating DA to charge this guy with anything. That doesn't mean it won't happen, it just means that it will be difficult.

In any event, self defense is a human right.

A Father Defends His Family

What else should he have done? Father shoots man who opened fire on his family in museum parking lot. It appears that this incident took place on December 26th, the Tuesday after Christmas.

A suspect who allegedly shot at a family in the Denver Museum of Nature and Science's parking lot before the father shot him is facing multiple charges of attempted murder.

He, his girlfriend and their two children were in the parking lot of the museum. He was changing his shirt when two men with guns ran up and demanded a silver chain he was wearing.

He said the suspects grabbed him and told him to give them the silver chain around his neck. One of the suspects then hit him in the back of the head, he said. He believed that the man hit him with the butt of the handgun, according to a probable cause statement. The father then pulled his gun from his waistband and pointed it at the two suspects, he told police.

One of the suspects fired several rounds at the man, with one round striking the rear passenger side of the vehicle. The man told police he fired back at the suspects, who fled on foot northbound and fired an additional round at the family as they ran, according to a probable cause statement. It was not clear if the man believed he had struck either suspect.

So what should he have done? They threatened his family. Are you sure they only wanted valuables? What if they had rape on their mind?

A short time later a guy who may have matched the description on one of the suspects showed up at a local hospital. He is, or was when the article was written, "medically unresponsive" due to his injuries.

He faces seven charges; four counts of attempted first-degree murder, two counts of felony menacing and attempted aggravated robbery.

Self-defense is a human-right, and it appears to be your legal right in Denver.

Fewer Police Mean Longer Waits for 911 Response

14 minutes is a long time when bad things are happening. It's taking longer for Denver Police to respond to 911 calls | 9news.com

Add Denver to the list of cities where there are not enough police officers. Did we really expect any other outcome?

Since 2018, response times for the highest priority calls, like those for shootings, have increased nearly 3 minutes and is now about 14 1/2 minutes.

Denver Police Chief Paul Pazen said he's deeply concerned by the increase in response times, which he described as a supply-and-demand problem: Too much demand for police services and too few cops on the street.

But it was just recently that cities across the country decided that it was a good idea to defund the police, and have fewer officers. And I just recently saw yet another video about how people should not call police. So how can there be a shortage? <sarcasm/> And about the same time a bunch of people decided that they don't want to be police. Between the lack of recruits and the increase rush for the exits of retirement, and resignation, well...

Strangely the article doesn't talk about defunding the police, or why the department is about 15% short of its authorized headcount.

I can't even pretend to be shocked that there is a shortage of officers.

Denver Police Response Time and Recidivism

Like many cities, Denver is suffering from a lack of police. Denver Police down 170 officers, Chief Paul Pazen says.

The details that are important are as follows.

• The Denver PD is down about 10% in headcount of cops to answer 911 calls,
• there are about 4% more calls coming in than the 3-year-baseline would indicate, and
• In Denver PD's mind, a 12 minute response time to a 911 call is doing OK.

12 minutes is a long time to wait, if something bad is happening, assuming you can call 911 BEFORE the bad stuff starts happening. But that isn't what interested me in this article.

“How was it that 32 people in our city were killed? And the offender was on some form of supervision? That flies in the face of what supervision is supposed to be,” he said. “We need to get this figured out as quickly as possible because unfortunately people are being harmed in our community. Families are being destroyed by this type of activity.”

Because keeping violent offenders in jail is unfair, a number of them have been released on recognizance bonds, only to be arrested later in relation to a murder.

Oh, and that response time target that Denver PD had... They can't meet due to increase in calls and the decrease in officers. Response times have increased 18 percent.

Once Again a Mass-shooting By Someone "Known to Law Enforcement"

It wasn't the FBI (Funded But Incompetent) this time. But still... Denver, Lakewood shooting spree: 47-year-old man who killed 5 people, injured 2 identified

Police identified the shooter as Lyndon McLeod, 47, and said he knew many of the people he targeted. McLeod had previously been investigated by law enforcement in 2020 and 2021 but that the investigations did not lead to state or federal charges, Denver police Chief Paul Pazen said.

“This individual was on the radar of law enforcement,” Pazen said.

Not that being "on the RADAR" does any good, it seems. This isn't the first time, and it probably won't be the last. Here's a sample, collected by Conservative Treehouse from March of this year, of what the FBI knew ahead of time in face of mass shootings.

• Boulder, Colorado shooter - Ahmad al-Aliwi Alissa
• The Pulse Nightclub shooter - Omar Mateen
• San Bernardino Terrorists - Tashfeen Malik
• The Boston Marathon Bombers - the Tsarnaev brothers (in this case they were tipped off by the Russians)
• The Garland, Texas, shooters - Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi
• The Parkland High School shooter Nikolas Cruz
• The Fort Hood shooter - Nidal Hasan

Those are just off-the-top of my head… Anyone notice a pattern?

Meanwhile the political FBI agents chase the ghosts of mysteriously invisible white supremacists conducting random acts of unidentified racism.

In the current case, McLeod knew several of the people he killed. As I type this, not all the details have been released, my guess is that they are still trying to track down next of kin for some of the victims.

The rampage moved from Denver to Lakewood (near to Denver) and included at least one running gun battle with police.

McLeod, who died after being shot by a Lakewood police agent, opened fire in at least six different locations across the two cities before dying in an exchange of gunfire with a Lakewood police agent in the busy Belmar shopping district. Romero did not identify the agent who shot McLeod, but said she killed him after McLeod shot her in the abdomen. The agent underwent emergency surgery Monday night and is expected to survive.

I was sent to look for more information on this story by The Other McCain and Denver Gunman Kills 4, Wounds 3.

Of course, what counts as a “mass murder” in Denver is just a typical weekend in Chicago, in terms of total body count. Is everybody in Chicago having a mental health crisis? They must be crazy to elect Lori Lightfoot as their mayor, but other than that — and the constant gunfire — there are few other symptoms of their struggles with mental health.

Of course that is understating the situation. HeyJackass! which views the latest weekend as running from 12 PM Friday thru 6 AM Monday counted 4 killed and 28 wounded. A typical weekend in the summer would be much worse.

And Robert Stacy McCain has an update on how McLeod was known to law enforcement. Denver Shooting Rampage Update: Gunman Identified as Tattoo Artist Lyndon McLeod, Was Known to Cops.

Denver Shooting Rampage Update: Gunman Identified as Tattoo Artist Lyndon McLeod, Was Known to Cops Posted on | December 28, 2021 | 1 Comment Before the identity of the Denver shooter was known, I’d predicted that we would “eventually be told the gunman “struggled with mental health issues,’” and sure enough, Lyndon James McLeod, 47, “had a history of psychiatric episodes,” according to “multiple law enforcement sources.” [SNIP]

He seems to have targeted other local tattoo artists.

So the motive was revenge, probably for imaginary wrongs. That is to say, the people McLeod murdered hadn’t actually done anything wrong to him, but in his mind they were villains, because they were successful and he was not.

There is more, at both the Other McCain links, the Conservative Treehouse link, and the link to the Denver Post at the top.