%1 http://coloradoencyclopedia.org/ en The Denver Police Department, 1859–1933 http://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/denver-police-department-1859-1933 <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--title--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--title.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--title.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">The Denver Police Department, 1859–1933</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--uid--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--uid.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--uid.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'username' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> <span lang="" about="/users/yongli" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="">yongli</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--created--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--created.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'time' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/time.html.twig' --> <time datetime="2021-01-25T15:34:17-07:00" title="Monday, January 25, 2021 - 15:34" class="datetime">Mon, 01/25/2021 - 15:34</time> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/time.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'addtoany_standard' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * addtoany-standard--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * addtoany-standard--node.html.twig x addtoany-standard.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/addtoany/templates/addtoany-standard.html.twig' --> <span class="a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_32 addtoany_list" data-a2a-url="http://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/denver-police-department-1859-1933" data-a2a-title="The Denver Police Department, 1859–1933"><a class="a2a_dd addtoany_share" href="https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=http%3A%2F%2Fcoloradoencyclopedia.org%2Farticle%2Fdenver-police-department-1859-1933&amp;title=The%20Denver%20Police%20Department%2C%201859%E2%80%931933"></a><a class="a2a_button_facebook"></a><a class="a2a_button_twitter"></a><a class="a2a_button_email"></a></span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/addtoany/templates/addtoany-standard.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--body--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--body.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--body.html.twig * field--text-with-summary.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item" id="id-body"><p>The Denver Police Department was formed in 1859 to bring order to a rowdy, dusty mining camp. The department grew up with the city and with broader trends in American policing. Denver Police spent most of the late nineteenth century focused on drunks, gamblers, thieves, and prostitutes. Later, a more professionalized police force developed during the <a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/progressive-era-colorado"><strong>Progressive Era</strong></a> (1900–20), and the increase in police power during <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/prohibition"><strong>alcohol prohibition</strong></a> (1916–33) formed the basis for a <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/denver-police-department-1933"><strong>modern Denver Police Department</strong></a> that increasingly functioned as an apparatus of social control as well as capturing criminals.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Origins of American Policing</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>Boston formed the nation’s first public police department in 1838. Between then and Denver’s founding in 1858, many American cities developed public police forces distinct from the night watches or constable systems that preceded them. In the north, the need for public police grew with industrializing cities and was especially influenced by perceptions of new immigrant populations, including the Irish and Germans. In the south, police departments had their origins in slave patrols that dated back to the early eighteenth century. In both regions, the formation of police stemmed more from a need to control populations that elites saw as disorderly than from a need to control crime in general.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Controlling Rowdy Denver</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>In this context, public police were seen as a necessity for maintaining order in towns that sprang up in freshly colonized Western territories. During the chaotic <a href="https://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/colorado-gold-rush"><strong>Colorado Gold Rush</strong></a> of 1858–59, thousands of white immigrants streamed into the area that became <a href="/article/denver"><strong>Denver</strong></a>. Saloons, brothels, and gambling dens riddled the fledgling city; brawls and shootouts were common, and gamblers won and lost entire blocks of the early town in card games. As in many of the earliest white settlements in the West, vigilantes and <a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/lynching-colorado"><strong>lynch mobs</strong></a> carried out “frontier justice” before the arrival of governments, police, and courts.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>When Denver was chartered in 1859, its first leaders sought to get a handle on the rough-and-tumble settlement. They commissioned Wilson E. “Bill” Sisty as a marshal—the city’s first law enforcement officer—for the joint settlements of Denver, <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/auraria-west-denver"><strong>Auraria</strong></a>, and Highland. One of Sisty’s first jobs was to punish Denver’s first official murderer, John Stoeffel, who had shot his brother-in-law over a bag of gold dust (such crimes were common in early Denver). Sisty carried out Stoeffel’s sentence—death by hanging. After five months on the job, Sisty abruptly resigned for reasons unknown.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>1860s–70s: A “well regulated and judicious police system”</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>While the marshals did Denver’s first police work, the new city’s charter gave the city council power “to establish, regulate and support night-watch and police, and define the powers and duties of the same.” In January 1860, inaugural mayor <strong>J. C. Moore</strong> directed the new city council to establish a “well regulated and judicious police system.” That year, P. P. Wilcox was elected the city’s first police magistrate, a role similar to today’s police chief. In 1862 the city hired George E. Thornton as its first police chief, and the force got its trademark star badges two years later.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>The first Denver Police headquarters was on Market Street near Fifteenth Street, a location chosen on account of its proximity to many brothels, gambling dens, and other common sites of criminal activity. In its early years, the Denver Police were largely concerned with thieves, drunks, street violence, and prostitutes (the city passed prostitution ordinances in the 1860s and 1870s, stepped up its red-light enforcement in the 1880s, and eventually banned the sex trade outright in 1913).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>In 1873 Denver remodeled its police department along the lines of New York City’s, giving its officers standard badges and uniforms. By 1874 the department had thirteen officers, all of whom were listed in the <em>Denver Daily Times</em>. Operating out of a new headquarters at 1517 Lawrence Street, the force was split between day and night shifts.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>1880s: Standardization and Growth</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>Colorado joined the Union in 1876, and the state’s reinvigorated mining industry made Denver into a booming city during the 1880s. By 1881 the police department had grown to “fifteen regulars and eleven specials,” in addition to the chief and a sergeant, patrolling a city of more than 35,000. This included the city’s first black police officer, <strong>Isaac Brown</strong>, hired in April 1880. The department was now operating more like its contemporaries across the nation, conducting investigations, raiding brothels and opium dens (its first racially targeted anti-vice activity), and making thousands of arrests per year. On May 5, 1881, the police department held its first annual ball, a popular and much-anticipated event in many cities.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>While they often harassed the <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/denver%E2%80%99s-chinatown"><strong>Chinese community</strong></a> for its opium use, the Denver Police were instrumental in protecting Chinese from <strong>a white riot</strong> on October 31, 1880. Riding a wave of anti-Chinese <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/populism-colorado"><strong>populism</strong></a> that swept the West at the time, a huge mob of white Denverites descended on Chinatown, burning buildings, smashing goods and property, and beating up Chinese citizens, including one who died from his wounds. That day, Mayor <strong>Richard Sopris</strong> made an emergency appointment of <strong>Dave Cook</strong>, the city marshal, as Denver Police chief. Cook’s officers, along with hundreds of emergency-deputized citizens, eventually drove the white mob out of Chinatown.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>The next year, one of the earliest accusations of brutality against the department came in an anonymous letter to the <em>Great West </em>newspaper. Denver officer Jim Connors allegedly “jerked” local farmer John Wolff out of his wagon, “pounded him on the ground, took his valuables,” and then “broke Wolff’s nose with his club”—all because Wolff apparently “did not start his team from a watering place quite quick enough.” Wolff was later released and had his valuables returned, but the letter opined that “the policeman deserves to be made to pay a heavy fine, and to serve a term in prison.”</p>&#13; &#13; <p>In 1886, with the city’s population fast approaching 100,000, the Denver Police started using patrol wagons for multiple suspects and installed a system of call boxes so officers could be more quickly dispatched across the city. As raids on brothels increased during the decade, the department hired its first matron, <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/sadie-likens"><strong>Sadie Likens</strong></a>, in 1888 to look after female prisoners.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>1900–20: Corruption, Consolidation, and Crackdowns</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>The Denver Police became known for violence and corruption under chief Michael A. Delaney, who held the post in 1894–95 and 1904–08. The local <em>News Free Press </em>labeled the chief an “official anarchist” who had not only “assaulted scores of prisoners” but also “used his power to extort graft” from criminals and “played favorites” in enforcing the law. In 1905 it was discovered that Delaney, a Democrat, had played a major role in a voter fraud scheme to benefit the Democratic Party in the previous year’s election. Nevertheless, Delaney remained chief, but later resigned in 1908 amid public pressure from his broad-daylight beating of a man who turned out to be innocent. Delaney was eventually indicted for taking money from “red light denizens” while serving as police chief.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>The department looked ahead to brighter days in 1909, when it celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. Delaney’s disastrous tenure even prompted some calls for reform. In June 1912, investigative journalist <strong>George Creel</strong> was appointed as Denver police commissioner and sought to end the force’s use of billy clubs. Yet most residents worried more about disorder than police violence, so Creel’s proposal was never enacted.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>By the 1910s, the Denver Police force had grown to more than 200 officers and became more organized with the administrative reforms of the Progressive Era. Formal police training began during this era, stemming from August Vollmer’s pioneer 1908 training program in Berkeley, California. An Army veteran-turned-cop, Vollmer was one of many reformers who believed the police should function more like a military unit to achieve better discipline and maximum efficiency. Overall, police departments during this period adopted their now-familiar rank hierarchy (with associated pay grades) as well as mounted patrols.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>The 1910s also saw the Denver Police grappling with labor disturbances and the increased popularity and danger of the automobile. During the <a href="/article/western-federation-miners"><strong>Western Federation of Miners</strong></a> strike against the <strong>American Smelting and Refining Company</strong> in 1903, dozens of Denver officers were called in to protect company property, with one sustaining an eye injury. Later, in the wake of a violent <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/denver-tramway-strike-1920"><strong>Tramway Strike</strong></a> in 1920—during which the state militia was called to assist the city police—the department added 100 more officers. Meanwhile, the department’s first traffic division was formed in 1910; it consisted of the largest officers on the force so they would be easily seen in traffic.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>1920s: Ku Klux Cops</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>In the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan experienced a national revival amid broad anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic sentiments, and new populations of southern blacks in northern (and western) cities due to the <strong>Great Migration</strong>. In Colorado, noted Klan members included Governor <strong>Clarence J. Morley</strong>, Denver mayor <strong>Benjamin F. Stapleton</strong>, and nearly two dozen Denver Police officers, including chief William Candlish.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>A former state senator from <a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/leadville"><strong>Leadville</strong></a>, Candlish was appointed by Stapleton in 1924 and quickly turned the department against the city’s growing population of immigrants and ethnic minorities. In October, for instance, he issued an order to “oust all white girls from establishments of any kind owned and operated by Greeks, Japanese and Chinese within the city.” Despite such xenophobic policies, the Klan’s power at this time stemmed from institutional influence and intimidation more than outright violence. Its power in Colorado was also short lived. In June 1925, Colorado Klan leader John Galen Locke was arrested for tax evasion, and the group began a steady decline nationwide. Forced to renounce his Klan ties, Mayor Stapleton fired Candlish.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Prohibition and Effects on Policing</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>Meanwhile, much of the Denver Police’s day-to-day operations were consumed by the enforcement of prohibition. Owing to the heavy demands of policing a widespread black market in booze, Denver added hundreds of new officers, including its first accredited female officer, <strong>Edith Barker</strong>. To assist police efforts, lawmakers in Colorado (and elsewhere) essentially gave police free reign, resulting in a sharp increase in excessive force incidents, brutal interrogations, and warrantless searches and wiretaps.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>However, the increase in police power during this time did not translate into a decrease in criminal activity, especially in black-market liquor. Instead, bootleggers became more sophisticated, deadlier, and wealthier. Heavily armed mobsters, such as associates of the <strong>Smaldones</strong> and the <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/carlino-brothers"><strong>Carlino Brothers</strong></a>, shot at each other and the police in broad daylight, or led police on deadly automobile chases. This led to a kind of arms race between major bootleggers and the police; for instance, the Denver Police began using armored cars with mounted machine guns at this time, foreshadowing the continued militarization of police throughout the twentieth century. Meanwhile, criminal wealth led to police corruption, as dozens of officers took bribes to look away from illegal liquor activity.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Although prohibition ended in 1933, the Denver Police Department did not downsize, but rather settled into its newly expanded power. Unfortunately, corruption and abuse—two huge hangovers from prohibition—continued to plague the Denver Police throughout the twentieth century and to the present, even as the department continued its work to improve public safety in the city.</p>&#13; </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-author--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-author.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-author.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-author field--type-entity-reference field--label-above" id="id-field-author"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-author">Author</div> <div class='field__items'> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-author"><a href="/author/encyclopedia-staff" hreflang="und">Encyclopedia Staff</a></div> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-keyword--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-keyword.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-keyword.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-keyword field--type-entity-reference field--label-above" id="id-field-keyword"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-keyword">Keywords</div> <div class='field__items'> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/denver-police" hreflang="en">denver police</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/history-denver-police" hreflang="en">history of denver police</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/denver-police-history" hreflang="en">denver police history</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/colorado-police-history" hreflang="en">colorado police history</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/saloons" hreflang="en">saloons</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/brothels" hreflang="en">brothels</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/red-light-district" hreflang="en">red light district</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/early-denver-history" hreflang="en">early denver history</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/police-brutality" hreflang="en">police brutality</a></div> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'links__node' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * links--node.html.twig x links--inline.html.twig * links--node.html.twig * links.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/navigation/links--inline.html.twig' --> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/navigation/links--inline.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-references-html--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-references-html.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-references-html.html.twig * field--text-long.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-references-html field--type-text-long field--label-above" id="id-field-references-html"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-references-html">References</div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-references-html"><p>William G. Bailey, “<a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Historical_Dictionary_of_Law_Enforcement/wIf5w6BJOmQC?hl=en&amp;gbpv=1&amp;dq=%22denver+police%22&amp;pg=PA91&amp;printsec=frontcover">Denver Police Department</a>,” in <em>The Encyclopedia of Police Science</em>, ed. William G. Bailey, 1995.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>“<a href="https://www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org/?a=d&amp;d=CFT18760803.2.66&amp;srpos=24&amp;e=-------en-20--21-byDA-img-txIN%7ctxCO%7ctxTA-%22denver+police%22-------0--">City and Vicinity</a>,” <em>Colorado Daily Chieftain</em>, August 3, 1876.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>“<a href="https://www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org/?a=d&amp;d=THD19120818-01.2.40&amp;srpos=27&amp;e=-------en-20--21-byDA-img-txIN%7ctxCO%7ctxTA-%22Denver+police%22+%22brutality%22-------0--">A Clubless Police Force</a>,” <em>Herald Democrat</em>, August 18, 1912.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>“<a href="https://www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org/?a=d&amp;d=LWH18810507-01.2.28&amp;srpos=49&amp;e=-------en-20--41-byDA-img-txIN%7ctxCO%7ctxTA-%22denver+police%22-------0--">Colorado Condensations</a>,” <em>Weekly Herald</em>, May 7, 1881.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>“<a href="https://www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org/?a=d&amp;d=NFP19080522-01&amp;e=--1900---1960--en-20--61-byDA-img-txIN%7ctxCO%7ctxTA-%22delaney%22+%22denver+police%22-------0--">Delaney a Practical Anarchist</a>,” <em>News Free Press</em>, May 22, 1908.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>“<a href="https://www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org/?a=d&amp;d=TRJ19080508.2.110&amp;srpos=57&amp;e=--1900---1960--en-20--41-byDA-img-txIN%7ctxCO%7ctxTA-%22delaney%22+%22denver+police%22-------0--">Denver Police Chief Resigns</a>,” <em>Record Journal </em>(Douglas County), May 8, 1908.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>“<a href="https://www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org/?a=d&amp;d=DMF19091225-01.2.17&amp;srpos=64&amp;e=--1900---1960--en-20--61-byDA-img-txIN%7ctxCO%7ctxTA-%22delaney%22+%22denver+police%22-------0--">Denver’s Police System Is 50 Years Old This Week</a>,” <em>Denver Municipal Facts</em>, December 25, 1909.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>“<a href="https://www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org/?a=d&amp;d=TTJ19120905.2.50&amp;srpos=66&amp;e=--1900---1960--en-20--61-byDA-img-txIN%7ctxCO%7ctxTA-%22delaney%22+%22denver+police%22-------0--">Former Denver Police Chief Indicted by Grand Jury</a>,” <em>Telluride Journal</em>, September 5, 1912.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Julian Go, “<a href="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/708464">The Imperial Origins of American Policing: Militarization and Imperial Feedback in the Early 20th Century</a>,” <em>American Journal of Sociology</em> 125, no. 5 (2020).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>“<a href="https://www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org/?a=d&amp;d=THD19050305-01.2.4&amp;srpos=14&amp;e=--1900---1960--en-20--1-byDA-img-txIN%7ctxCO%7ctxTA-%22delaney%22+%22denver+police%22-------0--">He Scores ‘Big Mitt:’ Waldron’s Close and Careful Analysis of Denver’s Political Corruption</a>,” <em>Herald Democrat</em>, March 5, 1905.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>“<a href="https://denverpolicemuseum.org/history/history-facts/">History and Facts</a>,” Denver Police Museum, n.d.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>“<a href="https://www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org/?a=d&amp;d=RMW18591214.2.2&amp;e=-------en-20--1-byDA-img-txIN%7ctxCO%7ctxTA-%22charter%22+%22auraria%22-------0--">Laws of the Provisional Government of the Territory of Jefferson: An Act to Charter and Consolidate the Towns of Denver, Auraria, and Highland</a>,” <em>Rocky Mountain News</em>, December 14, 1859.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Shawn Lay, ed., <em>The Invisible Empire in the West: Toward a New Historical Appraisal of the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s</em> (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2004).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Jan MacKell, <em>Red Light Women of the Rocky Mountains</em> (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2009).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>“<a href="https://www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org/?a=d&amp;d=RMW18600125.2.13&amp;srpos=8&amp;e=-------en-20--1-byDA-img-txIN%7ctxCO%7ctxTA-%22police%22-------0--">Mayor’s Message</a>,” <em>Rocky Mountain News</em>, January 25, 1860.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Leonard Moore, “<a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/police-brutality-in-the-United-States-2064580">Police Brutality in the United States</a>,” <em>Encyclopedia Britannica</em>, updated June 4, 2020.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>“<a href="https://www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org/?a=d&amp;d=CLM18810129-01.2.15&amp;srpos=37&amp;e=-------en-20--21-byDA-img-txIN%7ctxCO%7ctxTA-%22denver+police%22-------0--">Ollapodrida</a>,” <em>Colorado Miner</em>, January 29, 1881.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>“<a href="https://www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org/?a=d&amp;d=GTW18810626-01.2.5&amp;srpos=54&amp;e=-------en-20--41-byDA-img-txIN%7ctxCO%7ctxTA-%22denver+police%22-------0--">An Outrage</a>,” <em>Great West</em>, June 26, 1881.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Dr. Gary Potter, “<a href="https://ekuonline.eku.edu/sites/plsonline.eku.edu/files/the-history-of-policing-in-us.pdf">The History of Policing in the United States</a>,” Eastern Kentucky University, n.d.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Byron Reed, “<a href="https://www.9news.com/article/news/the-denver-police-department-has-a-history-of-hiring-black-officers-dating-back-to-the-late-1800s/73-4edde5e6-840a-491a-8061-358d27eab2b5">Denver Police Department Has a History of Hiring Black Officers Dating Back to the Late 1800s</a>,” 9News, February 11, 2019.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Ted Richthofen, <a href="http://digital.auraria.edu/IR00000098/00001"><em>A People’s History of Alcohol Prohibition in Colorado: Labor, Class, Gender, and Moral Reform 1916–1933</em></a>, undergraduate thesis, Metropolitan State University, 2019.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>“<a href="https://www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org/?a=d&amp;d=LMR19050125-01.2.11&amp;srpos=3&amp;e=--1900---1960--en-20--1-byDA-img-txIN%7ctxCO%7ctxTA-%22delaney%22+%22denver+police%22-------0--">The Assembly and the Denver Frauds</a>,” <em>Lamar Register</em>, January 25, 1905.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>“<a href="https://www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org/?a=d&amp;d=ADT19250609.2.16&amp;srpos=86&amp;e=--1920---1930--en-20--81-byDA-img-txIN%7ctxCO%7ctxTA-%22john+galen+locke%22-------0--">The Grand Dragon Under Arrest</a>,” <em>Aspen Daily Times</em>, June 9, 1925.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>“<a href="https://www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org/?a=d&amp;d=DTM18740305.2.130&amp;srpos=13&amp;e=-------en-20--1-byDA-img-txIN%7ctxCO%7ctxTA-%22denver+police%22-------0--">The Police</a>,” <em>Denver Daily Times</em>, March 5, 1874.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Cheryl Siebert Waite, <a href="http://digital.auraria.edu/AA00002143/00001"><em>Denver’s Disorderly Women: Prostitution and the Sex Trade, 1858 to 1935</em></a>, master’s thesis, University of Colorado–Denver, 2006.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>James Walsh, “Vagrancy Laws in Colorado History,” <em>Colorado Heritage</em>, March/April 2016.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Robert Weller, “<a href="https://apnews.com/2cbb976bd9417e46018fbe4fe2b39fde">Scandals Spotlight Denver Police</a>,” <em>Associated Press</em>, March 24, 2000.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>“<a href="https://www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org/?a=d&amp;d=ADT19241002&amp;e=--1920---1930--en-20--1-byDA-img-txIN%7ctxCO%7ctxTA-%22candlish%22-------0--">Why Not Throw Out the Greeks and Chinamen?</a>” <em>Aspen Daily Times, </em>October 2, 1924.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>“<a href="https://www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org/?a=d&amp;d=RPA19240313-01.2.95&amp;srpos=11&amp;e=--1920---1930--en-20--1-byDA-img-txIN%7ctxCO%7ctxTA-%22candlish%22-------0--">William Candlish Will Be New Chief Of Police in Denver</a>,” <em>Republican-Advocate</em>, March 13, 1924.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Carroll D. Wright, <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.li3h4y&amp;view=1up&amp;seq=23&amp;q1=Denver"><em>Labor Disturbances in the State of Colorado, from 1880 to 1904</em></a> (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1905).</p>&#13; </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-additional-information-htm--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-additional-information-htm.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-additional-information-htm.html.twig * field--text-long.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-additional-information-htm field--type-text-long field--label-above" id="id-field-additional-information-htm"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-additional-information-htm">Additional Information</div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-additional-information-htm"><p><a id="_Hlk48830448" name="_Hlk48830448"></a><a href="https://www.denvergov.org/Government/Departments/Police-Department">Denver Police Department</a>.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Denver Police Department, “<a href="https://www.denvergov.org/content/dam/denvergov/Portals/720/documents/DPD_Decade_of_Achievement.pdf">Denver Police Department, 2002–2010: A Decade of Achievement</a>,” 2010.</p>&#13; &#13; <p><a id="_Hlk48830453" name="_Hlk48830453"></a><a href="https://denverpolicemuseum.org/">Denver Police Museum</a>.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Marjorie Hornbein, “Three Governors in a Day,” in <em>Western Voices: 125 Years of Colorado Writing</em>, ed. Steve Grinstead and Ben Fogelberg (Golden, CO: Fulcrum, 2004).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Lisa McGirr, <em>The War on Alcohol: Prohibition and the Rise of the American State</em> (New York: W. W. Norton, 2016).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Melinda Pearson, “<a href="https://frontporchne.com/article/who-was-ben-stapleton/">Who Was Ben Stapleton?</a>” <em>Front Porch </em>(Denver), October 1, 2017.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Eugene Frank Rider, <em>The Denver Police Department: An Administrative, Organizational, and Operational History, 1858–1905</em> (Denver: University of Denver, 1977).</p>&#13; </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> Mon, 25 Jan 2021 22:34:17 +0000 yongli 3490 at http://coloradoencyclopedia.org The Denver Police Department since 1933 http://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/denver-police-department-1933 <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--title--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--title.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--title.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">The Denver Police Department since 1933</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--uid--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--uid.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--uid.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'username' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> <span lang="" about="/users/yongli" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="">yongli</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--created--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--created.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'time' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/time.html.twig' --> <time datetime="2021-01-25T14:39:18-07:00" title="Monday, January 25, 2021 - 14:39" class="datetime">Mon, 01/25/2021 - 14:39</time> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/time.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'addtoany_standard' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * addtoany-standard--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * addtoany-standard--node.html.twig x addtoany-standard.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/addtoany/templates/addtoany-standard.html.twig' --> <span class="a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_32 addtoany_list" data-a2a-url="http://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/denver-police-department-1933" data-a2a-title="The Denver Police Department since 1933"><a class="a2a_dd addtoany_share" href="https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=http%3A%2F%2Fcoloradoencyclopedia.org%2Farticle%2Fdenver-police-department-1933&amp;title=The%20Denver%20Police%20Department%20since%201933"></a><a class="a2a_button_facebook"></a><a class="a2a_button_twitter"></a><a class="a2a_button_email"></a></span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/addtoany/templates/addtoany-standard.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--body--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--body.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--body.html.twig * field--text-with-summary.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item" id="id-body"><p>The Denver Police Department is the primary law enforcement apparatus for the city of <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/denver"><strong>Denver</strong></a>. Officially formed in 1859 as a small group of marshals, today’s Denver Police Department consists of more than 1,500 officers in sixteen units active in a metropolitan community of more than 620,000 residents. Its headquarters is located at 1331 N. Cherokee Street. As of 2020, Paul Pazen serves as chief.</p><p>In its <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/denver-police-department-1859%E2%80%931933"><strong>early days</strong></a>, the Denver Police Department focused on bringing order to a fledgling city filled with drunks and prostitutes. In the early twentieth century, Denver’s explosive growth and changing demographics produced a gradual shift in police activity, from general maintenance of order to more targeted policing of specific groups and activities. The department grew in size and power during both the <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/progressive-era-colorado"><strong>Progressive Era</strong></a> (1900–20) and <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/prohibition"><strong>alcohol prohibition</strong></a> (1916–33). These years established the Denver Police—as well as American police more generally—as predominantly a force for social and cultural control, in addition to capturing criminals.</p><p>Since then, the Denver Police has provided justice for many victims, offered many residents a sense of security, and had innumerable positive encounters with citizens. However, the department today continues to grapple with many of the problems of its past, especially the erosion of community trust stemming from continuous instances of police-citizen violence and discriminatory practices. These have continued despite ongoing efforts at reform, from both within and outside the department.</p><h2>Prohibition Hangovers</h2><p>Before alcohol prohibition, police corruption and abuse of power occurred infrequently and on a much smaller scale than they did during and after. During prohibition, the massive scale of illegal booze activity necessitated an equally massive beefing-up of law enforcement. To drive the vice of drink from the land, lawmakers in Colorado and elsewhere essentially gave police free reign, resulting in a sharp increase in abuses. Corruption also increased during prohibition, as wealthy criminals paid dozens of officers to look away from their illegal liquor activities.</p><p>Although prohibition ended in 1933, the large police forces created to enforce it remained, and the abuses and corruption that became rampant in an era of expanding police power continued. Unfortunately, these hangovers from prohibition continued to plague the Denver Police Department throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.</p><h2>New Station, New City</h2><p>In 1939 the Denver Police moved to a new headquarters, a three-story Art Deco building at Thirteenth and Champa Streets. The building was built by the federal Works Progress Administration during the <a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/new-deal-colorado"><strong>New Deal</strong></a>. The new police station was not the only new thing about Denver at the time. The <strong>Great Depression</strong> had brought an end to the mining economy that had previously driven the city’s growth. In its place, Denver developed a multifaceted economy based largely on agriculture and manufacturing, with <a href="/content/great-western-sugar-company"><strong>Great Western Sugar</strong></a><strong> </strong>and <strong>Gates Rubber </strong>among the city’s leading businesses.</p><p>Into this new economy came new people. More African Americans arrived from the South, turning the <a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/five-points"><strong>Five Points</strong></a> neighborhood into a thriving Black community. Latino came from Mexico or other parts of the United States to work jobs in factories or sugar beet fields; they formed communities along the <a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/south-platte-river"><strong>South Platte River</strong></a>, near today’s Lower<strong> Downtown Denver</strong>. The percentage of Denver’s population born in Mexico increased from .3 percent in 1910 (about 275 individuals) to 3.9 percent by 1940 (about 950 individuals)—not including those of Mexican descent who came from other states. Altogether, Denver’s population surged from just over 133,000 in 1900 to more than 320,000 by 1940. The growth of the city’s nonwhite working class would continue over the ensuing decades, prompting a shift in police activity that was largely driven by laws and perceptions crafted by Denver’s elite.</p><h2>Postwar Policing</h2><p>In the 1940s, Latino residents faced blatant discrimination in housing, employment, and policing. The city used the formation of Latino gangs as an excuse to pass broad vagrancy laws that criminalized all young Latino people. For instance, young people were banned from congregating outside pool halls and other popular places, which gave officers cover for excessively policing young Latino groups. Between 1945 and 1954, Latino residents represented 31 percent of those arrested for vagrancy, even though they made up only 10 percent of the city’s population.</p><p>This racialized policing continued over the next few decades and ultimately sowed resentment and distrust toward the police in many Denver communities.</p><h2>1960s–70s: Years of Unrest</h2><p>Trust in the Denver Police was further undermined in 1961, when detective Arthur “Art” Dill uncovered a ring of thieves within the department. Overall, fifty-four officers were arrested for a string of burglaries from 1954 to 1962. The saga was detailed by one of the officers, Art Winstanley, in his 2009 autobiography, <em>Burglars in Blue</em>.</p><p>Statistics do not tell a complete story of crime, but FBI data indicate a sharp rise in violent crime in Colorado in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This period also saw frequent peaceful demonstrations for civil rights, as well as many urban protests against systemic poverty in communities of color. George L. Seaton, Denver’s Police Chief from 1968 to 1972, remembered the 1960s as a time of “social catharsis” brought on by decades of inequality—“and in the middle of that ‘catharsis,’” Seaton wrote, “was the American policeman who dealt with . . . the violence, hatred, frustration, rage of American citizens too long denied the American Dream.”</p><p>Seaton led a department in a city that was 11 percent Black and 25 percent nonwhite, but where only 2 percent of police were Black and 1.6 percent were Latino. Art Dill, who succeeded Seaton as chief in 1972, tried to rectify that, bringing those percentages up to 6 and 13, respectively, by the time he retired in 1983. It did not help, however, that Dill inherited a department that according to two police historians, held “ass kicking” as a “hallowed tradition, especially with respect to minorities.” In predominantly Black communities such as <strong>Park Hill</strong>, for example, a 1967 police-community relations program instructed Black youth to cooperate with all police search requests of vehicles—an unnecessary level of compliance never expected of the city’s white youth.</p><p>Against this backdrop of rising crime, national unrest, and local distrust, the 1960s and 1970s were a period of intense mutual hostility between the Denver Police and the communities where it was most active. The police especially antagonized—and were antagonized by—members of the Crusade for Justice, a Chicano (Mexican American) activist group formed by <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/rodolfo-"><strong>Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales</strong></a> in 1966, and the <strong>Denver Black Panther Party</strong> (BPP), a militant Black rights group formed by <strong>Lauren Watson</strong> in 1967. The organizations formed to resist the discrimination endured by communities of color in housing, education, employment, and especially policing. Throughout the heated street encounters of these decades, members of both groups often used or threatened violence against the police as well. In March 1973, for instance, a street confrontation between Crusade for Justice members and Denver Police escalated <strong>into a shootout</strong> that seriously wounded several officers and killed twenty-year-old Luis Martinez.</p><p>In addition to overpolicing racial minorities, the police were also active in the culture wars of the times. The mostly conservative Denver Police and city officials made no secret of their general disdain for a younger generation that embraced far different norms of dress and behavior and was constantly agitating for civil rights and protesting the Vietnam War. This led the police to profile and target young people—predominantly young, college-aged whites—as “hippies.” For example, in 1970 officers attempted raids on a music venue and health clinic popular among young people, with Chief Seaton telling <em>The Denver Post</em> that “hippie pads” were home to “nothing but degeneration.”</p><p>The department policed other cultural lines as well. Veteran gay rights activists recall the Denver Police tricking gay men into admitting homosexual activity, then arresting them for it. As they did in earlier arrests of Latino youth, the police used a city ordinance—the Lewd Acts Ordinance, which criminalized homosexuality—to expedite the arrests of LGBT individuals. Activists got the ordinance repealed in 1973.</p><h2>1980s–2000s: Spy Files, Crackdowns, and Attempts at Reform</h2><p>Despite sustained community resistance and several attempts at reform, the Denver Police Department maintained its reputation for stoking community distrust into the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. From the 1950s through the 1990s, the department secretly collected information on more than 3,200 groups and individuals—most of whom were neither known nor suspected criminals. Denver Police continued targeting activists of color, including members of the <strong>American Indian Movement</strong>, on whom the department spied from 1986 to 2002 despite no evidence of criminal activity.</p><p>In 1993, after a series of violent episodes led the media to proclaim a “Summer of Violence,” the Colorado legislature passed a set of harsh sentencing laws and Denver Police established a forty-three-member “gang unit,” which worked with existing state and federal units focused on gangs. These units disproportionately targeted Latino and Black communities, where citizens repeatedly complained about a rash of unpunished police beatings, killings, and weapon brandishing; they also told researchers and interviewers that gang squads made their communities considerably less safe.</p><p>In 2000 Mayor <strong>Wellington Webb</strong> hired Gerald Whitman as police chief. An eighteen-year veteran of the department with a clean, impressive record, Whitman held the post for eleven years, making him the longest-serving chief in Denver Police history. He was given the job in part to bring change to a department that was experiencing high rates of turnover and low morale in the wake of its latest scandal, a no-knock SWAT raid at the wrong address that killed Ismael Mena, a forty-five-year-old Mexican national. One of Whitman’s first initiatives was to form a Clergy Advisory Team made up of local community leaders. He also reshuffled Denver Police leadership, created more training programs, and overhauled the department’s use-of-force policy in hopes of avoiding more unnecessary shootings.</p><p>Whitman’s reform efforts angered many longtime officers who felt that the chief was making their jobs more complicated and difficult. Part of the problem, according to one former officer, was an internal culture of violating citizens’ constitutional rights. Media reports based on internal sources referred to this set of unofficial (and potentially illegal) practices as “The Denver Way.”</p><p>Whitman’s tenure as chief was generally lauded by politicians and many citizens, even if his reforms did not stop police violence. “The Denver Way” prevailed on the street, and Denver Police continued to be plagued by use-of-force scandals. In 2011 newly elected Mayor <a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/michael-hancock"><strong>Michael Hancock</strong></a> praised Whitman for his reforms but still replaced the city’s longest-serving chief with Robert C. White, another reform-minded chief whom Hancock sought to continue Whitman’s legacy.</p><h2>Today: Protests, Response, and Reform</h2><p>By the 2010s, the Denver Police were entrenched in a cycle common to police departments in other US metropolitan areas: the police would kill a person of color under questionable circumstances, protests and calls for justice and reform would follow, and then the cycle would go on, with or without justice or reforms. In particular, the 2015 killings of Jessica Hernandez, a teenager, and Paul Castaway, who was mentally ill, prompted fresh criticism of the department.</p><p>A year later, Denver allocated nearly $1.8 million for body cameras for its police department as a reform tool intended to provide clear evidence of either police misconduct or threats to officers. After all Denver officers were required to wear body cameras in 2017, the department reported that fifty-three officers were disciplined that year for failing to use them. Transparency issues, such as delays in release of footage or incomplete release of footage, hamstrung the efficacy of body cameras over the next few years.</p><p>In late May 2020, the graphic, highly publicized video of George Floyd’s killing at the hands of a police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota, sparked a <strong>historic wave of protests</strong> against police brutality across the nation. In Denver, protesters crowded streets for nearly two weeks, demanding police accountability and reform, as well as funding cuts to the police department. At one point, Denver Police chief Paul Pazen, who replaced White in 2018, marched with peaceful protesters in a show of solidarity.</p><p>However, in the first few days of demonstrations, police and protesters engaged in several violent altercations. Police as well as protesters and bystanders were injured. The city eventually settled a lawsuit with those injured during police response, and a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order against the department to limit its use of nonlethal weapons that had caused injury, such as tear gas and rubber bullets.</p><p>In the wake of the protests, Governor <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/jared-polis"><strong>Jared Polis</strong></a> signed into law a sweeping police reform bill that included a stricter body-camera mandate, struck down the state’s “fleeing felon” law (used by police to justify shooting fleeing suspects), made it easier to file lawsuits against individual officers, compelled police to report all uses of force, and allowed the state attorney general to investigate alleged patterns of abuse in police departments. The Denver Police Department has stated its support for these reforms and began implementing them in mid-2020; embattled chief Pazen has further stated his willingness to “reevaluate every single thing” at the department.</p></div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-author--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-author.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-author.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-author field--type-entity-reference field--label-above" id="id-field-author"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-author">Author</div> <div class='field__items'> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-author"><a href="/author/encyclopedia-staff" hreflang="und">Encyclopedia Staff</a></div> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-keyword--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-keyword.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-keyword.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-keyword field--type-entity-reference field--label-above" id="id-field-keyword"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-keyword">Keywords</div> <div class='field__items'> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/denver-police" hreflang="en">denver police</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/history-denver-police" hreflang="en">history of denver police</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/police-brutality" hreflang="en">police brutality</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/george-floyd-protests" hreflang="en">george floyd protests</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/social-justice" hreflang="en">social justice</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/activists" hreflang="en">activists</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/wellington-webb" hreflang="en">wellington webb</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/american-indian-movement" hreflang="en">american indian movement</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/crusade-justice" hreflang="en">Crusade for Justice</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/la-crusada-para-la-justicia" hreflang="en">la crusada para la justicia</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/black-panthers" hreflang="en">black panthers</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/lauren-watson" hreflang="en">lauren watson</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/paul-pazen" hreflang="en">paul pazen</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/michael-hancock" hreflang="en">michael hancock</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/denver-way" hreflang="en">the denver way</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/police-reform" hreflang="en">police reform</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/ismael-mena" hreflang="en">ismael mena</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/jessica-hernandez" hreflang="en">jessica hernandez</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/paul-castaway" hreflang="en">paul castaway</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/gerald-whitman" hreflang="en">gerald whitman</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/george-seaton" hreflang="en">george seaton</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/burglaries" hreflang="en">burglaries</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/police-crime" hreflang="en">police crime</a></div> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'links__node' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * links--node.html.twig x links--inline.html.twig * links--node.html.twig * links.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/navigation/links--inline.html.twig' --> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/navigation/links--inline.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-references-html--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-references-html.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-references-html.html.twig * field--text-long.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-references-html field--type-text-long field--label-above" id="id-field-references-html"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-references-html">References</div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-references-html"><p><a href="https://www.census.gov/prod/www/decennial.html">1910 US Census</a>.</p><p><a href="https://www.census.gov/prod/www/decennial.html">1940 US Census</a>.</p><p>Jake Bleiberg, “<a href="https://www.denverpost.com/2020/06/16/police-body-cameras-transparency/">Value of Police Body Cameras Limited by Lack of Transparency</a>,” <em>Associated Press</em>, June 16, 2020.</p><p>Summer Burke, “<a href="https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1017&amp;context=psi_sigma_siren">Community Control: Civil Rights Resistance in the Mile High City</a>,” <em>Psi Sigma Siren</em> (University of Nevada Las Vegas) 7, no. 1 (April 2011).</p><p>Center for Policing Equity, “<a href="https://policingequity.org/about/who-we-are">About</a>,” n.d.</p><p>Center for Policing Equity, “<a href="https://policingequity.org/about/history">History</a>,” n.d.</p><p>Denver Police Foundation, “<a href="https://www.denvergov.org/content/dam/denvergov/Portals/720/documents/DPD_Decade_of_Achievement.pdf">Denver Police Department, 2002–2010: A Decade of Achievement</a>,” 2010.</p><p>“<a href="https://coloradosun.com/2020/06/27/denver-george-floyd-protests-settlement/">Denver Reaches Agreement in Lawsuit Over Police Response to George Floyd Protests</a>,” <em>Associated Press</em> (<em>Colorado Sun</em>), June 27, 2020.</p><p>Disaster Center, “<a href="https://www.disastercenter.com/crime/cocrime.htm">Colorado Crime Rates 1960–2018</a>,” via Federal Bureau of Investigation Uniform Crime Reports, updated 2018.</p><p>Robert J. Durán, “Over-Inclusive Gang Enforcement and Urban Resistance: A Comparison Between Two Cities,” <em>Social Justice </em>36, no. 1, 2009.</p><p>Robert J. Durán, “Racism, Resistance, and Repression: The Creation of Denver Gangs, 1924–1950,” in <em>Enduring Legacies: Ethnic Histories and Cultures of Colorado, </em>ed. Artura J. Aldama, Elisa Facio, Daryl Maea, and Reiland Rabaka (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2010).</p><p>Jessica Fender, “<a href="https://www.denverpost.com/2011/09/01/defenders-step-up-for-denver-police-chief-whitman-as-he-prepares-to-step-down/">Defenders Step Up for Denver Police Chief Whitman as He Prepares to Step Down</a>,” <em>The Denver Post</em>, September 1, 2011.</p><p>“<a href="https://www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org/?a=d&amp;d=WMJ19611207-01.2.26&amp;srpos=1&amp;e=-------en-20--1--img-txIN%7ctxCO%7ctxTA-%22officer+sentenced%22+%22denver+police%22-------0--">Fifth Former Denver Police Officer Sentenced for Burglary in County</a>,” <em>Westminster Journal</em>, December 7, 1961.</p><p>Natasha Gardner, “<a href="https://www.5280.com/an-inside-look-at-the-denver-police-department/">An Inside Look at the Denver Police Department</a>,” <em>5280</em>, September 2015.</p><p>Natasha Gardner, “<a href="https://www.5280.com/was-1993s-summer-of-violence-really-so-violent/">Was 1993’s Summer of Violence Really So Violent?</a>” <em>5280</em>, December 6, 2011.</p><p>Liz Gelardi, “<a href="https://www.denver7.com/news/front-range/denver/denver-police-department-rolls-out-body-cameras-to-first-wave-of-officers">Denver Police Begin Wearing Body Cameras</a>,” CBS 4 Denver, January 7, 2016.</p><p>Shay Gonzales, “<a href="https://www.academia.edu/5497253/_CALM_stands_for_be_cool_man_A_Black_Citizen_s_Patrol_in_Denver">CALM Stands for ‘Be Cool, Man!’: A Black Citizen’s Patrol in Denver</a>,” Academia.edu, n.d.</p><p>Ted Robert Gurr, “<a href="https://www-jstor-org.ezproxy2.library.colostate.edu/stable/1147382?seq=30#metadata_info_tab_contents">Historical Trends in Violent Crime: A Critical Review of the Evidence</a>,” <em>Crime and Justice</em> 3 (1981).</p><p>Jeff Haanen, “<a href="https://www.denverinstitute.org/denvers-changing-economy-1/">Denver’s Changing Economy: A Five Minute History</a>,” Denver Institute for Faith and Work, May 12, 2016.</p><p>“<a href="https://www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org/?a=d&amp;d=CNK19701217-01.2.61&amp;srpos=2&amp;e=-------en-20--1--img-txIN%7ctxCO%7ctxTA-%22denver+police%22+%22hippies%22-------0--">Hip Help Offed</a>,” <em>Chinook</em> (Denver), December 17, 1970.</p><p>Matt Hoyer, “<a href="https://www.denverpost.com/2017/11/24/like-other-native-americans-paul-castaway-didnt-have-to-die-like-this/">Like Other Native Americans, Paul Castaway Didn’t Have to Die like This</a>,” <em>The Denver Post</em>, November 24, 2017.</p><p>Terge Langeland, “<a href="https://www.csindy.com/temporary_news/police-targeted-american-indians/article_93a3832c-97f3-5232-b6bb-3bcdfe6d5dd7.html">Police Targeted American Indians</a>,” <em>Colorado Springs Independent</em>, December 19, 2002.</p><p>Conor McCormick-Cavanaugh, “<a href="https://www.westword.com/news/denver-police-chief-reevaluate-department-11723489">Chief Paul Pazen Commits to “Re-evaluating Every Single Thing” at DPD</a>,” <em>Westword</em>, June 9, 2020.</p><p>Jeremy P. Meyer, “<a href="https://www.denverpost.com/2011/10/28/search-for-denvers-next-top-cop-kept-going-back-to-louisville/">Search for Denver’s Next Top Cop Kept Going Back to Louisville</a>,” <em>The Denver Post</em>, October 28, 2011.</p><p>Michael Miller, <em>Deep Nights: A True Tale of Love, Lust, Crime, and Corruption in the Mile High City</em> (Authorhouse, 2010).</p><p>Kirk Mitchell, “<a href="https://www.denverpost.com/2011/10/29/departing-denver-police-chief-proud-of-his-tenure-thought-media-coverage-was-unfair/">Departing Denver Police Chief Proud of His Tenure, Thought Media Coverage Was Unfair</a>,” <em>The Denver Post</em>, October 29, 2011.</p><p>Wilmer Nieves, “<a href="http://digital.auraria.edu/AA00006170/00001/citation">The Denver Economy: Its History, Economic Base, Regional Impact and Its Direction Into the Future</a>,” MA thesis, University of Colorado-Denver, 1978.</p><p>Thomas J. Noel, “<a href="https://digital.denverlibrary.org/digital/collection/p15330coll14/id/9">City and County of Denver Police Administration Building …</a>” Denver Public Library Digital Collections (Thomas J. Noel photograph collection), n.d.</p><p>Noelle Phillips, “<a href="https://www.denverpost.com/2017/10/23/denver-police-officers-fail-to-use-body-cameras/">Denver Police Boost Body Camera Training After Dozens of Officers Fail to Use Them</a>,” <em>The Denver Post</em>, October 23, 2017.</p><p>Maximillian Potter, “<a href="https://www.5280.com/the-chief-concern/">The Chief Concern: Police Chief Gerry Whitman Is Respected by Minsters and Reviled by His Own Cops. Should Denver Be Worried?</a>” <em>5280</em>, August 28, 2010.</p><p>George Seaton, “<a href="https://freerangelongmont.com/2011/07/09/outsider-absurd/">A New Police Chief for Denver—An Absurd Notion to Look ‘Outside’ the Department</a>,” <em>Free Range Longmont </em>(blog), July 9, 2011.</p><p>Allison Sherry, “<a href="https://www.cpr.org/2020/06/19/polis-signs-broad-police-accountability-and-reform-bill-into-law/">Polis Signs Broad Police Accountability and Reform Bill Into Law After Weeks of Protests</a>,” <em>Colorado Public Radio</em>, June 19, 2020.</p><p>Jerome H. Skolnick and David H. Bayley, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=VS2UYa38XFMC&amp;pg=PA119&amp;lpg=PA119&amp;dq=chief+art+dill+denver+police+policy&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=dEH2cwHEcM&amp;sig=ACfU3U34gPstlDiSY5JY0Ndcpi7lK6oxOQ&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=2ahUKEwip77Sn1KzrAhVHqp4KHTIyAjA4ChDoATAOegQIAxAB#v=onepage&amp;q=chief%20art%20dill%20denver%20police%20policy&amp;f=false"><em>The New Blue Line: Police Innovation in Six American Cities</em></a> (New York, NY: The Free Press, 1988).</p><p>Allison Sylte, “<a href="https://www.9news.com/article/news/local/denver-aclu-protest-lawsuit/73-228d4727-5e59-4e69-a047-9e4be0fc68a5">2nd Lawsuit Filed Against City and County of Denver for Use of Force Against Protesters</a>,” 9 News, June 25, 2020.</p><p>Art Winstanley, <em>Burglars in Blue </em>(Bloomington, IL: Author House, 2009).</p></div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-additional-information-htm--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-additional-information-htm.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-additional-information-htm.html.twig * field--text-long.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-additional-information-htm field--type-text-long field--label-above" id="id-field-additional-information-htm"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-additional-information-htm">Additional Information</div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-additional-information-htm"><p>ACLU Denver, “<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20091120125020/http:/www.aclu-co.org/spyfiles/samplefiles.htm">The Denver Police Spy Files</a>,” 2009.</p><p><a href="https://www.denvergov.org/Government/Departments/Police-Department">Denver Police Department</a>.</p><p><a href="https://denverpolicemuseum.org/">Denver Police Museum</a>.</p><p>Natasha Gardner, “<a href="https://www.5280.com/direct-fail/">Direct Fail</a>,” (feature on Colorado criminal justice and juvenile justice system) <em>5280</em>, December 2011.</p><p>Elise Schmelzer, “<a href="https://www.denverpost.com/2019/04/29/denver-police-paul-pazen-progressive-initiatives/">Denver Police Chief Paul Pazen Has Rolled Out a Series of New ‘Progressive’ Initiatives—Are They Working?</a>” <em>The Denver Post</em>, April 29, 2019.</p><p>Mort Stern, “What Makes a Policeman Go Wrong? An Ex-Member of the Force Traces the Steps on Way From Law Enforcement to Violating,” <em>Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology, and Police Science </em>53, no. 1 (March 1962).</p></div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> Mon, 25 Jan 2021 21:39:18 +0000 yongli 3489 at http://coloradoencyclopedia.org Prohibition http://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/prohibition <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--title--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--title.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--title.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Prohibition</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: x field--node--field-article-image--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-article-image.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-article-image.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--field-article-image--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div id="carouselEncyclopediaArticle" class="carousel slide" data-bs-ride="true"> <div class="carousel-inner"> <div class="carousel-item active"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'node' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * node--3296--article-detail-image.html.twig * node--3296.html.twig x node--image--article-detail-image.html.twig * node--image.html.twig * node--article-detail-image.html.twig * node.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/content/node--image--article-detail-image.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-encyclopedia-image--image.html.twig * field--node--field-encyclopedia-image.html.twig * field--node--image.html.twig * field--field-encyclopedia-image.html.twig * field--image.html.twig x field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-encyclopedia-image field--type-image field--label-hidden field__item"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'image_formatter' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/image-formatter.html.twig' --> <a href="/image/prohibition-still-near-greeley"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'image_style' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/image-style.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'image' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> <img loading="lazy" src="/sites/default/files/styles/wide/public/Prohibition-Media-1_0.jpg?itok=nrzmLm-W" width="1000" height="592" alt="" typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-wide" /> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/image-style.html.twig' --> </a> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/image-formatter.html.twig' --> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="carousel-caption d-none d-md-block"> <h5><a href="/image/prohibition-still-near-greeley" rel="bookmark"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--title--image.html.twig x field--node--title.html.twig * field--node--image.html.twig * field--title.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Prohibition, still near Greeley</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> </a></h5> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--body--image.html.twig * field--node--body.html.twig * field--node--image.html.twig * field--body.html.twig x field--text-with-summary.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--text-with-summary.html.twig' --> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>A group of men wearing suits and hats stand near a large still and barrels of liquor near Greeley (Weld County), Colorado. One man leans his arm on a pile of sacks with labels reading: "100 lbs, Cerelose, Product Refining Co., New York, U.S.A."</p> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--text-with-summary.html.twig' --> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/content/node--image--article-detail-image.html.twig' --> </div> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--field-article-image--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--uid--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--uid.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--uid.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'username' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> <span lang="" about="/users/yongli" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="">yongli</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--created--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--created.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'time' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/time.html.twig' --> <time datetime="2020-06-09T14:51:18-06:00" title="Tuesday, June 9, 2020 - 14:51" class="datetime">Tue, 06/09/2020 - 14:51</time> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/time.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'addtoany_standard' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * addtoany-standard--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * addtoany-standard--node.html.twig x addtoany-standard.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/addtoany/templates/addtoany-standard.html.twig' --> <span class="a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_32 addtoany_list" data-a2a-url="http://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/prohibition" data-a2a-title="Prohibition"><a class="a2a_dd addtoany_share" href="https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=http%3A%2F%2Fcoloradoencyclopedia.org%2Farticle%2Fprohibition&amp;title=Prohibition"></a><a class="a2a_button_facebook"></a><a class="a2a_button_twitter"></a><a class="a2a_button_email"></a></span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/addtoany/templates/addtoany-standard.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--body--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--body.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--body.html.twig * field--text-with-summary.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item" id="id-body"><p>Alcohol prohibition in Colorado (1916–33) was a <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/progressive-era-colorado"><strong>Progressive Era</strong></a> experiment, based on reform-minded and religious sentiments, to completely ban the sale and transport of alcohol. While the intention of reformers was to reduce violence, drunkenness, and crime, outlawing alcohol instead created more issues than had been anticipated.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Prohibition in Colorado predated national prohibition by four years, and ended only months before national prohibition was also repealed. As it was elsewhere, the prohibition era in Colorado was marked by a sharp increase in organized crime, public flouting of laws, black markets, law enforcement and government corruption, and a growing distrust of Progressive politics. Despite the failure of prohibition as a movement, it introduced the state to new social and economic opportunities for women and fundamentally changed the way the public drank alcohol.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Origins</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>During the <a href="/article/colorado-gold-rush"><strong>Colorado Gold Rush</strong></a> of 1858–59, most mining camps and early towns used saloons as places for government, suppliers, grocers, and other official functions. Later, saloons served as locations for labor union meetings, money caches, and places where immigrant miners could buy foreign-language newspapers. They were also hot spots for gambling, boxing, and prostitution.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Because the rough-and-tumble saloon scene was a feature of its early communities, Colorado soon saw a push for alcohol prohibition. Legal and moral arguments for the control of liquor existed as early as the mid-1860s, when Colorado was still a territory. Conscious of the region’s saloon culture, some towns were established as totally dry from the get-go, including the agrarian communities of <a href="/article/greeley"><strong>Greeley</strong></a> (<strong>Union Colony</strong>) and <a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/longmont-0"><strong>Longmont</strong></a> (<a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/chicago-colorado-colony"><strong>Chicago-Colorado Colony</strong></a>) in the early 1870s. However, the idea of turning the entire state dry did not gain traction until the end of the century. A state law passed in 1889 outlawed the sale or delivery of alcohol to American Indians. Further efforts to ban alcohol in the state followed this precedent and often corresponded with antiurban, anti-immigrant sentiments.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Building Support</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>In the late 1800s and early 1900s, reform-minded Progressives often saw alcohol as the source of many problems. There was a popular belief among prohibitionists that alcohol was a slippery slope: one sip could lead to a lifetime of physical and financial ruin. They believed that alcohol consumption led to labor unrest and moral degeneracy. Reformers saw saloon culture as a product of urbanization and immigration, and hoped to keep Colorado free from what they called “un-American” activities. Several leaders of the <strong>Women’s Christian Temperance Union</strong> (WCTU) were also prominent members of the <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/ku-klux-klan-colorado"><strong>Ku Klux Klan</strong></a> (KKK), and their stance on banning alcohol was based in strong anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic sentiments. They felt as if their frontier state were being overrun by unskilled foreign laborers whose taste for drink made them dangerous and unsettled.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Many of the antialcohol Progressives were also women with newly acquired voting rights, and they were especially concerned with drinkers and gamblers who left their families impoverished. Colorado men opposed the 1877 referendum on <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/womens-suffrage-movement"><strong>women’s suffrage</strong></a> out of fear that women would vote for prohibition. By the time women gained the right to vote in 1893, many men had changed their stance and had taken up the cause of prohibition as a quick fix for society’s ills. It was no longer a gendered issue but, rather, a unifying Progressive issue.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>As a step toward full prohibition, antialcohol Progressive voters first worked to make drinking a male-only activity, reinforced by strict Victorian ideas of womanhood. These sentiments led to a 1901 law that prohibited women from entering saloons, working in areas that served alcohol, or purchasing alcohol. When saloon owners challenged the law, arguing that it was at odds with women’s suffrage, it was upheld by the state and federal Supreme Courts.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>In 1907 the antiliquor campaigns of the WCTU and the <strong>Anti-Saloon League</strong> led to a state local-option law for prohibition, allowing cities to vote on whether to go dry. By 1909 <a href="/article/colorado-springs"><strong>Colorado Springs</strong></a>, <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/fort-collins"><strong>Fort Collins</strong></a>, <strong>Aurora</strong>, and Greeley used this law to ban alcohol within a mile of their borders.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>The biggest divide over the legality of alcohol was between rural towns and urban areas (including mining camps). Besides <a href="/article/denver"><strong>Denver</strong></a>, the strongest antiprohibition counties included <a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/teller-county"><strong>Teller</strong></a>, <a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/mineral-county"><strong>Mineral</strong></a>, <a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/la-plata-county"><strong>La Plata</strong></a>, <a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/ouray-county"><strong>Ouray</strong></a>, <a href="/article/chaffee-county"><strong>Chaffee</strong></a>, <a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/alamosa-county"><strong>Alamosa</strong></a>, and <a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/garfield-county"><strong>Garfield</strong></a>. All of these counties were home to major industrial centers, especially mining and <strong>smelting</strong> operations. They were also home to larger numbers of non-Protestants as well as higher numbers of immigrants than lived in the counties voting to go dry.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Prohibition Takes Effect</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>During the years leading up to prohibition, the WCTU, KKK, and Anti-Saloon League held several public demonstrations, toured the state with their campaign, spoke directly with lawmakers, campaigned door to door, and maintained a strong public presence to demand the banning of any and all alcohol. By 1914 the WCTU gathered enough signatures to get a prohibition referendum on the ballot. Donations from industrial leaders such as John D. Rockefeller, Jr., who gave large contributions to the WCTU and the Anti-Saloon League, aided the prohibitionist campaign, while a rise in anti-immigrant sentiment at the start of <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/colorado-world-war-i"><strong>World War I</strong></a> stoked suspicions that German American brewers were leading an anti-American conspiracy. The culture of alcohol remained strong in Colorado, but there was not an organized campaign to keep it legal, and it was instead overpowered by the famous Progressive drive to “organize and agitate.” Called Measure 2, the prohibition referendum passed on November 3 with 52 percent of the vote.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>On January 1, 1916, statewide prohibition of alcohol went into effect, four years before the federal Volstead Act brought prohibition to the entire country. The Volstead Act used language similar to the earlier Colorado prohibition referendum. For example, both defined “intoxicating liquor” as any beverage containing more than 0.5 percent alcohol. Both laws also banned the sale and transport of all alcohol, even for religious purposes. Thousands of breweries and saloons went out of business in Colorado, and many others scrambled to convert to soft drink parlors. By 1917 statewide prohibition had closed as many as 1,615 saloons and 17 breweries in the Denver area alone.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Enforcement and Corruption</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>As in most states during prohibition, the problems of enforcing an alcohol ban became obvious within the first year of the law. Aside from closing cultural hot spots and other businesses that served and sold alcohol, dry laws quickly proved difficult to enforce, especially on individual citizens. Early on, Governor <strong>William Ellery Sweet</strong> appointed “dry agents” who routinely broke civil liberty laws in order to enforce prohibition. Colorado also became home to corrupt law enforcement practices. For example, many soft drink parlors still sold alcohol and simply gave free liquor to officers to stay in business. In addition, caches of liquor taken in raids on speakeasies and stills would often disappear from police evidence rooms.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Members of the governor’s “purity squads,” as newspapers called them, had an ambiguous legal status. These squads were often made up of men not formally trained as police officers. According to various newspaper reports, they viewed themselves as “crusaders” seeking to destroy the “demon drink.” These moral enforcers were known to frequently bust down the doors of people’s houses without warrants and arrest anyone on the premises, with or without evidence that they had been drinking. Suspected drinkers or bootleggers were sometimes tied to chairs and beaten, or otherwise publicly humiliated.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>This activity prompted many complaints against the state’s Chief Prohibition Officer, <strong>John R. Smith</strong>, and his vigilante groups (often composed of members of the KKK). Smith was frequently sued for violating civil liberties and using extreme force, specifically against the Italian American and Mexican American communities. Progressive judge <strong>Benjamin Lindsey</strong>, who originally supported prohibition, openly expressed his disdain for how marginalized communities were targeted with brutal enforcement and given unfair trials.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Lindsey also lamented that wealthy Coloradans seemed immune to the dry laws. Indeed, the wealthy drinkers of Colorado worked with corrupt cops to ensure that they always had as much liquor as they wanted. Newspapers gawked at various instances of police eagerly partying with rich people, often sipping on liquor seized from poorer communities.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Organized Crime</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>As a result of alcohol prohibition, Colorado saw the rapid growth of organized <strong>crime families</strong> in the 1920s and early 1930s. Notorious gangsters appeared all around Colorado—including Joe Berry, Joe Roma, Joe Varra, and Sam and <strong>Pete Carlino</strong>—each of whom made names for themselves through the bootleg liquor trade. Prohibition laws did not decrease the demand for alcohol, so the market for illegal booze skyrocketed. In 1924, during a series of prohibition sweeps in the Italian American community of <strong>Globeville</strong>, at least eighteen bootleggers were arrested over the course of a week, and more than half of them were women.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Opportunities for Women</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>Having previously been barred from the legal alcohol trade, women in Colorado took full advantage of new opportunities in black-market booze. They participated in both the consumption and creation of alcohol at unprecedented rates. During prohibition, Coloradans experienced a new diversity within spaces where people drank alcohol. Women and men of all ages now enjoyed an activity that had been primarily male.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Women held every sort of illegal job pertaining to booze during prohibition, from running kitchen stills to peddling booze, tallying sales records, and smuggling alcohol within and beyond borders. When police were tipped off to moonshine stills, they often found women operating them from their kitchens, a traditionally acceptable realm for women that served as a convenient cover.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Women also benefited from new opportunities in law enforcement. In the early 1920s, four women in Denver were appointed as deputy sheriffs to crack down on the alcohol trade. Throughout prohibition, several other police departments throughout the state benefited from hiring their first female officers. <strong>Edith Barker</strong>, a member of the WCTU, became Denver’s first accredited female police officer on May 2, 1920.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Repeal</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>By the late 1920s, Coloradans seemed as eager to end prohibition as they had been to start it. In 1926 Colorado became the first state to hold a referendum calling for the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment. The referendum failed. <strong><em>The Denver Post</em></strong> hosted its own “Rocky Mountain Referendum on Prohibition,” in which the newspaper printed its own ballots asking readers whether they were for or against the continuation of prohibition. The consensus from 110,000 newspaper ballots was that Coloradans favored repeal. Because anyone could send in a newspaper ballot, <em>The</em> <em>Post </em>did not account for people who could not vote. This factor suggests that there was a strong sentiment to repeal prohibition in the state but that eligible voters still supported temperance after rejecting the official referendum.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>After Colorado’s referendum, several other states, mainly in New England, began to agitate for repeal of prohibition. Soon several western states—including Arizona, New Mexico, and California—joined the call for repeal. Raymond Humphreys, chief investigator for the state district attorney’s office in Colorado, opined that “prohibition spawned corruption in law enforcement that undermined public confidence in the law as a whole.” By 1928 more than 12,000 liquor-violation cases were filed in the Denver courts, but only half of them had been heard. Clearly, the law had become a burden on the state’s executive and judicial branches.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>In November 1932, Colorado voted once more on the repeal of prohibition, and this time repeal received 67 percent of the vote. Starting April 7, 1933, beer with a maximum alcohol content of 3.2 percent by volume could be legally sold in the state, though federal prohibition was still in effect nationwide. This loophole meant that beer could be bought and sold in Colorado, but it was illegal to travel with or ship it across state lines. Later that same year, the US Congress approved a constitutional amendment to repeal prohibition. By December 5, 1933, thirty-six states, including Colorado, had ratified the Twenty-first Amendment, repealing national prohibition.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>According to the <strong><em>Rocky Mountain News</em></strong>, beer sales alone made the newly revived alcohol industry more than $200,000 (roughly $4 million today) on the first day of statewide repeal. Equipment manufacturers, laborers, and railroads all benefited from the end of prohibition. The <em>News </em>anticipated that in Denver alone, more than 1,000 retailers would be issued liquor licenses during April 1933.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>As the industry revived, alcohol quickly became a part of the public lives of Coloradans again. Former Colorado breweries returned to beer production, including the <strong>Tivoli Brewing Company</strong> in Denver and <strong>Coors</strong> in <a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/golden"><strong>Golden</strong></a>, which had relied on producing other products (such as porcelain and nonalcoholic beverages) until prohibition was repealed. Meanwhile, mobsters who had profited from the illegal status of alcohol had the rug ripped out from under them. They were eliminated by legal and regulated competition within a few months. No longer did the law prevent women and American Indians from entering places that sold alcohol, as the Twenty-first Amendment also removed prohibitive laws that targeted individual groups of people.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Legacy</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>Since prohibition took legal hold on the state between 1916 and 1933, Colorado has thoroughly reclaimed its saloon roots through the tradition of crafting and imbibing alcoholic beverages. As a state, Colorado currently hosts more than 400 established breweries, including famous national brands such as Coors, <strong>New Belgium</strong>, <strong>Left Hand</strong>, <strong>O’Dell</strong>, and <strong>Breckenridge</strong>. It is the top US state in microbreweries per capita, and in 2019 Coloradans voted craft beer as their state’s most iconic drink. Colorado is also home to vibrant spirit industry (including Stranahan’s, Montoya, Woody Creek, and Laws), as well as a celebrated wine industry based largely in the <a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/grand-junction"><strong>Grand Valley</strong></a>.   </p>&#13; </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-author--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-author.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-author.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-author field--type-entity-reference field--label-above" id="id-field-author"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-author">Author</div> <div class='field__items'> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-author"><a href="/author/richthofen-ted" hreflang="und">Richthofen, Ted</a></div> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-keyword--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-keyword.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-keyword.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-keyword field--type-entity-reference field--label-above" id="id-field-keyword"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-keyword">Keywords</div> <div class='field__items'> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/prohibition" hreflang="en">prohibition</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/prohibition-colorado" hreflang="en">prohibition in colorado</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/alcohol" hreflang="en">alcohol</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/saloons" hreflang="en">saloons</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/womens-christian-temperance-union" hreflang="en">womens christian temperance union</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/temperance" hreflang="en">temperance</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/cannabis" hreflang="en">cannabis</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/edith-barker" hreflang="en">edith barker</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/denver-police" hreflang="en">denver police</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/ku-klux-klan" hreflang="en">Ku Klux Klan</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/crime-families" hreflang="en">crime families</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/carlino" hreflang="en">carlino</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/bootlegging" hreflang="en">bootlegging</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/bootleggers" hreflang="en">bootleggers</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/speakeasies" hreflang="en">speakeasies</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/1920s" hreflang="en">1920s</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/beer" hreflang="en">beer</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/wine" hreflang="en">wine</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/spirits" hreflang="en">spirits</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/craft-beer" hreflang="en">craft beer</a></div> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'links__node' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * links--node.html.twig x links--inline.html.twig * links--node.html.twig * links.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/navigation/links--inline.html.twig' --> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/navigation/links--inline.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-references-html--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-references-html.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-references-html.html.twig * field--text-long.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-references-html field--type-text-long field--label-above" id="id-field-references-html"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-references-html">References</div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-references-html"><p>Robert Annand, <em>A Study of the Prohibition Situation in Denver</em> (MA thesis, University of Denver, 1932).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>CF&amp;I Industrial Bulletin, “The End of the Saloon at CF&amp;I Properties”, vol. 1, no. 2 (December 22, 1915).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>John Whiteclay Chambers II, <em>The Tyranny of Change: America in the Progressive Era, 1890–1920</em> (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2000).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Ernest Hurst Cherrington, <em>Standard Encyclopedia of the Alcohol Problem</em> (Westerville, OH: American Issue Publishing Company, 1925).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Rick Clyne, <em>Coal People: Life in Southern Colorado’s Company Towns, 1890–1930</em> (Denver: Colorado Historical Society, 1999).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Stanley Coben, <em>Rebellion Against Victorianism: The Impetus for Cultural Change in 1920s America</em> (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Colorado General Assembly, “<a href="http://www.leg.state.co.us/lcs/ballothistory.nsf/">Ballot Issue History</a>,” n.d.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>The Colorado National Guard, <em>The Military Occupation of the Coal Strike Zone of Colorado, 1913–1914</em> (Denver: Smith-Brooks Printing Company, 1914).</p>&#13; &#13; <p><em>Colorado Springs Gazette</em>, “Rum Runners, in Jail Here, Profess Innocence of Crime,” October 13, 1924; “Olsen Sent to Prison on Rum Conviction,” January 22, 1915.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Colorado.com, “<a href="https://www.colorado.com/articles/colorado-breweries-defining-craft">Colorado Breweries: Defining the Craft</a>,” updated June 17, 2019.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Cornell University Law Library, <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/192/108"><em>DANIEL CRONIN v. FRANK ADAMS</em></a>, n.d.</p>&#13; &#13; <p><em>Cripple Creek Times-Record</em>, “Four Stills and Hundred Gallons of Whiskey Seized by State Prohibition Men,” September 22, 1924.</p>&#13; &#13; <p><em>Daily Times (Longmont)</em>, “Woman Arrested in Booze Raid at Boulder Will Be Tried, Says J. E. Kirkbride,” vol. 33, no. 217, August 26, 1927.<br />&#13; <em>Denver Express,</em> “Job in Question: Status of Dry Agent in Dispute,” December 27, 1923.</p>&#13; &#13; <p><em>Denver News,</em> “Three Are Arrested in State Dry Raid: Prohibition Charge Faces Owner of Italian Gardens Following Liquor Seizure,” December 10, 1923; “State Dry Agent Rapped by Judge for Alleged Raid Without Warrant,” January 9, 1924; “State Officers Jail Seven in Rum Raids: Hotel Proprietress and Clerk Arrested After Alleged Wild Party in Room,” January 10, 1924; “Anti-Rum Societies Aid State Officers Destroying Liquor,” March 19, 1924.</p>&#13; &#13; <p><em>The Denver Post</em>, “Liquor Sales Under New Law,” March 3, 1915; “Denver Policewoman Uses Jiu Jitsu to Rout Mashers,” March 6, 1921; “Woman Arrested as Bootlegger,” January 22, 1923; “Booze Raid Disturbs Revel of 200 Youths and Girls,” August 6, 1923; “Pocket Still Discovered by Agents in Raid on Home of Denver Woman,” July 10, 1924; “Wild Parties of Police With Women and Liquor Are Learned of by May,” April 21, 1925; “Wets Are Victorious In Posts Referendum,” February 23, 1926; “Pete Carlino Is Found Murdered on Lonely Road Near Pueblo,” September 14, 1931; “Denver Beer Drinkers on 3.2 Spree With Old-Time Saloons Open Again,” April 7, 1933; “National Prohibition Repealed,” November 8, 1933.</p>&#13; &#13; <p><em>Denver Times</em>, “Women Barred From Saloons”, July 27, 1901.</p>&#13; &#13; <p><em>Durango Herald</em>, “Hardboiled Methods at Law Enforcement at Silverton Breeds No One Any Good,” July 24, 1924.</p>&#13; &#13; <p><em>Fort Collins Courier</em>, “Judge Lindsey Urges Prosecution of Rich Booze Law Violators,” October 8, 1921; “Five Seeking Smith’s Post as Dry Agent,” July 6, 1923.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Phil Goodstein, <em>Robert Speer’s Denver, 1904–1920</em> (Denver: New Social Publications, 2004).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>James Hansen, “<a href="https://www.historycolorado.org/sites/default/files/media/document/2018/ColoradoMagazine_v50n1_Winter1973.pdf">Moonshine and Murder</a>,” <em>Colorado Magazine</em> (Winter 1973).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Hangovercure.org, “<a href="https://hangovercure.org/guides/most-popular-drink-by-state/">America’s Favorite Iconic State Drink</a>,” December 17, 2019.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Katherine Harris, “Feminism and Temperance Reform in the Boulder WCTU”, <em>Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies</em> 4, no. 2 (Summer 1979).</p>&#13; &#13; <p><em>Herald Democrat (Leadville)</em>, “Women’s Rights: To Drink in Saloon to Be Heard Before U.S. Supreme Court,” July 31, 1902; “Their Life Belts Loaded With Booze,” August 1, 1919.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>R. Todd Laugen, <em>The Gospel of Progressivism: Moral Reform and Labor War in Colorado, 1900–1930</em>, (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2010).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Harry G. Levine and Craig Reinarman, “From Prohibition to Regulation: Lessons From Alcohol Policy for Drug Policy,” <em>Milbank Quarterly</em> 69, no. 3 (1991).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Carol Mattingly, <em>Well-Tempered Women: Nineteenth-Century Temperance Rhetoric</em> (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1998).</p>&#13; &#13; <p><em>Montrose Daily Press</em>, “Sheriff Ducray Arrests Bootlegger Who Sought Protection by Bribery,” vol. 12, no. 206, March 4, 1921.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Thomas Noel, <em>The City and the Saloon: Denver 1858–191</em>6, 2nd ed. (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 1996).</p>&#13; &#13; <p><em>Pueblo Star Journal</em>, “They All Love Publicity; Even State Dry Law Director Will Stage a Raid For the Movies,” July 25, 1923.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Ted Richthofen, “<a href="http://digital.auraria.edu/IR00000098/00001">A People’s History of Alcohol Prohibition in Colorado: Labor, Class, Gender, and Moral Reform, 1916–1933</a>” (BA honors thesis, Metropolitan State University of Denver, 2019).</p>&#13; &#13; <p><em>Rocky Mountain News</em>, April 7, 1933.</p>&#13; &#13; <p><em>San Juan Prospector</em>, “Women Whiskey Merchants,” March 15, 1918.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Clark Secrest, <em>Hell’s Belles: Prostitution, Vice, and Crime in Early Denver: With a Biography of Sam Howe, Frontier Lawman</em>, rev. ed. (Denver: University Press of Colorado, 2001).</p>&#13; &#13; <p><em>Trinidad Chronicle, </em>“State Dry Officers May Be Charged with Violence by Two Local Attorneys,” September 10, 1923.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>United Labor Bulletin, October 10, 1914, CSFL Collection, Colorado Historical Society, Denver.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>“Up-to-the-Minute Bulletin of the International Reform Bureau,” July 9, 1918, Shafroth Family Papers, Western History Collection, Denver Public Library.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>John Dinan Wake and Jac C. Heckelman, “Support for Repealing Prohibition: An Analysis of Statewide Referenda on Ratifying the 21st Amendment,” <em>Social Science Quarterly </em>95, no. 3 (September 2014).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Elliot West, “Cleansing the Queen City: Prohibition and Urban Reform in Denver,” <em>Journal of the Southwest</em> 14, no. 4 (Winter, 1972).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>“Women Named Deputy Sheriffs,” <em>Brush Tribune</em>, June 8, 1923.</p>&#13; </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-additional-information-htm--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-additional-information-htm.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-additional-information-htm.html.twig * field--text-long.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-additional-information-htm field--type-text-long field--label-above" id="id-field-additional-information-htm"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-additional-information-htm">Additional Information</div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-additional-information-htm"><p>Betty L. Alt and Sandra K. Wells, <em>Ban the Booze: Prohibition in the Rockies </em>(N.p.: Dog Ear Publishing, 2013).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Lisa McGirr, <em>The War on Alcohol: Prohibition and the Rise of the American State</em> (New York: W. W. Norton, 2016).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Daniel Okrent, <em>Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition</em> (New York: Scribner, 2010).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Ted Richthofen, “<a href="https://www.historycolorado.org/story/womens-history/2020/03/12/openly-and-gusto-how-women-moonshiners-led-denvers-first-female-cop">Openly and With Gusto: How Women Moonshiners Led to Denver’s First Female Cop</a>” (History Colorado, March 12, 2020).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Rocky Mountain PBS, “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbJtXMa0ZAQ">Colorado Experience: The Smaldones, Family of Crime</a>” (YouTube).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Erin Turner, <em>Rotgut Rustlers: Whiskey, Women, and Wild Times in the West </em>(Kearney, NE: Morris, 2009).</p>&#13; </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-4th-grade--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-4th-grade.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-4th-grade.html.twig * field--text-with-summary.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-4th-grade field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item" id="id-field-4th-grade"><p>Prohibition in Colorado (1916–33) banned the sale of alcohol. The goal was to reduce violence, drunkenness, and crime. The prohibition era in Colorado saw an increase in organized crime and corruption.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Origins</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>During the Colorado Gold Rush of 1858–59, mining camps and early towns used saloons as places for government. Later, saloons served as locations for labor union meetings. They were also hot spots for gambling and boxing.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Because the rough-and-tumble saloon scene, Colorado saw a push for alcohol prohibition. Legal and moral arguments for the control of liquor existed as early as the mid-1860s. Some towns were founded as dry. These included Greeley (Union Colony) and Longmont (Chicago-Colorado Colony) in the early 1870s. The idea of turning the entire state dry did not gain traction until the end of the century. A state law passed in 1889 outlawed the sale or delivery of alcohol to American Indians. Further efforts to ban alcohol followed.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Building Support</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>In the late 1800s and early 1900s, reform-minded Progressives saw alcohol as the source of many problems. They believed that alcohol consumption led to unrest and moral failings. Reformers saw saloon culture as a product of immigration. Several leaders of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) were also members of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). Their stance on banning alcohol was based on strong anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic feelings.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Many of the antialcohol Progressives were also women with newly gained voting rights. The women were concerned about drinkers and gamblers who left their families poor. Colorado men opposed the 1877 referendum on women’s suffrage. Men were afraid women would vote for prohibition. By the time women gained the right to vote in 1893, many men had changed their stance. They had taken up the cause of prohibition. Prohibition was no longer a gendered issue. It was a unifying Progressive idea.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Progressives worked to make drinking a male-only activity staring in 1901. They passed a law that kept women from entering saloons or buying alcohol. The law was upheld by the state and federal Supreme Courts.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>In 1907, cities could vote on whether to go dry. By 1909 Colorado Springs, Fort Collins, Aurora, and Greeley used this law to ban alcohol within a mile of their borders.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>The biggest divide over alcohol was between rural and urban areas. Denver, Teller, and Alamosa counties were against prohibition. All were home to major industrial centers. They were also home to higher numbers of immigrants than lived in the counties voting to go dry.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Prohibition Takes Effect</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>During the years leading up to prohibition, the WCTU, KKK, and Anti-Saloon League toured the state with their campaign. They spoke with lawmakers. The groups demanded a ban on all alcohol. By 1914 the WCTU gathered enough signatures to get a prohibition referendum on the ballot. Donations from industrial leaders such as John D. Rockefeller, Jr. helped their campaign. The culture of alcohol remained strong in Colorado. However, there was not an organized campaign to keep it legal. The prohibition referendum passed with 52 percent of the vote.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>On January 1, 1916, statewide prohibition of alcohol went into effect. That was four years before the federal Volstead Act brought prohibition to the entire country. The Volstead Act used language similar to the Colorado prohibition referendum. Both laws banned the sale and transport of all alcohol. Thousands of breweries and saloons went out of business in Colorado. Others changed to soft drink parlors. By 1917 statewide prohibition had closed as many as 1,615 saloons and 17 breweries in the Denver area.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Enforcement and Corruption</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>Problems enforcing the alcohol ban started within the first year. The governor appointed “dry agents” who broke civil liberty laws to enforce prohibition. Many soft drink parlors still sold alcohol. They gave free liquor to police officers to stay in business. Liquor from speakeasies would disappear from police evidence rooms.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Members of the governor’s “purity squads,” as newspapers called them, had an uncertain legal status. These squads were made up of men not formally trained as police officers. They would break down the doors of people’s houses without warrants. Anyone at the home would be arrested, with or without evidence that they had been drinking. Suspected drinkers or bootleggers were sometimes tied to chairs and beaten.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>This activity prompted complaints against the state’s Chief Prohibition Officer, John R. Smith. Smith was sued for violating civil liberties.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Judge Benjamin Lindsey supported prohibition at first. However, he expressed frustration with how certain communities were targeted. Lindsey was also upset that wealthy Coloradans didn't obey dry laws. Newspapers reported police partying with rich people while drinking liquor taken from poorer communities.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Organized Crime</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>Because of prohibition, Colorado saw the growth of organized crime families in the 1920s and early 1930s. Gangsters emerged all around Colorado. Joe Berry, Joe Roma, and Joe Varra made names for themselves through the bootleg liquor trade. Prohibition laws did not decrease the demand for alcohol, so the market for illegal booze skyrocketed. During a 1924 sweep in Globeville, at least eighteen bootleggers were arrested in a week. More than half of them were women.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Opportunities for Women</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>Having been banned from the legal alcohol trade, women in Colorado took full advantage of black-market booze. They drank and made alcohol.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Women held every sort of illegal job related to booze. They ran kitchen stills, sold liquor, and smuggled alcohol. When police were tipped off, they found women operating moonshine stills from their kitchens.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Women also got new chances in law enforcement. In the early 1920s, four women in Denver were made deputy sheriffs as part of the crack down on the alcohol trade. Throughout prohibition, several other police departments hired their first female officers. Edith Barker, a member of the WCTU, became Denver’s first female police officer on May 2, 1920.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Repeal</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>By the late 1920s, Coloradans seemed eager to end prohibition. In 1926 Colorado became the first state to hold a vote calling for the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment. The vote failed.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>By 1928 more than 12,000 liquor-violation cases were filed in the Denver courts. Only half of them had been heard. The law had become a burden on the state’s executive and judicial branches.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>In November 1932, Colorado voted on repeal again. This time, repeal received 67 percent of the vote. However, federal prohibition was still in effect. This meant that beer could be bought and sold in Colorado.  However, it was illegal to travel with or ship it across state lines. Later that same year, the US Congress approved an amendment to end prohibition. By December 5, 1933, thirty-six states, including Colorado, had ratified the Twenty-first Amendment. National prohibition was repealed.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Alcohol became a part of Coloradan's lives again. Former Colorado breweries returned to beer production. This included the Tivoli Brewing Company in Denver and Coors in Golden. Mobsters who had profited from prohibition were gone within a few months.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Legacy</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>Since prohibition, Colorado has reclaimed its saloon roots. As a state, Colorado currently has more than 400 established breweries. There is also a celebrated wine industry based in the Grand Valley.   </p>&#13; </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-8th-grade--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-8th-grade.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-8th-grade.html.twig * field--text-with-summary.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-8th-grade field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item" id="id-field-8th-grade"><p>Prohibition in Colorado (1916–33) banned the sale and transport of alcohol. The goal was to reduce violence, drunkenness, and crime. The prohibition era in Colorado saw a sharp increase in organized crime and corruption.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Origins</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>During the Colorado Gold Rush of 1858–59, most mining camps and early towns used saloons as places for government and other official functions. Later, saloons served as locations for labor union meetings. They were also hot spots for gambling, boxing, and prostitution.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Because the rough-and-tumble saloon scene, Colorado saw a push for alcohol prohibition. Legal and moral arguments for the control of liquor existed as early as the mid-1860s. Some towns were founded as dry. These included Greeley (Union Colony) and Longmont (Chicago-Colorado Colony) in the early 1870s. The idea of turning the entire state dry did not gain traction until the end of the century. A state law passed in 1889 outlawed the sale or delivery of alcohol to American Indians. Further efforts to ban alcohol in the state followed.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Building Support</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>In the late 1800s and early 1900s, reform-minded Progressives saw alcohol as the source of many problems. They believed that alcohol consumption led to unrest and moral failings. Reformers saw saloon culture as a product of immigration. Several leaders of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) were also members of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). Their stance on banning alcohol was based on strong anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic feelings. They felt the state was being overrun by unskilled foreign laborers whose taste for drink made them dangerous.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Many of the antialcohol Progressives were also women with newly acquired voting rights. The women were concerned about drinkers and gamblers who left their families poor. Colorado men opposed the 1877 referendum on women’s suffrage. Men were afraid women would vote for prohibition. By the time women gained the right to vote in 1893, many men had changed their stance. They had taken up the cause of prohibition. Prohibition was no longer a gendered issue. It was a unifying Progressive idea.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Progressives worked to make drinking a male-only activity staring in 1901. The idea was reinforced by strict Victorian ideas of womanhood. Progressives passed a law that kept women from entering saloons or buying alcohol. When saloon owners challenged the law, it was upheld by the state and federal Supreme Courts.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>In 1907, cities could vote on whether to go dry. By 1909 Colorado Springs, Fort Collins, Aurora, and Greeley used this law to ban alcohol within a mile of their borders.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>The biggest divide over alcohol was between rural and urban areas. Denver, Teller, and Alamosa counties were against prohibition. All were home to major industrial centers. They were also home to higher numbers of immigrants than lived in the counties voting to go dry.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Prohibition Takes Effect</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>During the years leading up to prohibition, the WCTU, KKK, and Anti-Saloon League toured the state with their campaign. They spoke with lawmakers. The groups demanded a ban on all alcohol. By 1914 the WCTU gathered enough signatures to get a prohibition referendum on the ballot. Donations from industrial leaders such as John D. Rockefeller, Jr. helped their campaign. The culture of alcohol remained strong in Colorado. However, there was not an organized campaign to keep it legal. The prohibition referendum passed with 52 percent of the vote.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>On January 1, 1916, statewide prohibition of alcohol went into effect. That was four years before the federal Volstead Act brought prohibition to the entire country. The Volstead Act used language similar to the Colorado prohibition referendum. Both laws banned the sale and transport of all alcohol. Thousands of breweries and saloons went out of business in Colorado. Many others scrambled to convert to soft drink parlors. By 1917 statewide prohibition had closed as many as 1,615 saloons and 17 breweries in the Denver area alone.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Enforcement and Corruption</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>Problems enforcing the alcohol ban started within the first year. The governor appointed “dry agents” who broke civil liberty laws to enforce prohibition. Many soft drink parlors still sold alcohol. They gave free liquor to police officers to stay in business. Liquor from speakeasies would disappear from police evidence rooms.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Members of the governor’s “purity squads,” as newspapers called them, had an uncertain legal status. These squads were made up of men not formally trained as police officers. They would break down the doors of people’s houses without warrants. Anyone at the home would be arrested, with or without evidence that they had been drinking. Suspected drinkers or bootleggers were sometimes tied to chairs and beaten.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>This activity prompted many complaints against the state’s Chief Prohibition Officer, John R. Smith. Smith was sued for violating civil liberties and using extreme force.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Progressive judge Benjamin Lindsey supported prohibition at first. However, he expressed frustration with how certain communities were targeted. Lindsey was also upset that wealthy Coloradans didn't obey dry laws. The well-off drinkers of Colorado worked with corrupt cops to make sure they had liquor. Newspapers reported police partying with rich people while drinking liquor taken from poorer communities.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Organized Crime</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>Because of prohibition, Colorado saw the growth of organized crime families in the 1920s and early 1930s. Notorious gangsters emerged all around Colorado. Joe Berry, Joe Roma, Joe Varra, and Sam and Pete Carlino made names for themselves through the bootleg liquor trade. Prohibition laws did not decrease the demand for alcohol, so the market for illegal booze skyrocketed. In 1924, during a series of sweeps in the Italian American community of Globeville, at least eighteen bootleggers were arrested in a week. More than half of them were women.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Opportunities for Women</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>Having been banned from the legal alcohol trade, women in Colorado took full advantage of black-market booze. They drank and made alcohol.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Women held every sort of illegal job related to booze during prohibition. They ran kitchen stills, sold liquor, and smuggled alcohol. When police were tipped off to moonshine stills, they often found women operating them from their kitchens.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Women also got new chances in law enforcement. In the early 1920s, four women in Denver were appointed as deputy sheriffs to crack down on the alcohol trade. Throughout prohibition, several other police departments hired their first female officers. Edith Barker, a member of the WCTU, became Denver’s first female police officer on May 2, 1920.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Repeal</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>By the late 1920s, Coloradans seemed eager to end prohibition. In 1926 Colorado became the first state to hold a vote calling for the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment. The vote failed.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>The Denver Post hosted its own “Rocky Mountain Referendum on Prohibition.” The newspaper printed ballots asking readers whether they were for or against prohibition. Based on the 110,000 newspaper ballots, Coloradans favored repeal. However, eligible voters still supported temperance.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>By 1928 more than 12,000 liquor-violation cases were filed in the Denver courts. Only half of them had been heard. The law had become a burden on the state’s executive and judicial branches.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>In November 1932, Colorado voted on repeal again. This time, repeal received 67 percent of the vote. Starting April 7, 1933, beer with a maximum alcohol content of 3.2 percent by volume could be legally sold in the state. However, federal prohibition was still in effect nationwide. This meant that beer could be bought and sold in Colorado.  However, it was illegal to travel with or ship it across state lines. Later that same year, the US Congress approved an amendment to end prohibition. By December 5, 1933, thirty-six states, including Colorado, had ratified the Twenty-first Amendment. National prohibition was repealed.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>According to the Rocky Mountain News, beer sales alone made the alcohol industry more than $200,000 (roughly $4 million today) on the first day of statewide repeal. Equipment builders, laborers, and railroads all benefited from the end of prohibition. The News guessed that in Denver alone, more than 1,000 retailers would be issued liquor licenses during April 1933.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Alcohol quickly became a part of Coloradan's lives again. Former Colorado breweries returned to beer production. This included the Tivoli Brewing Company in Denver and Coors in Golden. They had produced products such as porcelain and nonalcoholic beverages during prohibition. Mobsters who had profited from prohibition were gone within a few months. The law no longer prevented women and American Indians from entering places that sold alcohol. The Twenty-first Amendment removed alcohol laws that targeted groups of people.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Legacy</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>Since prohibition, Colorado has reclaimed its saloon roots. As a state, Colorado currently has more than 400 established breweries. It is the top US state in microbreweries per capita. In 2019 Coloradans voted craft beer as their state’s most iconic drink. Colorado is also home to vibrant spirit industry. There is also a celebrated wine industry based in the Grand Valley.   </p>&#13; </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-10th-grade--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-10th-grade.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-10th-grade.html.twig * field--text-with-summary.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-10th-grade field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item" id="id-field-10th-grade"><p>Alcohol prohibition in Colorado (1916–33) was a Progressive Era experiment. It was based on reform-minded and religious ideas. Prohibition banned the sale and transport of alcohol. The goal of reformers was to reduce violence, drunkenness, and crime. However, outlawing alcohol created more issues than first thought.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Prohibition in Colorado predated national prohibition by four years. It ended only months before national prohibition was also repealed. The prohibition era in Colorado was marked by a sharp increase in organized crime, black markets, and government corruption.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Origins</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>During the Colorado Gold Rush of 1858–59, most mining camps and early towns used saloons as places for government and other official functions. Later, saloons served as locations for labor union meetings. They were also hot spots for gambling, boxing, and prostitution.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Because the rough-and-tumble saloon scene, Colorado soon saw a push for alcohol prohibition. Legal and moral arguments for the control of liquor existed as early as the mid-1860s, when Colorado was still a territory. Conscious of the region’s saloon culture, some towns were founded as dry. These included the communities of Greeley (Union Colony) and Longmont (Chicago-Colorado Colony) in the early 1870s. However, the idea of turning the entire state dry did not gain traction until the end of the century. A state law passed in 1889 outlawed the sale or delivery of alcohol to American Indians. Further efforts to ban alcohol in the state followed.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Building Support</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>In the late 1800s and early 1900s, reform-minded Progressives saw alcohol as the source of many problems. They believed that alcohol consumption led to labor unrest and moral failings. Reformers saw saloon culture as a product of urbanization and immigration. They hoped to keep Colorado free from what they called “un-American” activities. Several leaders of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) were also members of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). Their stance on banning alcohol was based on strong anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic feelings. They felt as if the state was being overrun by unskilled foreign laborers whose taste for drink made them dangerous.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Many of the antialcohol Progressives were also women with newly acquired voting rights. They were concerned with drinkers and gamblers who left their families poor. Colorado men opposed the 1877 referendum on women’s suffrage. Men were afraid women would vote for prohibition. By the time women gained the right to vote in 1893, many men had changed their stance. They had taken up the cause of prohibition. Prohibition was no longer a gendered issue but, rather, a unifying Progressive idea.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>As a step toward full prohibition, antialcohol Progressives worked to make drinking a male-only activity staring in 1901. The idea was reinforced by strict Victorian ideas of womanhood. Progressives passed a law that kept women from entering saloons, working in areas that served alcohol, or buying alcohol. When saloon owners challenged the law, it was upheld by the state and federal Supreme Courts.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>In 1907, cities could vote on whether to go dry. By 1909 Colorado Springs, Fort Collins, Aurora, and Greeley used this law to ban alcohol within a mile of their borders.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>The biggest divide over alcohol was between rural towns and urban areas. The strongest antiprohibition counties included Denver, Teller, Mineral, La Plata, Ouray, Chaffee, Alamosa, and Garfield. All of these counties were home to major industrial centers, especially mining and smelting operations. They were also home to larger numbers of non-Protestants and higher numbers of immigrants than lived in the counties voting to go dry.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Prohibition Takes Effect</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>During the years leading up to prohibition, the WCTU, KKK, and Anti-Saloon League toured the state with their campaign. They spoke directly with lawmakers. The groups also publicly demanded the banning of any and all alcohol. By 1914 the WCTU gathered enough signatures to get a prohibition referendum on the ballot. Donations from industrial leaders such as John D. Rockefeller, Jr. aided their campaign. The culture of alcohol remained strong in Colorado, but there was not an organized campaign to keep it legal. Called Measure 2, the prohibition referendum passed on November 3 with 52 percent of the vote.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>On January 1, 1916, statewide prohibition of alcohol went into effect. That was four years before the federal Volstead Act brought prohibition to the entire country. The Volstead Act used language similar to the Colorado prohibition referendum. For example, both defined “intoxicating liquor” as any beverage containing more than 0.5 percent alcohol. Both laws also banned the sale and transport of all alcohol, even for religious purposes. Thousands of breweries and saloons went out of business in Colorado. Many others scrambled to convert to soft drink parlors. By 1917 statewide prohibition had closed as many as 1,615 saloons and 17 breweries in the Denver area alone.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Enforcement and Corruption</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>Problems enforcing an alcohol ban became obvious within the first year of the law. Governor William Ellery Sweet appointed “dry agents” who broke civil liberty laws in order to enforce prohibition. Colorado also became home to corrupt law enforcement practices. For example, many soft drink parlors still sold alcohol. They gave free liquor to officers to stay in business. In addition, liquor taken in raids on speakeasies would disappear from police evidence rooms.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Members of the governor’s “purity squads,” as newspapers called them, had an uncertain legal status. These squads were often made up of men not formally trained as police officers. According to newspaper reports, they viewed themselves as “crusaders” seeking to destroy the “demon drink.” These moral enforcers would break down the doors of people’s houses without warrants. They would arrest anyone on the premises, with or without evidence that they had been drinking. Suspected drinkers or bootleggers were sometimes tied to chairs and beaten.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>This activity prompted many complaints against the state’s Chief Prohibition Officer, John R. Smith, and his vigilante groups (often composed of members of the KKK). Smith was sued for violating civil liberties and using extreme force against the Italian American and Mexican American communities.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Progressive judge Benjamin Lindsey supported prohibition at first. However, he expressed frustration with how marginalized communities were targeted and given unfair trials. Lindsey was also upset that wealthy Coloradans didn't comply with dry laws. The well-off drinkers of Colorado worked with corrupt cops to ensure that they had as much liquor as they wanted. Newspapers reported police partying with rich people, often sipping on liquor seized from poorer communities.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Organized Crime</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>As a result of prohibition, Colorado saw the rapid growth of organized crime families in the 1920s and early 1930s. Notorious gangsters appeared all around Colorado. Joe Berry, Joe Roma, Joe Varra, and Sam and Pete Carlino made names for themselves through the bootleg liquor trade. Prohibition laws did not decrease the demand for alcohol, so the market for illegal booze skyrocketed. In 1924, during a series of prohibition sweeps in the Italian American community of Globeville, at least eighteen bootleggers were arrested in a week. More than half of them were women.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Opportunities for Women</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>Having been barred from the legal alcohol trade, women in Colorado took full advantage of new opportunities in black-market booze. They took part in drinking and creating alcohol.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Women held every sort of illegal job pertaining to booze during prohibition. They ran kitchen stills, sold booze, tallied sales records, and smuggled alcohol. When police were tipped off to moonshine stills, they often found women operating them from their kitchens.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Women also benefited from new chances in law enforcement. In the early 1920s, four women in Denver were appointed as deputy sheriffs to crack down on the alcohol trade. Throughout prohibition, several other police departments hired their first female officers. Edith Barker, a member of the WCTU, became Denver’s first accredited female police officer on May 2, 1920.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Repeal</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>By the late 1920s, Coloradans seemed as eager to end prohibition as they had been to start it. In 1926 Colorado became the first state to hold a referendum calling for the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment. The referendum failed. The Denver Post hosted its own “Rocky Mountain Referendum on Prohibition.” The newspaper printed ballots asking readers whether they were for or against prohibition. The consensus from 110,000 newspaper ballots was that Coloradans favored repeal. However, eligible voters still supported temperance.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>After Colorado’s referendum, several states in New England began to call for repeal of prohibition. Soon several western states—including Arizona, New Mexico, and California—joined the call.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>By 1928 more than 12,000 liquor-violation cases were filed in the Denver courts. Only half of them had been heard. The law had become a burden on the state’s executive and judicial branches.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>In November 1932, Colorado voted on the repeal of prohibition again. This time, repeal received 67 percent of the vote. Starting April 7, 1933, beer with a maximum alcohol content of 3.2 percent by volume could be legally sold in the state. However, federal prohibition was still in effect nationwide. This loophole meant that beer could be bought and sold in Colorado, but it was illegal to travel with or ship it across state lines. Later that same year, the US Congress approved an amendment to end prohibition. By December 5, 1933, thirty-six states, including Colorado, had ratified the Twenty-first Amendment, repealing national prohibition.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>According to the Rocky Mountain News, beer sales alone made the newly revived alcohol industry more than $200,000 (roughly $4 million today) on the first day of statewide repeal. Equipment builders, laborers, and railroads all benefited from the end of prohibition. The News guessed that in Denver alone, more than 1,000 retailers would be issued liquor licenses during April 1933.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>As the industry revived, alcohol quickly became a part of the public lives of Coloradans again. Former Colorado breweries returned to beer production, including the Tivoli Brewing Company in Denver and Coors in Golden. They had relied on producing other products such as porcelain and nonalcoholic beverages until repeal. Meanwhile, mobsters who had profited from prohibition had the rug ripped out from under them. They were gone within a few months. The law no longer prevented women and American Indians from entering places that sold alcohol. The Twenty-first Amendment removed prohibitive laws that targeted groups of people.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Legacy</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>Since prohibition took legal hold on the state between 1916 and 1933, Colorado has reclaimed its saloon roots. As a state, Colorado currently has more than 400 established breweries. It is the top US state in microbreweries per capita. In 2019 Coloradans voted craft beer as their state’s most iconic drink. Colorado is also home to vibrant spirit industry, as well as a celebrated wine industry based in the Grand Valley.   </p>&#13; </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> Tue, 09 Jun 2020 20:51:18 +0000 yongli 3274 at http://coloradoencyclopedia.org