Denver Parks and Recreation joined forces with the Police Department to install 14 security cameras in Civic Center, which has been a hub for drug deals and related crimes.

“They’re installed for crime suppression,” Denver police Sgt. Brian Kimberly said. “Civic Center park, for quite some time, has been plagued with some crime problems. We already had some cameras monitoring the park, and Parks and Rec came to us and asked about a few more.”

The Parks and Recreation-funded cameras were installed this week, adding to the five cameras already used to observe the park near the Denver City and County Building. When the cameras come online — likely next week — they will be monitored by Denver police.

The cameras are part of the HALO program, a system of police-monitored cameras scattered throughout the city in high-crime areas. HALO, or High Activity Location Observation, started in 2008.

Drug deals, assaults and robberies have been a problem at Civic Center, said Kimberly, who is in charge of the city’s HALO program.

In the Civic Center area, which is bound by West Colfax Avenue, Broadway and Speer Boulevard, 445 crimes were reported from January through June, up from 330 during the same period last year.

Of the 445 reported crimes, 71 were drug or narcotics violations.

And the hot spot is right at the corner of Colfax and Broadway, according to a crime tracker map.

The presence of the cameras, which hang from light poles in the park, are intended to deter that kind of behavior.

“They’re not covert in any way, we’re not trying to hide anything,” Kimberly said. “We want people to know that they’re there.”

Denver Parks spokesman Jeff Green said he hopes the cameras also will stop vandalism in the park, which was recently named a National Historic Landmark.



“We hope that they’re going to deter the activity, that’s kind of our No. 1 goal,” Green said. “It’s not to necessarily catch someone who’s causing damage or spraying graffiti because we still have to deal with that, we still have to clean that up.”

In the past three years, about $15 million — mostly from the 2007 Better Denver bond initiative — has been invested in restoring structures in Civic Center, which was placed on Colorado’s Endangered Places list in 2007.

By cutting crime and activating the park with events that draw people who live and work downtown, the city is trying to burnish Civic Center’s image.

“It’s right in the heart of the city, it’s where the biggest festivals take place,” Green said. “We felt that there was a need not only to have some additional cameras so we can help protect our assets in the park, but we want to make them as safe as possible for the people using them for legitimate purposes.”

The cost of the cameras was not available Thursday, however on Friday downtown area planner Mark Bernstein said the cost to design, fabricate and install the cameras was $47,000.

Jessica Valand works at the Colorado Department of Human Services and was waiting for a friend to eat lunch in Civic Center, where food trucks create a pop-up food court during the lunch hour Tuesdays and Thursdays.

She said she was unsure the cameras would change anything — crime rates or peoples’ feelings of safety.

“I think that if you’re used to working around here, you probably have a certain set of expectations for what life is like off Colfax,” Valand said. “I think most people who are down here on a daily basis wouldn’t notice one way or the other.”

Ally Marotti: 303-954-1223, amarotti@denverpost.com or twitter.com/AllyMarotti

This story has been updated in this online archive. A more precise location for the crime “hot spot” in Civic Center has been added, along with the cost of the new cameras.