Citing a “scourge of hoodlums” on Denver’s 16th Street Mall, city officials on Monday announced new plans to ramp up security, including stopping people from leaning on walls and calling animal control when people are loitering with dogs.

The plan also includes the addition of more uniformed officers on the mall, from the Denver Police Department and from private security, which will be hired by the Denver Downtown Partnership.

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August 30, 2020 Letters: Athletes’ decision to forgo games praised, criticized (8/30/20) Mayor Michael Hancock said the crackdown is coming because of bad behavior from “urban travelers,” whom he described as a scourge of hoodlums who are pushing the boundaries of the law. Others describe the urban travelers as primarily young people who travel between cities seeking a carefree lifestyle with no desire to hold jobs, mortgages or bank accounts.

“I know people will try to twist who and what we are talking about here today,” Hancock said during a news conference at the Downtown Denver Partnership’s office. “We are not talking about Denver’s homeless. We’re not talking about those on the corner asking for money.”

The travelers often arrive in Denver around April 20, in time for the annual marijuana celebration, and they stick around for the warmer months before moving down the road. Since 2014, there has been an increase in their numbers, said Denver police Cmdr. Tony Lopez, whose district includes downtown.

“They are intimidating those who want to enjoy the mall,” Hancock said.

White described the travelers as “aggressive and offensive” and said, “they’ve been disrespectful to even our police officers in uniforms to be honest with you. We’re at the point where enough is enough. We’re not going to tolerate it for one more second.”

After the news conference, Nathan Woodliff-Stanley, executive director of the ACLU of Colorado, said he has concerns about the new measures because they are vague and broad.

“They way they are talking about it is exactly how they talk about the homeless,” he said.

Tension over the travelers increased last week when Denver’s Fox 31 aired a video that showed so-called travelers harassing a downtown officer worker. The incident escalated into a fight between several young people and others who tried to aid the worker. Four people were charged with assault.

The video created a public-relations crisis for the city because the mall is in the heart of its downtown where more than 50,000 people come daily to work, shop, eat, drink and to attend conventions, sporting events and other entertainment.

Despite safety concerns, arrests on the 16th Street Mall have dropped in the past year. And the largest number of arrests in the past 18 months were for shoplifting, according to police statistics obtained recently by The Denver Post.

Tami Door, the downtown partnership’s president and chief executive officer, said the new security plan was in the works before the video surfaced. The partnership hired a private consulting firm that created a nearly 250-page report on various security measures that could be undertaken.

Those ideas range from locking garbage Dumpsters in alleys to the hiring of a downtown security chief.

The security chief, Eugene Wade, started work last month after serving as the security manager for the Denver Performing Arts Complex. His first task is to contract with a private security firm to place officers on the mall.

Those officers will wear uniforms, but they will not be armed. They will not be authorized to write tickets or make arrests, Door said. Instead, they will coordinate with Denver police to address nuisances and other problems downtown.

The partnership’s total investment in security will be around $1 million per year, Door said.

The Denver police will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to increase the number of officers on the street, White said.

The city will triple the number of officers in its Walk the Beat program, which puts officers on foot on the mall. This summer, 16 will be assigned to the mall seven days per week.

Some officers specifically will be assigned to walk between the blocks between Tremont and Champa streets because that is where the most problems occur, White said. There will be two officers per shift for those blocks.

The department is asking downtown businesses to cooperate. For example, White wants marijuana dispensaries to stop selling single joints to reduce the number of people smoking pot in public.

The police department also will ask downtown businesses to take a unified approach to crime enforcement. Some businesses decline to prosecute petty thefts, but White wants them all to do so.

White also said the city will “aggressively pursue area restrictions,” meaning it will seek to ban people from the mall as part of their punishment for committing crimes. Those restrictions have been used for some time, but no one tracks the restrictions to determine whether they are effective.

To enforce trespassing laws, the police department will ask businesses to delineate their property lines so police will know exactly where people are allowed to stand.

“Leaning against a wall is actually trespassing,” White said.

Woodliff-Stanley said new police initiatives like the one rolled out Monday are a concern because they lend themselves to discriminatory practices. He questioned whether police will cite office workers who might be leaning on a wall for trespassing.

“We don’t know exactly how this is going to unfold,” he said, “but we will be watching.”