The anonymously run account, which bills itself as a “citizen journalist” dedicated to finding “compassionate, tough-love solutions to homelessness,” exploded in popularity during the last two years. Critics say it relied on shock and conspiracy to steadily build its platform to more than 144,000 followers across Instagram and X.

There’s a video of a man with his pants around his knees, twerking in his underwear at a bus stop. People who appear to be homeless sitting by a fire. Needles. Blood on the pavement. Fistfights. Surveillance footage with the sound of gunshots. A man holding a cardboard sign. A rat running down the street. People who appear to be high, or unconscious, or overdosing.

The content, which DoBetterDNVR says is crowdsourced, is often set to music and accompanied by the account’s commentary.

“What a vibrant scene showing the destruction of our taxpayer dollars,” the account wrote about a video showing a person pulling flowers out of a flowerpot near Denver’s Union Station.

DoBetterDNVR is a household name in some Denver circles and has grown to a point where it impacts city politics, drawing the attention of Denver officials and prompting at least one city investigation. The posts are often inflammatory, and the information presented is sometimes false, with tidbits of fact mixed with rumor, speculation and misinformation, The Denver Post found.

The Post investigated the people behind the account because of its growing influence and the misinformation it spreads. While the account claims to be a news provider, its anonymity, lack of transparency and absence of public ethical standards undermine its credibility, said Kelly McBride, chair of the Craig Newmark Center for Ethics and Leadership at the Poynter Institute, a nonprofit that aims to bolster ethical journalism.

“That gets at (DoBetterDNVR’s) motives, right?” she said. “They don’t want to take responsibility for what they are doing. As a journalist, you put your name on stories. You take responsibility for the work.”

DoBetterDNVR’s drumbeat of voyeuristic videos and photos — which made up about 57% of 1,900 posts on Instagram since July 2023 —  is punctuated by screenshots of local news coverage, posts featuring publicly available criminal records, reposts from police departments, commentary on city policies, calls to political action and, rarely, proposed solutions for homelessness.

The account routinely excoriates Denver’s current leaders for the way the city approaches addiction and homelessness, and calls instead for tough-on-crime solutions like making it a felony to possess small amounts of drugs, shifting away from harm-reduction programs and forcing people into mandatory treatment.

DoBetterDNVR frequently criticizes Mayor Mike Johnston and sometimes levies personal attacks against his family and others. In a March post with more than 10,000 views, DoBetterDNVR compared a photo of Courtney Johnston, the mayor’s wife, to a picture of J.R.R. Tolkien’s fictional character Gollum, with the comment that she was “lookin’ a lil rough today.”

Courtney Johnston, who is a chief deputy district attorney in the Denver District Attorney’s Office, declined to comment for this story. Several city employees and people working at local nonprofits also declined to publicly discuss the account out of fear that DoBetterDNVR would bully them if they did so.

In an environment where the burden of sorting through facts, verifying information and curating stories has largely shifted to news consumers, readers must now rely on media literacy skills — like considering an information provider’s sources, ethics, transparency and motives — to determine what is credible information online, McBride said.

“Regular people can commit acts of journalism,” said Patrick Ferrucci, chair of the Department of Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder. “They can disseminate important information, and that’s great. But that’s only a piece of what journalism does. Journalism often puts that information into context, which makes it more useful for people. And, more importantly, journalism is not just defined by the end product. It is defined by the process that goes into it. Ethics, norms, verification — all these things that make the information that goes out different.”

Who is involved?

The Post tied Arizona resident Jill Osa, Denver resident Megan Anderson and New Mexico resident Alexandra Pacheco to DoBetterDNVR through requests they made to various city agencies under the Colorado Open Records Act. Such requests are public records themselves, and The Post filed open records requests to obtain copies of requests tied to DoBetterDNVR.

The account claims to have thousands of contributors. Anderson, Pacheco and Osa stand out because of their involvement in the account since its early days in 2023, their connections to each other, and because they did not just send a single video or photo to the account but pursued information through open records requests.

Between October 2023 and June 2025, Osa filed 12 open records requests for information that later appeared on DoBetterDNVR, The Post found. In five of those instances, DoBetterDNVR directly acknowledged that people connected to the account filed the records requests, The Post found.

“In 2024, we submitted a CORA request, paid $99, and received invoices from @therealcityofdenver documenting $2.133 million in costs for vacant migrant rooms, which I shared on my accounts on 9/11/24,” the account posted in May. “In 2025, we requested the remaining invoices, only to face repeated delays.”

Osa filed both of those requests, The Post found. (DoBetterDNVR framed a significant price increase between its two requests as “curious, to say the least,” and did not share with its followers the city’s five-point explanation for the higher cost.)

In January 2024, Osa filed an open records request that sought emails exchanged between two city employees that included certain keywords. Eleven days later, Anderson, the school teacher, filed a nearly identical open records request seeking the same information but during a different timeframe.

Aside from the different dates, Osa and Anderson’s requests matched word-for-word and both included the same typo, The Post found.

Pacheco, the former employee at the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless, has been connected to DoBetterDNVR since 2023. In December 2023, she filed an open records request with the Denver Police Department seeking a death investigation report. It was posted by DoBetterDNVR 10 days after she received a copy.

In response to inquiries from The Post, the three women each insisted they were not the main administrator of DoBetterDNVR and acknowledged only that they contributed information to the account.

“I do CORA requests for DoBetterDNVR,” Osa said. “And that is the extent of my involvement. I do not run the account. It doesn’t matter that I live out of state. I have a vested interest in the city of Denver. Colorado is my — I still call it home.”

She later acknowledged that she also does other “research” for the account, including perusing and taking screenshots of people’s LinkedIn accounts, which she said she does at the request of DoBetterDNVR’s administrator. She said she sometimes disagrees with the account’s tone and stances.

Anderson, who has worked at a metro school district since 2016, said in an email that she did not create DoBetterDNVR and is not responsible for it. She said she is no longer involved with DoBetterDNVR because she disagrees with the “aggressive tone or stance on immigration the account has taken on.”

“My initial interest in the account, back in 2023 and early 2024, stemmed from a sincere concern about drug abuse and homelessness in the Denver area; I am passionate about addressing these issues, which affect so many people in and around this city,” she wrote in an email. “However, my personal beliefs and politics do not align with the direction the account has since taken.”

Anderson is an unaffiliated voter. Pacheco and Osa are registered Republicans, with Pacheco switching from the Democratic Party in late 2024, according to their voting records.

Anderson did not answer a question about when she stopped working with the account. She did not dispute a text-message exchange DoBetterDNVR posted on X on July 25 that suggests Anderson was sending videos to the account as recently as June.

The Post on Monday spoke to an anonymous caller who claimed to be the administrator of the DoBetterDNVR accounts, but the person refused to identify themselves. The Post was unable to confirm the caller’s claimed role in the account.

The Post’s policy on using anonymous sources requires the reporter to know the person’s identity even if the person’s name is not published. Additionally, The Post declined to grant anonymity to the caller, who then refused to do an interview in which they would be named.

Pacheco told The Post she has not contributed to DoBetterDNVR since she moved to New Mexico in late 2023, and said she has never been an administrator for the account.

“I’m not going to City Council meetings anymore, I’m not hearing firsthand what is happening at (Colorado Coalition for the Homeless), I’m not hearing the mayor lie to people at micro-community meetings about crime in neighborhoods, knowing doggone well he is not telling the truth and feeling like I have to let people know what the real truth is by downloading premise reports,” she said, referencing city reports that show 911 calls at particular addresses.

Pacheco filed an open records request with the mayor’s office in June that sought information related in part to DoBetterDNVR. Pacheco said she did so to explore whether she could take legal action against Courtney Johnston over an exchange on X about DoBetterDNVR in 2024.

In an interview Monday, Pacheco said she connected with DoBetterDNVR after witnessing “tomfoolery” during the 10 months she worked for the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless, a Denver nonprofit that provides services to homeless people. She spoke with Denver7 in March 2024 about problems she perceived at the nonprofit.

Cathy Alderman, spokeswoman for the organization, said she was surprised and disappointed to learn a former employee was involved with DoBetterDNVR.

“I’ve certainly known people who have worked in the homeless response space who get so crisis fatigued and so frustrated, both with the system and sometimes with the people the system is helping, that they become completely disillusioned,” she said.

The social media account relies on an element of public shaming that the organization takes issue with, Alderman said.

“They’re not exposing problems and issues in a way that is driven toward solutions,” she said. “They’re doing it in a way that is hurtful, shameful and mocks people. And to me it’s just cruel.”

Alderman noted that DoBetterDNVR posts inaccurate information, like sharing details about a crime that happened near one of the nonprofit’s properties and claiming — without evidence — that the crime was committed by one of the organization’s clients.

DoBetterDNVR’s misinformation

In October, DoBetterDNVR alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua at the Cedar Run apartments on Oneida Street and at a second complex were meeting Denver firefighters when they arrived on site for emergency calls, questioning the firefighters about their purpose and then “escorting” the first responders through the apartment complex. Denver police, the account claimed, were usually “too busy” to provide backup for the firefighters.

“It’s obvious that TdA has infiltrated both of these complexes in Denver,” read the post, which cited no sources.

The unverified claim prompted an investigation within the Denver Fire Department, according to emails between Chief Desmond Fulton and Councilwoman Amanda Sawyer. Fulton told Sawyer that a fire operations chief immediately called over to the fire station in the area to ask about the claim, and that a police commander, fire division chief and fire district chief also visited the fire station to hear from firefighters directly.

The officials found the firefighters had no “negative interactions with TdA,” Fulton wrote in a Nov. 1 email, referring to the gang. They also discovered that Denver police “have been very responsive and have been onsite for most of our calls to these addresses.”

“Members at Station 19 have been followed and watched by male members while on medical calls, but not interfered with in the course of performing their duties,” Fulton wrote.

Capt. Dan Wilson, a spokesman for the department, clarified in July that firefighters did not know whether the men watching them were gang members. He said Fulton’s use of the term “members” to describe the observers borrowed from DoBetterDNVR’s framing, and noted that the chief also referred to firefighters as “members” in the email.

“There is no way of us knowing who is a member of (TdA) or not,” Wilson said. “…That term ‘male member’ was probably just brought over in the narrative from the DoBetter article. It probably should have just said, ‘followed by males.'”

He added that curious people frequently watch firefighters as they work. “We get that all the time,” he said.

Fulton referred to DoBetterDNVR ‘s post as an “article,” but the post should not be conflated with a reputable news story, McBride, the media ethics expert, said. The post about Cedar Run cited no sources and provided no evidence for its claim, she noted.

DoBetterDNVR ‘s posts are often couched with language like “I hear” or “word is” or “rumor has it.”

“Those posts show a very distorted image of the problem, right?” she said. “They’re meant to sort of shock people. They also lack any sort of context. So you don’t know who these people are in these videos or pictures, you don’t know what their backstory is, you don’t even know when the photo was taken or how long ago. So they are very light on facts and heavy on scare tactics.”

In August 2024, DoBetterDNVR claimed the Cedar Run apartments were “reportedly” under the control of TdA gang members. The post included images of needles, cigarette butts and blood-spattered trash.

The post didn’t show what DoBetterDNVR claimed, said Eida Altman, executive director of the Denver Metro Tenants Union, which worked with the complex’s residents at the time.

“What they were showing on their page was evidence of unhoused people living in the common areas,” she said. “And so there was some frustration that there is this influential, high-traffic social media account that is saying, ‘This is all TdA.’ …No one is denying that things were out of hand at Cedar Run, but they presented a very skewed picture that was definitely underpinned by political motives.”

Until this spring, the Denver Police Department’s X account regularly answered DoBetterDNVR’s public questions about incidents. The department stopped doing so in March, police spokesman Doug Schepman said, in a decision that came about “with guidance from the mayor’s office.”

“The volume and frequency of the requests reached levels that became onerous,” Schepman said, noting that the mayor’s office also determined the account’s content was “not solution-oriented.”

Jon Ewing, a spokesman for Mayor Johnston, said in a statement that DoBetterDNVR’s work does not improve the city.

“Those who truly wish to see their city do better seek to build others up,” he said, “not tear them down.”

‘Need to see the reality’

DoBetterDNVR’s supporters hail the account’s content as an unvarnished look at the city’s problems with homelessness and drug addiction.

The videos it posts — like one in October 2023 that showed a woman in a tent, inhaling a substance from a piece of foil through a long cylinder, surrounded by smoke — draw needed attention to problems city officials would rather look away from, supporters say.

“Smoking fetty of (sic) foil,” DoBetterDNVR wrote on the October 2023 video, suggesting the woman in the tent was using fentanyl. “I hear mutual aid groups are giving away foil to the homeless. Can anyone else confirm? This is going way beyond harm reduction — this is ENABLING. #methcampmike”

For Rae Martinez, who asked to be identified by her maiden name to protect her privacy, the video — which showed her 28-year-old daughter — shattered her heart.

“I was feeling like I failed as a parent. I felt like (I was) just waiting for the day I was going to get a call or a visit that she was no longer with us,” she said. “I felt hurt, sad, destroyed, heartbroken.”

Her daughter, a lifelong Denver resident and graduate of Emily Griffith High School, had been on the right track, Martinez said. She went to school to become a pharmacy technician, found her own apartment. She was ambitious, career-oriented, outgoing and bubbly.

She also struggled with substance use and with her mental health, Martinez said, and attempted suicide as a teenager. She became homeless about two and a half years ago after she was evicted from her apartment as her drug use escalated.

For a while, she stayed in touch with her family through sporadic texts, but eventually those stopped coming. Her family listed her as a missing person. They made fliers and walked the streets looking for her.

DoBetterDNVR ‘s post rocketed through the family, making rounds to her siblings, her grandparents and extended family, Martinez said.

“It’s hurtful when you see your own children, your own family members on there,” Martinez said. But she also thinks DoBetterDNVR shows a truth that is too easily ignored.

“I’m not mad at the account,” Martinez said. “I’m really not. I think that’s what needed to be done. We all need to see the reality.”

Is this doxing?

Serena Palacios’ first indication that she’d been featured on DoBetterDNVR was a concerned text from a friend who saw a post with a photo of Palacios and a record of her recent arrest at a protest.

“Initially, I kind of freaked out,” Palacios said.

She worried the post would block her from future job opportunities. Her concern shifted as people online found her social media accounts and started trying to interact with her. Two strangers recognized her in person in the days after DoBetterDNVR’s post, Palacios said, once as she was grocery shopping in a King Soopers with her young children.

“It made me really paranoid to be out in public in general, especially with people out recognizing me that first week,” she said.

On Monday, Osa told The Post that publishing her name and information about her could constitute “doxing,” which traditionally has been defined as publishing someone’s personal information online to try to shame or intimidate them. She and Pacheco both cited threats to DoBetterDNVR as a reason why their names should not be published.

Ferrucci, the journalism professor, dismissed both criticisms. DoBetterDNVR’s actions have turned the people behind it into partial public figures, he said, and receiving threats is an expected part of being a journalist. (He once received a dead bird in the mail, he said.)

“You are putting yourself out there,” he said. “This is what journalists do every day.”

Osa bought a home in Denver in 2013 and sold it for $10 in 2016 to Segen Properties, a Colorado company registered under her husband’s name, state and property records show.

The house is now a rental property, Osa said, adding that she was born and raised in Colorado. She describes herself on her personal Instagram account as a “Believer, wife, momma, infertility warrior, teacher, clean living, medical freedom fighter.”

Osa said she has never met Pacheco in person, though they sometimes spoke at the same meetings. On Monday, they shared information with each other about The Post’s calls within 90 minutes.

Pacheco told Denver city councilmembers in December 2023 that she was a former addict who grew up in a violent, drug-filled home.

“For years, I was resentful because I couldn’t understand why no one stood up for me and my brother,” she said, arguing that people housed in shelters should be required to participate in services like substance abuse treatment in order to keep their housing. “The policies that we stand behind have an impact, and this is a story about how the lack of barriers can have catastrophic consequences. Barriers aren’t always a bad thing. Sometimes barriers are there to prevent a car from driving off a cliff.”

Palacios had little sympathy for concerns that revealing the women connected to DoBetterDNVR constitutes doxing.

“Don’t dish out what you can’t take,” she said.

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The new law — which prohibits people from using a cellphone while driving unless the device is in a hands-free setup — took effect at the start of 2025. Between Jan. 1 and June 30, officers issued citations to drivers in 206 cases statewide, according to data provided by the Colorado Judicial Department.

The first six months of citations reflect racial disparities — an issue that lawmakers were concerned about when the bill was debated at the Capitol. Black Coloradans make up about 4% of the state’s population, but accounted for almost 7% of hand-held phone use citations, the early data shows.

“Unfortunately, we have not mitigated the systemic bias, and evidence of that is things like this, disproportional representation,” said state Rep. Jennifer Bacon, D-Denver.

Amid concerns of pretextual policing, the new law passed with a compromise in which handheld cellphone use became a secondary offense — that is, it can’t be the main reason that a police officer pulls someone over. Rather, officers can pull drivers over for other crimes, like weaving between lanes or driving unsafely, and then can add the charge of handheld cellphone use to that case.

The first six months of data also shows a disparity in the number of white drivers charged with handheld cellphone use. White drivers accounted for 79% of citations, but white people make up about 71% of the state’s population.

That gap could be attributed to an undercount of Hispanic drivers. Only 8% of citations were issued to drivers described as Hispanic, although Hispanic people make up about 22% of the state’s population across races.

And while white and Hispanic defendants are differentiated in the judicial system’s data, a random Denver Post review of 20 cases in which the defendant was listed as white included 11 defendants with common Hispanic surnames.

Bacon said she was encouraged that the racial gap for Black drivers was not wider, and said she thinks the data would show a larger disparity if handheld use of cellphones was a primary offense.

“We were able to kind of keep the ability to use it pretextually off the table,” she said. “It just goes to show there is something wrong — you have disproportional representation with anything that has to do with the justice system.”

Offenses of the new law can result in a $75 fine and two license suspension points for a first-time violation and up to a $250 fine and four points for third offenses. First-time violations of the law can be dismissed if the person ticketed shows they have a hands-free accessory or provides proof of purchase.

The hands-free cellphone enforcement has so far resulted in just over $15,000 in fines, the data shows. Enforcement was heaviest in Jefferson County, where 27 drivers were cited, followed by Arapahoe, Adams and El Paso counties, the data shows. Thirteen drivers were cited in Denver during the first six months of the year, according to data provided by Denver County Court.

Sixty percent of cited drivers were between the ages of 16 and 35, the data shows. About 69% of drivers were men and 31% were women, according to the data.

In the 206 cases in which drivers were charged with handheld cellphone use, the most common other charges were careless driving, lane-use violation, driving under the influence, failure to display proof of insurance, and driving without a valid license, the judicial department’s data shows.

Lawmakers hoped to crack down on distracted driving through the cellphone ban, and proponents like the Colorado State Patrol focused on traffic safety as they pushed the measure into law.

Traffic crashes across the state are trending down, but it is likely too early to tell whether that downward trend can be attributed to the hand-held cellphone ban.

The Colorado Department of Transportation recorded just over 49,000 traffic crashes statewide between January and June 2024, including 1,800 crashes with serious injuries. The agency recorded 306 crash fatalities during the first six months of 2024.

So far in 2025, the agency has recorded 42,000 crashes, with almost 1,700 of those crashes with serious injuries and 280 fatalities. However, CDOT spokesman David Swenka said it typically takes three to four months for new crash data to be fully reported to the agency, so recent 2025 crash data is likely to change.

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Weiser filed a civil complaint against Investigator Alexander Zwinck alleging the deputy knowingly assisted in federal immigration enforcement by sharing information about 19-year-old Caroline Dias Goncalves in a Signal group chat, which is prohibited by state law.

The attorney general’s office is also launching a wider pattern-and-practice investigation into the Signal group chat, which included a number of Colorado law enforcement agencies, to find out whether other state departments also assisted in federal immigration enforcement, Weiser said.

The deputy purposely stalled Dias Goncalves so federal immigration officers could get into position to arrest her, and passed on details about the make and model of her car, her license plate and her direction and timing of travel to the federal officers, knowing it would be used for immigration enforcement, Weiser said during a news conference.

Zwinck later congratulated the federal officers when they detained the student, Weiser said.

“These actions by the sheriff’s deputy were for the sole purpose of immigration enforcement,” Weiser said.

Zwinck could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

Colorado law prohibits local law enforcement officers from carrying out civil immigration enforcement and largely blocks local police agencies from working with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The state’s investigation into Zwinck also found at least one other instance in which he unlawfully participated in federal immigration enforcement, Weiser said, noting that one officer commented that the deputy would be named “ERO interdictor of the year,” a reference to ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division.

Weiser brought the civil complaint — a lawsuit — against Zwinck individually because that is the path established for violations of this particular state law, he said. The violation is not a criminal offense.

Zwinck can contest the attorney general’s allegations — in which case the state would pursue a court order prohibiting Zwinck from continuing to help with federal immigration enforcement — or he can admit the law violation and voluntarily agree to stop such enforcement in a court-enforced agreement known as a consent decree, Weiser said. The office could also pursue fines against Zwinck.

“The problem here is this deputy did the job of federal immigration enforcement, stepped outside of the role he should have been following,” Weiser said. “And that was the line he should have been following.”

Dias Goncalves, who attends the University of Utah, came to the U.S. from Brazil with her family when she was 7 and overstayed a tourist visa. She has a pending asylum application, according to the Salt Lake Tribune.

Zwinck pulled her over on June 5 on Interstate 70 near Loma because she was following a semitrailer too closely. At about 1:40 p.m., he shared a picture of her driver’s license in the Signal group chat so that federal agents could run her information through a number of databases that are only accessible to them, Weiser alleged in the lawsuit.

“Not seeing crim history, but I believe she has immigration issues,” a federal officer responded. “We are confirming.”

Zwinck at that point should have ended the traffic stop, Weiser said. Instead, he questioned Dias Goncalves about her accent and where she was from — she said she was born in Brazil. He shared his location with the federal agents, who responded that they were en route. He kept Dias Goncalves for about 15 minutes, then let her go with a warning at about 1:55 p.m.

He told the federal officers they could turn around, because “she’s gone,” the complaint alleges. He then told the officers her direction of travel, described her vehicle and provided a license plate number. The officers responded that they would “give it a shot,” the complaint says.

They pulled Dias Goncalves over near Grand Junction a few moments later and detained her for civil immigration enforcement.

“Rgr, nice work,” Zwinck responded.

Dias Goncalves was held in custody in Aurora for more than two weeks before she was released on bail.

The Signal group chat included a mix of local and federal officers and was used for regional drug-smuggling enforcement, according to the Mesa County Sheriff’s Office. A spokeswoman previously said deputies did not know the information shared in the chat was used for immigration enforcement and said the sheriff’s office pulled out of the chat after Dias Goncalves’ detainment.

Weiser alleged that Zwinck provided information to federal immigration authorities multiple times between May and June. On June 10, he sent a photo of another person’s driver’s license to the group chat, the complaint alleges.

“After being told that the individual had overstayed a visa and that the federal immigration officers ‘would want him,’ Deputy Zwinck responded, ‘Oh my gosh. We better get some bitchin (sic) Christmas baskets from you guys,'” the complaint alleges.

Zwinck was placed on administrative leave after the incident. Molly Casey, a spokeswoman for the sheriff’s office, said in a statement Tuesday that the internal investigation into Zwinck is expected to be finished within a week.

“We are committed to transparency in this process,” she said, adding that the sheriff’s office would comment further once the investigation is complete.

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The school failed to take action to protect students from Nicholas Jordan, the 26-year-old man who killed his roommate Samuel Knopp, 24, and Celie Montgomery, 26, who was visiting Knopp on campus on Feb. 16, 2024, Montgomery’s mother, Melody Montgomery, alleged in the lawsuit.

Jordan was convicted of the killings and sentenced to life in prison in April.

The 27-page lawsuit lays out a timeline of problems Jordan had on campus that started in early December 2023 and continued up until the February double homicide, including complaints that he sexually harassed multiple women on campus, used significant amounts of marijuana, did not clean and threatened his roommates.

Jordan asked to move out of his campus housing because he had a “bad roommate problem” on Dec. 7, 2023, the lawsuit alleges. He made several additional requests to move out in the coming weeks, but was caught up in school bureaucracy — his request to move was repeatedly stalled because he did the paperwork incorrectly, the lawsuit alleges.

Knopp also reached out to school officials to ask that Jordan move out. The roommates had several disputes between December and February, and campus police responded to complaints about Jordan on several occasions, including one instance in January in which Jordan threatened to kill Knopp because he was “snitching” to school police.

The school’s Campus Assessment Response and Evaluation Team, which exists to handle concerns about student behavior, was aware of Jordan’s conduct and discussed it on multiple occasions, but took no other action, the lawsuit alleges. The team is authorized to coordinate welfare checks, investigate student behavior, refer students to mental health services and take a variety of other steps to ensure campus safety, the lawsuit alleges.

“Defendants knew or should have known of the potential harm that could result from a mentally distressed person abusing drugs who threatens to kill his roommate by virtue of UCCS’ own polices and procedures,” the lawsuit states.

Melody Montgomery, who is now caring for her daughter’s two children, who are 9 and 7, is seeking monetary compensation, the lawsuit states.

Christopher Valentine, a spokesman for CU Colorado Springs, did not immediately return a request for comment Thursday.

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One prison employee and two suspects were wounded in the shootout, which happened around 2:40 a.m. July 10, Pueblo police spokeswoman Bianca Hicks said.

The five prison employees were hanging out after 2 a.m. in the skatepark in Pueblo’s City Park at 800 Goodnight Ave. after the group left work at the Centennial Correctional Facility near Cañon City.

They were skating, throwing a football around and “doing some other activities,” she said, noting that their presence in the park violated the area’s curfew. Then, a group of five suspects pulled up and attempted a carjacking, Hicks said.

At least one suspect shot at the correctional employees during the attempted carjacking and at least one of the prison employees returned fire, Hicks said.

Investigators found 70 shell casings at the scene, she said.

“Ultimately, what we ended up having was a bit of a shootout between the two groups,” she said.

Hicks said she did not know the extent of the injuries to the Department of Corrections employee or to the two suspects who were shot. One of the wounded suspects was an adult and the other was a juvenile, she said. Police were alerted to the shooting when the three victims arrived at two separate local hospitals, she said.

“The victims actually ended up taking the injured suspect to the local hospital,” Hicks said.

Police have identified some of the suspects and are working to identify the other people involved in the attempted carjacking, she said. She declined to release their names publicly and cited the ongoing investigation.

The district attorney’s office will make decisions about charges in the shootout and whether the prison employees acted in self-defense, Hicks said.

Christian Andrade, a spokesman for the Colorado Department of Corrections, confirmed that staff members were involved in the shooting and said no employees had been placed on administrative leave. He declined to provide additional information and directed inquiries to the Pueblo Police Department.

The early-morning shootout happened on the same day that off-duty two staff members at the Colorado Territorial Correctional Facility, a prison in Cañon City, were killed in a crash in Pueblo West at 1:58 a.m., according to The Cañon City Daily Record.

Investigators in that case were considering whether excessive speed and intoxication contributed to the crash, the newspaper reported.

Updated 3:11 p.m. July 17, 2025: This story was updated to correct inaccurate information provided by the Pueblo Police Department about who was injured in the shootout. 

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CENTENNIAL — James Craig was on the clock.

A woman he’d met days earlier at a Las Vegas conference — a woman he said he might be in love with — was coming to visit Denver. This woman, Karin Cain, thought he was living separately from his wife, Angela Craig, 43. She thought the married couple were in the middle of a divorce.

They weren’t, and that was a problem, 18th Judicial Assistant District Attorney Ryan Brackley said during opening statements at James Craig’s murder trial Tuesday.

“They’re living as husband and wife, but he’s got a problem, he’s got a situation, he’s trapped,” Brackley told the jury. “And he’s got eight days. He’s got a countdown.”

Craig, 47, is charged with first-degree murder in the death of Angela Craig on March 18, 2023, from lethal doses of cyanide and tetrahydrozoline, a decongestant found in over-the-counter eyedrops.

Prosecutors allege James Craig bought arsenic, eyedrops and cyanide days before his wife was poisoned to death, searched online about how to poison someone, was having an affair and faced financial difficulties.

Evidence shows that Craig put poison in a smoothie he made for his wife, Brackley said, and that he later opened up a bottle of prescription capsules, replaced the contents of the capsules with cyanide and encouraged a family member to give the deadly pills to his wife.

Brackley alleged during Tuesday’s opening statements in Arapahoe County District Court that James Craig poisoned his wife to get rid of her so he could start a new life with his paramour.

Craig’s defense attorney, Ashley Whitham, dismissed the prosecution’s theory and said Craig had been having affairs for the duration of the couple’s marriage.

“This cheating had been happening for 23 years,” Whitham said. “There were lots of women. This wasn’t just about three women or four women, this is something that had been going on throughout the whole entire relationship. And there is nothing new about Ms. Cain. I know the prosecution is going to argue that and tell you she is some sort of motive, she is just like all the rest of the women that Dr. Craig was having affairs with.”

Whitham accused police of conducting a biased investigation that wrongly focused on James Craig as the only possible suspect, and implied that Angela Craig died by suicide, suggesting she was isolated, overwhelmed and unhappy.

“She was broken,” Whitham said. “She was struggling.”

James Craig is also charged with two counts of solicitation to commit tampering with evidence, two counts of solicitation to commit perjury and solicitation to commit murder. He is accused of asking two different people — including his daughter — to cover up evidence in the case. Prosecutors allege he tried to pay another inmate $20,000 to kill the lead detective on the case and pay the inmate’s ex-wife to falsely testify that Angela Craig was suicidal.

Before Angela died, James Craig used a communal computer at his workplace to conduct numerous searches about poison, prosecutors said.

The searches on YouTube and Google included: “how many grams of pure arsenic will kill a human,” “Is Arsenic Detectable in Autopsy,” “Top 5 Undetectable Poisons That Show No Signs of Foul Play,” “how to make poison,” and “The Top 10 Deadliest Plants (They Can Kill You),” according to a police affidavit.

James Craig ordered arsenic from Amazon.com on Feb. 27, the same day that Cain booked a trip to Denver for March 8, Brackley said. She later pushed her trip back to March 16, Brackley said.

“I might be completely in love with you after 3 days,” James Craig texted Cain, whom he’d met at a conference that started Feb. 22. Over roughly three weeks, the two exchanged 4,000 texts, 80 expressions of love and planned a future together, Brackley said.

“Maybe she will decide to stay gone for a long time,” James Craig texted Cain about his wife on Feb. 28, 2023. “It would be hard for me to figure out how to manage with the kids, but it would definitely make my life easier.”

James and Angela Craig shared six children and were Mormon, Whitham said. She said Angela Craig’s faith was important to her and she wanted to keep the family together for religious reasons, despite long-standing trouble in her marriage.

James Craig received the Amazon package of arsenic on March 4, and two days later, his wife was admitted to a hospital with symptoms that aligned with poisoning, according to a police affidavit. James Craig bought 12 bottles of Visine on March 8, 2023, then bought more the next day, Brackley said.

Angela Craig was released from the hospital on March 6 but returned between March 9 and 14, 2023. While she was hospitalized, James Craig ordered two additional poisons — cyanide and oleandrin — from medical suppliers, according to the affidavit. (He never received the oleandrin because the package was intercepted by police.)

Angela Craig conducted a number of Google searches on her phone about what might be causing her illness, Brackley said. Those searches included: “Internal shiver causes,” “Fall asleep, deep snore, internal tremors,” “Obstructive sleep apnea,” and “Internal tremors & chills.”

On March 15, while Angela Craig was home, James Craig texted a family member and reminded them to give Angela Craig a prescription medication. Within 25 minutes of Angela Craig taking that medication, she became very sick and was rushed back to the hospital, where she was put in intensive care and on a ventilator.

Angela Craig was declared brain dead and taken off life support on March 18, 2023.

“He put cyanide in the capsule,” Brackley told jurors.

Both he and Craig’s defense team showed jurors images and video recorded by a surveillance camera installed inside the Craigs’ home that pointed at the couple’s living room and kitchen. In one photo from March 9, the footage showed Angela Craig crawling on the ground when she was overcome with pain. In another clip, after her first hospital visit, the couple argued.

Angela Craig accused her husband of undermining her during the visit by implying to the doctors that she’d harmed herself, and said she thought it was odd that he didn’t ask for more details about her medical care.

“No one in their right mind would ever think I would kill myself before I killed you,” Angela Craig said during that argument. “No way. Name one person.”

Craig was charged with his wife’s murder hours after Angela Craig was taken off life support and died. The case was scheduled for a jury trial in December 2024, but was delayed when Craig’s defense attorney, Harvey Steinberg, withdrew from representing Craig over ethical concerns on the day the jury trial was scheduled to start.

Another of Craig’s attorneys, Robert Werking, withdrew from the case on July 1 after Werking was arrested and accused of setting his own home on fire. Werking is receiving mental health treatment, his attorney said, and Werking’s wife, who is also an attorney, is continuing to represent Craig during his jury trial.

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J.E., who is being identified by her initials to protect her daughter’s identity, wanted the suspect to be convicted, locked away. She wanted to know he couldn’t hurt anyone else, at least for a while.

But that’s not what happened.

Jesus Alberto Pereira Castillo, 21, posted $5,000 bail and was released from the Jefferson County jail on Nov. 27, 2024, court records show. He was subsequently arrested by federal immigration authorities and was deported from the country by May.

“Clerk notified via email that deft” — the defendant — “has been removed from the country,” Chief Judge Jeffrey Pilkington wrote in a May 19 order.

The deportation effectively ended the state’s criminal case against Castillo — the prosecution cannot continue without his presence in court, though he remains wanted on a warrant and could be prosecuted if he were to return to Colorado.

There was no conviction, no sentence, no jail time — just a deportation.

“It’s been pretty hard on me and my daughter,” J.E. said. “She doesn’t feel like she is getting the justice she deserves. It just has been so easy for immigrants to come into the country after they are deported. So the fear is that he might relocate somewhere else in the U.S. and do this to someone else. Them deporting him ruined justice for my daughter.”

At least two dozen defendants and one witness in criminal cases in metro Denver have been taken into custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and deported in the middle of ongoing state prosecutions since September, The Denver Post found. District attorneys across the region started to notice more defendants disappearing into ICE custody this spring, as President Donald Trump ramped up deportations nationwide.

Colorado district attorneys who spoke with The Post said such deportations are not in the interest of justice and do not improve public safety over the long term.

“If I can’t hold someone accountable because the defendant is deported before we’ve reached a just outcome in the case, and the defendant finds their way back here and commits another crime, that does not make the community safer,” 17th Judicial District Attorney Brian Mason said. “If victims of crime are afraid to call the police after they have been sexually assaulted or some other terrible crime because they are worried about being deported, that makes our community less safe.”

The defendants deported were charged with crimes that included driving under the influence, car theft, drug distribution, assault, domestic violence, attempted murder and human trafficking.

Again and again, court records reviewed by The Post showed criminal cases stalled by deportations.

“Def does not appear as he was deported and is no longer in the U.S.,” a document notes in the file for a  26-year-old man from Brazil who was accused of swinging a knife at his wife.

“Deft no longer in the country. Defendant (failed to appear),” a record states in the file for a 32-year-old man from Mexico charged with driving a stolen car.

‘Full force of the law’

Detectives with the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office and the Denver Police Department spent six months building a case against a 28-year-old man from El Salvador who they alleged sold drugs and was connected to a woman who fatally overdosed at an Arapahoe County apartment complex in October.

The investigation included a drug deal with an undercover Denver detective and ongoing surveillance. The man was charged with four felony counts related to drug dealing and two counts of child abuse after the six-month investigation culminated in his arrest on April 9.

The man’s arrest affidavit notes that he was arrested by the Aurora Police Department’s SWAT team, and then, without further explanation, says he was taken into custody by ICE.

Aurora police spokesman Joe Moylan said the city’s SWAT team assisted in the arrest and then turned the man over to the sheriff’s office while at the scene. Anders Nelson, a spokesman for the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office, said the agency “partners with ICE” when pursuing cases against suspected non-citizen drug dealers.

“ICE uses various means to positively identify these individuals, and so when they are arrested, ICE agents respond to identify the individual so that we can charge them accordingly under their correct name,” Nelson said. “In this case, the subject had a lengthy criminal history that included active warrants for his arrest and had entered the U.S. illegally on several occasions, and so ICE agents took custody of him.”

The suspect accused of selling drugs was deported within a month. The state criminal case remains open.

“Deft has been deported,” the man’s court records noted on May 9.

In an emailed statement, Denver ICE spokesman Steve Kotecki said the federal agency “arrests aliens who threaten public safety and commit crimes.”

Before their recent arrests and deportations, the two men from El Salvador and Brazil had previously been cited only for traffic violations in Colorado, according to records kept by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. The man from Mexico had prior convictions for car theft and drug possession.

“ICE recognizes the importance of addressing unlawful actions with the full force of the law, ensuring that individuals are held accountable for their actions,” Kotecki said in the statement. “We are committed to creating safe and thriving communities by supporting effective and fair law enforcement practices.”

Tristan Gorman, a criminal defense attorney, noted that ICE’s mid-case deportations, which come before a defendant is convicted of a crime, are “completely disregarding the constitutional presumption of innocence.”

Mason, who serves as DA for Adams and Broomfield counties, said federal agencies “are under enormous pressure to implement the policies of the current administration.”

“This is new,” he said of the growing number of mid-case deportations.

Long-used process is no longer reliable

In the past, when ICE detained defendants while their state cases were ongoing, prosecutors relied on court orders called writs to ensure the defendants still appeared in court. A writ in this context is a judge’s order to a custodial agency, like a jail or immigration detention center, requiring the agency to bring the defendant to court.

ICE is no longer reliably complying with writs to produce defendants for their state hearings, First Judicial District Attorney Alexis King said.

“It’s hard to know and it’s hard to predict how a writ will be honored or not,” she said. “…A writ was our standard process that we relied on to keep someone available for a criminal proceeding. It is not consistently working.”

ICE hasn’t communicated its policies or procedures in any cohesive way to her team of Jefferson and Gilpin county prosecutors, King said. Her office is relying on personal connections between staff and officials at ICE to try to ensure defendants in federal custody are brought to court.

“It’s felt pretty ad hoc, and often reliant on us being very proactive,” she said.

ICE officials informed the Adams County Sheriff’s Office and the Denver Sheriff Department in June that the agency would no longer comply with writs for detainees in immigration custody to physically appear in the counties’ criminal courts.

“ICE Denver is no longer honor (sic) writ from Denver County Court due to the Denver County Jail do not (sic) comply with immigration detainer or fail to transfer custody of aliens in a safe and orderly manner,” Hung Thach, a supervisory detention and deportation officer in the Denver field office, wrote in a June 16 email to Denver officials.

In a statement issued to 9News and Colorado Public Radio, Denver Field Office Director Robert Gaudian said ICE would not honor the writs because agency officials were not confident the detainees would be returned to ICE’s custody after their state court appearances.

Kotecki did not respond to a request to share that statement with The Post. He previously has requested blanket anonymity for his statements as a spokesman for the federal agency, which The Post declined to grant. He also has said he would no longer provide information to The Post unless the newspaper complied with his request for anonymity.

“In the past, ICE Denver and the Adams County sheriff have enjoyed a great working relationship, with ICE honoring writs for trials and the sheriff notifying us of an alien’s release,” Gaudian said in the statement, according to 9News. “This relationship must be reciprocal, though. If I’m not confident that the sheriff will return an alien to us, then I cannot in good conscience release that individual.”

Denver sheriff’s spokeswoman Daria Serna defended the department’s practices for handling writs in a statement Wednesday.

“The Denver Sheriff Department’s policy and practice for the transfer of people in custody are in alignment with state and local laws,” she said.

ICE approach varies by jurisdiction

So far in Boulder, immigration authorities have largely complied with writs to produce defendants for state court hearings with just a handful of exceptions, said Michael Dougherty, the Boulder County district attorney.

The bigger risk for his office is not knowing about ICE detainment in time to seek a writ and delay deportation, because federal agents are failing to consistently alert prosecutors when they arrest defendants in state criminal cases, he said.

“ICE should provide a notification anytime they pick someone up and the person is a defendant,” Dougherty said. “That has not always happened. What has happened, more often than not, is we find out from the defense attorney or someone connected to the defendant that someone has been arrested by ICE and held for possible deportation.”

Dougherty noted that deportations seem to be happening much faster than in past years. When a defendant is deported in the middle of a case, it has a broad impact, he said.

“The victim never had his or her day in court,” he said. “We couldn’t do justice. There is no conviction, no sex offender registration and no consequences. And the person is deported to a country. We have no reason to believe the person is held responsible for the crime they were accused of.”

In Douglas, Elbert and Lincoln counties, prosecutors have not had any issues with ICE agents deporting defendants mid-case, said 23rd Judicial District Attorney George Brauchler. He said federal agents have given his office warnings when ICE is interested in defendants, which has allowed prosecutors to revoke defendants’ bonds to keep them in jail — in state custody — while the criminal case is pending.

Gorman, the defense attorney, said revoking bond simply because a person could be deported is fundamentally unfair.

“We’re just basically saying to them, ‘Yeah, we put all these terms and conditions on your bond and you’ve got to comply with them or we will revoke your bond,” she said. “But even if you do absolutely everything right and show up at all your court dates, we might revoke your bond anyway… even though you followed all the rules.”

Arrests at courthouses

Colorado law prohibits ICE agents from arresting people at or near state courthouses for civil immigration purposes — a line that federal agents have crossed multiple times this year, including in Denver and on the Western Slope.

Federal agents have also been routinely making immigration arrests at Denver’s federal courthouses, which are not covered by the state prohibition.

In Garfield, Pitkin and Rio Blanco counties, federal agents monitored courthouse dockets in order to detain defendants for immigration proceedings, Ninth Judicial District Chief Judge John Neiley wrote in an April 8 order instructing federal agents to stop.

“In short, these types of arrests make courthouses less safe, frustrate the process of justice, and could have a chilling effect on litigants, witnesses, victims, court personnel and other members of the public who have a right and obligation to participate fairly in the judicial system,” Neiley wrote in the order.

Although the practice is against Colorado law, there are no criminal penalties for federal agents who make such prohibited arrests. Rather, state law says they can be held in contempt of court or sued by the Colorado Attorney General’s Office. Spokesman Lawrence Pacheco said the office could not confirm or comment on any such investigations.

“Attorney General (Phil) Weiser is concerned about reports of ICE arrests at state courthouses interfering with state criminal prosecutions and having a chilling effect on witnesses and victims in criminal cases,” Pacheco said. “Federal immigration arrests at courthouses make our communities less safe and violate state law.”

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Paramedic Edward McClure, 54, was arrested on suspicion of manslaughter and forgery in the December death of Jesus Lopez Barcenas, two days after he was taken into custody.

The criminal case comes nearly six years after Elijah McClain, a 23-year-old Black man, died after Aurora police restrained him and a paramedic injected him with the sedative ketamine. McClain’s death prompted a new state law that limited the way paramedics could use ketamine during police encounters in an attempt to prevent similar deaths.

McClure used a different drug, Droperidol, to sedate Barcenas, according to a police affidavit.

Barcenas was arrested by police officers from the Boulder and University of Colorado police departments on Dec. 27, 2024. Campus police officers responded to CU’s Center for Innovation and Creativity, at 1777 Exposition Drive, after a worker there reported that Barcenas was acting strangely.

When campus officers arrived, Barcenas was shouting about people dying inside the building and the building being on fire, according to a 30-page affidavit filed against McClure. Barcenas was hitting a fire alarm with his cellphone. The building was not on fire.

Campus police attempted to arrest Barcenas and put him in handcuffs at 8:26 p.m. A fight ensued, according to the affidavit, and the officers called Boulder police for help. One officer reported that Barcenas tried to grab the officer’s gun during the struggle. Officers eventually were able to handcuff Barcenas, according to the affidavit.

They called for two ambulances — one for an officer who’d hurt his ankle during the arrest, and one for Barcenas, who was still speaking nonsensically and yelling.

When American Medical Response paramedics arrived at 8:34 p.m., McClure spoke to Barcenas from about three feet away as officers continued to restrain the man. He did not touch Barcenas or ask the man how he was feeling. McClure also did not ask officers what happened, according to the affidavit.

After a brief conversation with Barcenas in which the man did not speak coherently, McClure injected Barcenas with 5 mg of Droperidol. Barcenas was handcuffed, restrained by police and lying on his stomach when McClure injected him through a hole in his pants, according to the affidavit.

The officers, McClure and an EMT put Barcenas on a gurney. They laid him on his stomach with his hands cuffed behind his back, then used additional restraints on his ankles and strapped seatbelt-like restraints across his body.

“Now let’s strap the crap out of him,” McClure said, according to the affidavit. He instructed the EMT with him to keep Barcenas in a prone position.

“Just keep him face-down, I don’t care,” McClure said, according to the affidavit.

Transporting a handcuffed patient in that position is dangerous and forbidden by the ambulance company’s policy, according to the affidavit. A person restrained in a prone position is unable to safely exhale, which can cause carbon dioxide to rapidly rise in a person’s blood, which can lead to death.

Barcenas was put in the back of the ambulance at 8:46 p.m. At some point, prosecutors allege McClure placed a “spit sock” covering over Barcenas’ head, even though the man was not spitting on anyone.

By 8:55 p.m., the ambulance crew updated their status to an emergency because Barcenas suffered a heart attack. Two minutes later, McClure can be seen on a body-worn camera doing CPR on Barcenas. He did not recover.

Barcenas died two days later.

‘Tragic and untimely death’

The Boulder County Coroner’s Office found he died from “sudden cardiac arrest following a prolonged physical altercation and struggle, which included prone positioning and the use of restraints and a sedative,” according to the affidavit. The coroner’s office determined that “the toxic effects of methamphetamine contributed to his death.”

McClure was arrested Friday. He was booked into the Boulder County jail and then released after posting bail. He couldn’t be reached for comment.

Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty said in a news release Friday that he found the police officers’ use of force to be within the law during Barcenas’ arrest, but that McClure’s “reckless acts” led to the man’s death.

“The prone positioning, positioning of the gurney, and the use of the restraints and spit sock by Paramedic McClure is alleged to have caused the tragic and untimely death of Mr. Barcenas,” Dougherty wrote in a Friday letter that cleared the police officers of wrongdoing.

McClure is also accused of attempting to change his patient care reports in order to cover up his actions and being dishonest during interviews with his supervisors about the incident. He claimed that he could not take certain care steps in the ambulance because Barcenas was combative, when, in fact, the man was barely moving, according to the affidavit.

McClure was fired by American Medical Response on Dec. 30, 2024, according to the affidavit.

‘Virtually unheard of’

It’s extremely rare but not unprecedented for an emergency medical provider to be charged with crimes related to patient care, said Howard Paul, communications director for the Emergency Medical Services Association of Colorado.

“It’s virtually unheard of,” he said. “It’s extraordinarily rare.”

Emergency medical service providers across the country watched closely when two paramedics were charged with crimes in McClain’s 2019 death, he said.

One of the paramedics who handled McClain’s care was convicted of criminally negligent homicide and assault. A judge erased the paramedic’s five-year prison sentence just six months after it started.

McClain’s killing also renewed scrutiny around the term “excited delirium,” a disputed condition that describes someone exhibiting extreme agitation to the point where they are a danger to themselves and others.

McClure underwent training on restraining combative patients in August 2024, according to the affidavit, though he denied going through that training during an interview with his supervisors — until he was shown his signature on a class roster.

“Oh yeah, that is the whole, ‘You can’t say ‘excited delirium’ or whatever training,” he said, according to the affidavit.

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Mary Dulacki, the department’s chief compliance officer, was fired June 5 after city officials said she was dishonest during an investigation into workplace misconduct that allegedly ranged from gossiping to mismanaging subordinates to speaking with a TV news reporter.

Dulacki, who has been a city employee for 17 years, has claimed the firing was retaliation after she filed a gender-discrimination complaint with the Colorado Division of Civil Rights a year ago, according to a city letter of discipline.

Executive Director of Public Safety Armando Saldate denied in the nine-page letter that he fired Dulacki in retaliation.

“To the contrary, we received a complaint from one of the employees you directly supervised at the time alleging various perceived inappropriate actions on your part that we were obligated to investigate,” he wrote. “We hired a neutral outside investigator to investigate the allegations and make factual findings that we have relied upon in deciding to initiate the disciplinary process and to impose discipline.”

Dulacki and her attorney did not return requests for comment this week.

The misconduct investigation found that Dulacki spoke with CBS Colorado reporter Brian Maass after a Denver police officer was run over by a city fire truck during the Nuggets’ NBA championship celebration parade in June 2023. Maass obtained a copy of a draft Denver Fire Department after-action report about the incident and published a story about the document in March 2024.

Maass filed an open records request for the report in February 2024, but a city records custodian told him it didn’t exist, which Saldate said “was appropriate in that only a draft report existed that had never been approved.”

Dulacki then told the records custodian that the custodian should assume Maass already had a copy of the report, according to the letter.

“You disclosed that you were having conversations with Mr. Maass on the side and advised her to assume Mr. Maass already had a copy of the draft after-action report. You then asked not to tell anyone that you were speaking with Mr. Maass on the side,” the disciplinary letter states.

When asked about the conversations during the subsequent misconduct investigation, Dulacki said she didn’t recall talking with the reporter or asking the custodian not to tell anyone about the conversations, the disciplinary letter states. Saldate found her statements were not credible.

Dulacki was also investigated over concerns that she mismanaged her subordinates, including by unfairly distributing work, failing to advocate for an employee’s advancement and failing to communicate with that employee clearly. Additionally, the letter states that Dulacki gossiped about a subordinate having an affair.

She denied gossiping during the misconduct investigation, which Saldate again considered to be dishonest.

He noted that Dulacki was in charge of making final disciplinary decisions for Denver police officers and firefighters, and that those first responders can be fired for dishonesty.

“It would be irresponsible for me to retain you in your role when it is your responsibility to decide whether to dismiss officers who are deceptive in their internal affairs interviews, and when your credibility is critical to your ability to testify effectively in all disciplinary appeal hearings,” Saldate wrote. “In addition, I can no longer employ someone at your level whose honesty and judgment I no longer to (sic) trust.”

It was not immediately clear Friday whether or how Dulacki’s gender-discrimination complaint was resolved. Katie O’Donnell, a spokeswoman for the Colorado Civil Rights Division, said she could not comment on the status, outcome or existence of complaints filed with the division.

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Robert Werking — who had been representing Aurora dentist James Craig in a high-profile murder case — attended the brief hearing virtually and appeared to be sitting in a hospital bed. His attorney, David Beller, said in a statement that Werking is seeking mental health treatment.

“Being a defense lawyer necessarily means bearing the burden of living at all times in other people’s trauma. Sometimes, this means becoming a news story, when the weight of trauma is too much for us to continue to carry,” Beller said in the statement. “Mr. Werking is getting the mental health treatment so many of us delay receiving.”

Werking, 59, did not address the court except to ask for time to speak privately with his attorneys, Beller and Victor Stazzone.

Attorney for Aurora dentist accused of poisoning wife is arrested in arson of own home, withdraws on eve of murder trial

Prosecutors charged Werking with first-degree and fourth-degree arson, both felonies, after authorities say he set fire to his own Centennial home just before midnight June 28.

First responders found him sitting on the front porch with flames burning behind him. Werking also faces a weapons charge from a June 14 incident. Beller asked the public to "withhold judgment" and extend Werking grace and compassion.

He and his wife, Lisa Fine Moses, were the attorneys representing Craig, who is charged with poisoning his wife to death. Werking withdrew from the case after his arrest, just days before Craig's jury trial, which is scheduled to start Thursday.

Fine Moses has remained as Craig's attorney. She is named as a victim in the arson case because Werking is accused of burning the home the couple owns together without her consent. The formal complaint also names Werking's neighbor as a victim, because the fire endangered the home the neighbor owned next door.

Beller declined to immediately comment Tuesday. Werking is next scheduled to return to court on Sept. 19.

Craig's trial is still set to go forward on Thursday. The 47-year-old is charged with first-degree murder in the death of his wife, Angela Craig, 43, who died March 18, 2023, from lethal doses of cyanide and tetrahydrozoline, a decongestant found in over-the-counter eyedrops.

Investigators allege James Craig bought arsenic and cyanide days before his wife was poisoned to death, searched online about how to poison someone, was having an affair and faced financial difficulties.

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