Letters To The Editor
ShotSpotter Is Ineffective
By Kayla Q. Frawley
On the evening of Jan. 3, I, among many other neighbors and concerned citizens stayed online untill 9 p.m. to testify at a Denver City Council meeting in opposition or support of the new contract that the Denver Police Department made with ShotSpotter. ShotSpotter is a technology that alerts law enforcement when gunshots and other loud sounds are made.
As a mom and resident of District 8 in Denver, I am familiar with the gun violence that has torn our city apart countless times. I remember hiding under my desk at my child’s daycare center, calling 911 multiple times because of a shooting down the street, or a lockdown, or a lock-in. My stress is likely shared with all of my neighbors. All of us are impacted by gun violence. In 2019 the Denver metro had the third-most mass shootings per capita in the country. We are the fifth highest state when it comes to mass shootings. Residents are aware that we have to seek better solutions, invest in cost-effective routes to reducing gun violence, and take an equitable stance to community safety by reducing violence done onto communities of color.
An Associated Press investigation of ShotSpotter, however, found pretty serious flaws. Based on thousands of documents and multiple interviews, they found the system sets off false alarms with fireworks, cars backfiring, or other loud sounds. Because of this, they found many judges actually would throw out ShotSpotter evidence in cases, rightfully worried that the technology’s results have mistakenly put innocent people in jail.
We know that ShotSpotter is installed in neighborhoods that are considered crime spots — which more often than not are disproportionately in communities of color and unfairly target communities of color.
Ultimately, our City Council voted yes to extending the contract with ShotSpotter, meaning over the next five years taxpayers will pay $4.7 million to keep the program running. As residents, we have a moral responsibility to ensure the safety of our communities, specifically in communities monitored more by law enforcement. It is even more imperative that we show up, and share with City Council what matters to us, and how we would ideally like to see our tax money spent on promoting safety in our communities.
Kayla Q. Frawley lives in the Central Park neighborhood and works in Park Hill.
Bloom On, City Park
By Maria Flora and Georgia Garnsey
We reached out to you a year ago to help us launch a volunteer gardening program in City Park – and so many of you reached back! As the pandemic strained the capacity of our City Park horticulturists and maintenance staff to care for our park, you signed up to implement Denver Parks and Recreation’s Adopt-A-Flowerbed program. What a difference your commitment made.
More than 50 volunteers showed up in May, 2021. Neighbors from all around the park participated, including Park Hill, South City Park, Whittier, Congress, Cheesman, Cherry Creek – and beyond. City Park horticulturists outlined gardening responsibilities that included watering, weeding, pruning, and fertilizing. Participants organized into teams and picked the gardens they wanted to maintain.
As the gardening season progressed from spring to fall, volunteers gathered in teams or individually when they could – sometimes weekly, bi-weekly or monthly – and began to work on larger team projects. Sometimes the word would go out that the Benedict Rose Garden or Sopris or Thatcher needed help and a group of a dozen or more would show up to make it happen. Gardening was always accompanied by much laughter, trading of gardening tips and camaraderie. Getting to know the City Park horticulturists was a particular bonus.
City Park’s Adopt-a-Flowerbed volunteers racked up 1200 volunteer gardening hours in 2021 – the first year of the program. We are well into organizing for the 2022 season now. Please join us. The GPHC Parks and Open Space Committee, City Park Friends and Neighbors and City Park Alliance are City Park’s Adopt-A-Flowerbed sponsors. Email mjflora@msn.com or ggarnsey@ecentral.com with your interest and we’ll get back to you with more info and updates. This is a flexible and happy volunteer program we know you’ll enjoy as you keep City Park beautifully blooming.
Maria Flora is the GPHC Parks and Open Space Chair. Georgia Garnsey is president of City Park Friends and Neighbors.
We love your letters, and give preference to those that address an issue that has been covered in the newspaper, or a topic that is Park Hill or Denver-specific. Send letters to editor@greaterparkhill.org, and include your full name, and the neighborhood in which you live. Deadlines are the 15th of each month, for the following month’s issue.