A transgender inmate at the El Paso County Criminal Justice Center was removed from the general female population on Wednesday and put into a solitary cell where she will be confined for 23 hours a day, indefinitely. The Sheriff’s office relayed to the Gazette‘s Kassondra Cloos that the inmate had not threatened anyone, but rather that her separation came in response to a complaint claiming she was being “disruptive by talking about her status.” The move was “for the inmate’s safety,” according to a spokesman at the Sheriff’s office. Her stay there will likely be short, however, because she’s expected to be extradited to the state that issued the warrant for her arrest.
The state attorney general’s office penned an opinion this week declaring that DIY hash oil extraction is still illegal. Making this kind of marijuana concentrate involves the use of highly flammable chemicals which, in several cases, have caused home explosions. In a brief filed in a criminal case against a Mesa County man charged with arson, reckless endangerment and manufacture of marijuana concentrate, the attorney general’s opinion relied heavily on the semantics of amendment 64 – especially a comma used in the definition of “marijuana” intended to exclude oil, among other things. “To decriminalize dangerous and unreasonable behavior in which people are getting hurt and houses are blowing up defies the intent of the voters,” attorney general John Suthers told the Denver Post.
When the city of Boulder rejected resident Patrick Murphy’s Colorado Open Records Act request for the cash-flow model used in calculating the viability of a public municipal utility, city attorneys argued that the model was “work product” and therefore not subject to open records laws. Murphy is now suing the city to get hold of the model. His lawsuit argues that any information regarding the financial viability of the utility should be free and open so the public can make informed decisions about its energy future. That line of reasoning stems from the city charter amendment approved by voters in 2011, which gave city council the authority to create and run a municipal energy utility only if it could offer rates equal to or lower than its previous energy provider, Xcel Energy.”[The cash-flow model] is needed by the public to know whether municipalization is really viable,” Murphy said, “the fact that they are hiding it is unreasonable. They’ve made decisions based on that data, so they need to make it public.” Via the Daily Camera.
Seven people from Westboro Baptist Church protesting legal gay marriage and pot were met by nearly 400 counter-protesters in Pueblo on Monday. Betty Phelps, daughter-in-law of the church’s founder, Fred Phelps, said that they could’ve chosen to protest anywhere in Colorado, but Pueblo was most convenient. Southern Colorado Equality Alliance board member Jerry Carter remarked to the Pueblo Chieftain that since Pueblo County Clerk and Recorder Gilbert “Bo” Ortiz started issuing same-sex marriage licenses this fall, “no big holes have opened up under the ground, no big black birds have come out of the sky; just 60 couples have been married.”