ARAPAHOE COUNTY — — Denver Post reporter Jesse Paul's updates from Day 47 of the Aurora theater shooting trial at the Arapahoe County Justice Center in Centennial, Colorado.
Reported by Denver Post 17 hours ago.
Aurora theater shooting trial, the latest from Day 47
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Defense will rest in Aurora theater shooting trial Friday
CENTENNIAL — Defense attorneys called their final witness in the Aurora theater shooting trial on Friday, and they planned to rest their case later in the day.
Reported by Denver Post 16 hours ago.
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Aurora police: 7-year-old shot in head remains in critical condition
A 7-year-old boy remains in critical condition at Children's Hospital Colorado after he was apparently shot in the head accidently while with a group of children.
Reported by Denver Post 15 hours ago.
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Private Prison Company Forced Immigrants To Work For Free, Lawsuit Says
When Alejandro Menocal got locked up in an immigrant detention center in Aurora, Colorado, last year, he volunteered to work in the recreation yard. A Mexican-born migrant who has lived in the United States since 1973, Menocal said he enjoyed the exercise. He later took a job at the detention center serving breakfast, lunch and dinner to some 60 detainees and helping to clean the dining room, he says.
The GEO Group, the private prison contractor that runs the detention center as a for-profit enterprise, paid Menocal $1 per day for his work -- a common practice across the United States, where many detainees toil for days in order to earn enough money to buy a phone card.
But Menocal's job at the cafeteria wasn’t the only job he was expected to do. Each day, guards selected six detainees to clean each “pod” -- a cell containing roughly 60 migrants -- for no pay at all. One day, the six people chosen for pod cleaning duty refused to work. The guards swapped their orange jumpsuits for red ones, Menocal says, and punished them with solitary confinement, a chilling example for others who might follow their lead.
“They put them in isolation -- we call it ‘the hole,’” Menocal told The Huffington Post. “You don’t get to see anybody all day, not even the guards who bring you food.”
Now Menocal is a plaintiff in a lawsuit accusing the country's second-largest private prison contractor of unjustly enriching itself with the labor of immigrant detainees and forcing them to do custodial work for free under the threat of solitary confinement. On Monday, U.S. District Judge John Kane denied the GEO Group’s motion to dismiss the suit.
The lawsuit, filed last year on behalf of current and former immigrant detainees at the Aurora Detention Center, said that GEO violated Colorado’s minimum wage law, as well as the Trafficking Victim’s Protection Act, a federal law that bars forced labor. A third claim under common law accused GEO of illegally enriching itself at the detainees' expense.
While Kane denied GEO’s motion to dismiss the suit, he also said that Colorado’s minimum wage law wasn’t intended to apply to immigrant detainees. But the lawsuit will move forward based on the other two claims.
A favorable decision for the former inmates could have broad implications for the largely privatized immigrant detention system, in which private companies routinely pay well below the minimum wage for custodial duties and other work.
“GEO is making millions and millions of dollars a year, in part because they’re not paying the people who work at the facilities,” Nina DiSalvo, the executive director of Towards Justice, a nonprofit organization working with the attorneys handling the lawsuit, told the HuffPost. “It’s a pretty big deal that the regular practices that they’ve codified in policy handbooks would be forced labor.”
GEO denied any wrongdoing in an email to HuffPost. “GEO’s facilities, including the Aurora, Colo. Facility, provide high quality services in safe, secure, and humane residential environments, and our company strongly refutes allegations to the contrary,” the statement says. “The volunteer work program at immigration facilities as well as the wage rates and standards associated with the program are set by the Federal government.”
GEO has faced a series of allegations of misconduct at another immigrant detention center it runs in Karnes City, Texas, which houses immigrant mothers and their children. A group of women -- many of whom had passed the first stages of establishing an asylum claim -- launched a hunger strike before the Easter holiday to protest their continued detention. Some of the women said that guards at the GEO-run facility threatened to separate the mothers from their children if they continued to protest.
The private prison contractor denied allegations of wrongdoing in that instance as well.
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 15 hours ago.
The GEO Group, the private prison contractor that runs the detention center as a for-profit enterprise, paid Menocal $1 per day for his work -- a common practice across the United States, where many detainees toil for days in order to earn enough money to buy a phone card.
But Menocal's job at the cafeteria wasn’t the only job he was expected to do. Each day, guards selected six detainees to clean each “pod” -- a cell containing roughly 60 migrants -- for no pay at all. One day, the six people chosen for pod cleaning duty refused to work. The guards swapped their orange jumpsuits for red ones, Menocal says, and punished them with solitary confinement, a chilling example for others who might follow their lead.
“They put them in isolation -- we call it ‘the hole,’” Menocal told The Huffington Post. “You don’t get to see anybody all day, not even the guards who bring you food.”
Now Menocal is a plaintiff in a lawsuit accusing the country's second-largest private prison contractor of unjustly enriching itself with the labor of immigrant detainees and forcing them to do custodial work for free under the threat of solitary confinement. On Monday, U.S. District Judge John Kane denied the GEO Group’s motion to dismiss the suit.
The lawsuit, filed last year on behalf of current and former immigrant detainees at the Aurora Detention Center, said that GEO violated Colorado’s minimum wage law, as well as the Trafficking Victim’s Protection Act, a federal law that bars forced labor. A third claim under common law accused GEO of illegally enriching itself at the detainees' expense.
While Kane denied GEO’s motion to dismiss the suit, he also said that Colorado’s minimum wage law wasn’t intended to apply to immigrant detainees. But the lawsuit will move forward based on the other two claims.
A favorable decision for the former inmates could have broad implications for the largely privatized immigrant detention system, in which private companies routinely pay well below the minimum wage for custodial duties and other work.
“GEO is making millions and millions of dollars a year, in part because they’re not paying the people who work at the facilities,” Nina DiSalvo, the executive director of Towards Justice, a nonprofit organization working with the attorneys handling the lawsuit, told the HuffPost. “It’s a pretty big deal that the regular practices that they’ve codified in policy handbooks would be forced labor.”
GEO denied any wrongdoing in an email to HuffPost. “GEO’s facilities, including the Aurora, Colo. Facility, provide high quality services in safe, secure, and humane residential environments, and our company strongly refutes allegations to the contrary,” the statement says. “The volunteer work program at immigration facilities as well as the wage rates and standards associated with the program are set by the Federal government.”
GEO has faced a series of allegations of misconduct at another immigrant detention center it runs in Karnes City, Texas, which houses immigrant mothers and their children. A group of women -- many of whom had passed the first stages of establishing an asylum claim -- launched a hunger strike before the Easter holiday to protest their continued detention. Some of the women said that guards at the GEO-run facility threatened to separate the mothers from their children if they continued to protest.
The private prison contractor denied allegations of wrongdoing in that instance as well.
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 15 hours ago.
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A guide to mental health professionals who saw theater shooting gunman
CENTENNIAL — More than a dozen mental health professionals from a rainbow of disciplines have evaluated or treated James Holmes in his lifetime, according to testimony at the Aurora
Reported by Denver Post 15 hours ago.
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Aurora won't add rental sales taxes to coin-operated businesses
Owners of coin-operated car washes and Laundromats in Aurora no longer have to worry about the city imposing sales taxes on the use of their equipment after city council agreed to exempt those businesses at recent study session meeting.
Reported by Denver Post 13 hours ago.
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7-Year-Old Colorado Boy Shot In Head While Playing With Friends
A 7-year-old Colorado boy was in critical condition on Friday after being shot in the head in an apparent accident while he and six other children played together alone in a suburban Denver home, authorities have said.Police have not said what type of firearm was used in the incident, which took place on Thursday afternoon in Aurora. The wounded boy was rushed to the nearby Children's Hospital, where he underwent surgery in the evening.
"Everyone that was involved was a juvenile," Sergeant Chris Amsler said in a video released by the Aurora Police Department. He said the shooting appears to have been an accident.
Six children aged between 7 and 12 years old were inside the home at the time. No adults were present, authorities said, and the wounded child did not live there.
"We're not looking for anyone else," Amsler said, adding detectives will investigate how the kids got the gun. "We have to get all the facts and interview all the witnesses."
In a statement on Friday, the Aurora Police Department reminded firearm owners they must ensure guns are always kept in a place inaccessible to children or other unauthorized persons.
"Hiding a gun in a closet, drawer or similar location is not safe storage," the police department said. "Unloaded firearms should be stored in a locked cabinet, safe, gun vault or storage case. ... Ammunition should be stored in a locked location separate from firearms."
(Reporting by Daniel Wallis; Editing by Lisa Lambert)
Photo credit: Ken/Flickr Reported by Opposing Views 13 hours ago.
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Defense rests in Colorado theater shooting trial
James Holmes' defense argues he was legally insane when he carried out the deadly 2012 attack at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado
Reported by CBS News 13 hours ago.
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Man, Woman Die in Murder-Suicide at Motel 6 in Arlington Heights: Police
Patch Arlington Heights, IL -- Police said a 41-year-old Aurora woman was killed before her boyfriend took his own life.
Reported by Patch 13 hours ago.
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Mother Turns Her Back On Her 2-Year-Old For A Few Minutes - Finds A Disaster (Photos)
Kids do the darndest things. Victoria Farmer of Aurora, Colorado, was nursing her son Madox while her 2-year-old daughter Anistyn played in the house. She quickly realized it was “scary quiet,” Yahoo parenting reported.
Farmer set down Madox and found Anistnyn had apparently gone swimming in a bucket of white paint, KDVR reported. She snapped a photo and posted it on Facebook.
“Now that it’s been a few hours I can laugh, but at the time I was about to have a meltdown haha it took nearly two hours to clean,” Farmer wrote.
“Cleaning her was the easy part. Cleaning it off the fireplace before it set in was the scary part. Plus it’s a discontinued paint on the fireplace and our house is going on the market in a week so the timing was pretty incredible.”
Farmer submitted the photo of Anistyn drenched in paint to the Ellen show and while she was on a phone interview, Anistyn nearly made another mess. “…In true Anistyn fashion, she rolls out her drawing paper. She must think I’m ready for round 2. I’m not so sure I could handle it,” she laughed.
Sources: Yahoo Parenting, KDVR Images via KDVR Reported by Opposing Views 13 hours ago.
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Defense Rests In Aurora, Colo., Theater Shooting Case
Attorneys for James Holmes argue he was insane at the time of the 2012 attack that killed 12 people. Prosecutors, who are seeking the death penalty, say he knew the difference between right and wrong.
Reported by NPR 12 hours ago.
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Aurora police searching for bank robbery suspect
A Friday morning bank robbery in Aurora left police asking for the public's help in identifying the suspect.
Reported by Denver Post 10 hours ago.
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Aurora Police Shoot at Men Who Pointed Gun at Them
Patch Montgomery, IL -- Nobody was struck by a bullet and the men were taken into custody after a pursuit.
Reported by Patch 2 days ago.
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Overcoming Healthcare Organizations' Dangerous Zero Sum Thinking
Despite the fact that it’s common knowledge that just in the U.S. $1 trillion of annual revenues will shift from one set of players to another over the next decade, the vast majority of efforts at innovation by incumbent healthcare organizations are remarkably tepid. It mimics Zero Sum Game thinking during the first decade of the commercial Internet that doomed established media companies. In this piece, I will highlight two organizations who’ve made recent moves to avoid Zero Sum Game thinking — Novartis and Aurora Healthcare. Most incumbent healthcare organizations are making newspaper industry mistakes. Newspaper companies looked at digital media through a newspaper prism. Despite having the opportunity to partner with, invest in or acquire the companies that make up a large portion of digital media, the decades-long local monopoly/oligopoly position they had drove complacency and blind spots (sound familiar?). Considering that digital media industry revenue long ago passed newspaper industry revenue and is now even surpassing television, this was the blunder of their lifetime. At Oliver Wyman’s Health Innovation Center meetings (disclosure: I’m on the advisory board for the Oliver Wyman Health Innovation Center), they advise senior executives on how to ensure they win. The first point they make is Incumbents best positioned for success are those who pivot in fast, focused way, and who play 30% defense + 70% offense. Unfortunately, I’d characterize most incumbent organizations playing 95% defense and 5% offense. From One Economy to Three
Reported by Forbes.com 1 day ago.
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Aurora bank robbery suspect captured on Sunday
A suspect accused of robbing an Aurora bank on Friday was captured on Sunday, police said.
Reported by Denver Post 1 day ago.
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Jurors to decide fate of Aurora theater shooter
Jurors on Wednesday are set to begin deliberating whether to convict James Holmes in connection with 12 murders at the Aurora, Colo. movie theater as it showed The Dark Knight Rises.
Reported by USATODAY.com 20 hours ago.
Reported by USATODAY.com 20 hours ago.
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Shorr Packaging Celebrates New Corporate Headquarters and Warehouse with Groundbreaking Ceremony
AURORA, Ill., July 13, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Shorr Packaging marked the beginning of the construction project at their site of their new corporate headquarters and warehouse on June 26, 2015 in Aurora, Illinois. Notable dignitaries and representatives from within the community...
Reported by PR Newswire 14 hours ago.
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Eos Energy Storage Hires VP of Manufacturing and VP of Sales in Support of Gigawatt-Level Demand for its Advanced Grid-Scale Batteries
NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Eos Energy Storage today announced two additions to its senior management team: Vice President of Manufacturing Donald Humphreys and Vice President of Sales Jim Morgenson. The executive hirings come on the heels of Eos receiving more than 8,000 MWh of qualified pre-orders for the Aurora 1000|4000 containerized DC battery system, available in 2016, and the closing of $23M Series C equity financing. “At a disruptive price of $160/kWh, demand for the Aurora product has s
Reported by Business Wire 14 hours ago.
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Barbecue bonding in the tatters of the American dream
The city of the title is a frame of mind, rather than a place, as very different, new suburban neighbors attempt to bond over backyard barbecues in director Josh Costello’s smartly performed Aurora Theatre production, now extended through July 26. The more the older, underemployed couple — she (Amy Resnick) is an unhappy paralegal; he (Jeff Garrett) has been laid off as a loan officer — get to know their younger, borderline-employed neighbors (Luisa Frasconi and Patrick Kelly Jones), who are fresh out of rehab, the more distant old notions of suburban life appear and the more tattered any notions of getting ahead become. [...] all dreams seem to go up in barbecue smoke.
Reported by SFGate 14 hours ago.
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A look at Colorado insanity statute at heart of theater shooting trial
Jurors in the Colorado movie theater shooting trial must decide whether James Holmes met the state's legal definition of insanity when he opened fire on a movie theater in the Denver suburb of Aurora.
Reported by FOXNews.com 13 hours ago.
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