Are Cops Pushing Union Station Crime to Denver Skatepark?

The tragedy doesn’t surprise Derek Cox, a resident of an apartment overlooking the skate park, as well as the victim of multiple crimes over the past two years, including two robberies in which he lost belongings worth thousands of dollars, as well as a pair of assaults. The second of the attacks took place while he was on the phone with a 911 operator to report what he describes as a “full-scale riot” at the Denver Skatepark just two weeks prior to Herrera-Lozano’s death.

Since last year, Cox has been in contact with multiple city officials and DPD representatives regarding his concerns about a rise in open drug use and criminal behavior in the vicinity of the Skatepark and nearby apartment complexes. He says he’s frustrated by how the DPD has handled his calls for help. After the riot and assault, Cox was able to speak to an off-duty officer, who stayed with him for approximately an hour. But three on-duty motorcycle cops responding to his call didn’t turn up until more than two hours later, and instead of stopping and talking to him, he says, they simply drove past the Skatepark, which had largely cleared out by then, and kept moving.

Of course, DPD officers aren’t hard to find these days around the Union Station terminal, the focus of increased enforcement efforts since Mayor Michael Hancock expressed concerns about illegal activity in and around the facility last December. Cox can’t help wondering if these actions and increasing issues at the Denver Skatepark, at the northern edge of the area the DPD identifies as the Union Station area, are connected.

“They cracked down at Civic Center Park, and everything moved to Union Station,” he points out. “Then they cracked down at Union Station and everything moved to the Skatepark. It just seems like they crack down in one area and it pushes things to another area — never solving the problem, but just moving it down the road.”

A photographer with a love of the outdoors, Cox moved to the Union Station area from Atlanta two and a half years ago, and he says that his early experiences were entirely positive. But in April 2020, shortly after the shutdowns related to the COVID-19 pandemic, a storage unit about a hundred feet from his fifth-floor apartment was burglarized, with the thieves making off with $5,000 worth of camera equipment — and a $6,000 mountain bike was stolen during a second break-in a couple of weeks later. A suspect was eventually nabbed, and while he wasn’t directly tied to Cox’s storage-unit incidents, the robberies stopped.

During the summer of 2021, however, “things started deteriorating fast,” Cox says. That Labor Day, he saw a non-resident slip into his building’s parking garage; fearful that the man intended to swipe items from cars parked there, Cox called 911, where he sat on hold for thirty minutes. Finally, he decided to act on his own, but when he spoke to the man, who was digging through a dumpster at the time, “he immediately started swinging at me,” Cox recalls. The situation deteriorated into a brawl that only ended after several other residents turned up and helped Cox hustle the man out of the garage.

Meanwhile, Cox and his neighbors were becoming increasingly irritated by the presence of a two-person rock band, complete with generators, amplifiers, guitars and drums, that set up at the Skatepark every Sunday evening throughout the summer and fall and played loudly enough to be heard a mile away. A Denver Police officer to whom he complained told him that the noise problem fell under the purview of Denver Parks and Recreation. But his calls to 311, a number set up to help residents navigate city services, didn’t do the trick, either, prompting him to join a group of frustrated residents who confronted the musicians in November. The result was another fight, and another Cox call to 911. This time, officers arrived in a fairly timely manner and shooed the band away.

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A photo of the late Juan-Herrera Lozano and a suspect vehicle in his April 23 fatal shooting, as shared by the Denver Police Department.

Denver Police Department

Afterward, Cox emailed Denver City Council member Debbie Ortega; Scott Gilmore, deputy executive director of Parks and Rec; and Eliza Hunholz, assistant director of the city’s park ranger program, among others. In exchanges shared with Westword, all three were sympathetic, but little progress was made. The band continued plugging in at the Skatepark until it became too cold to do so; the musicians have now returned.

The end of last year saw another unnerving incident: A heavily intoxicated man managed to get into Cox’s secure complex and follow him to his apartment, where he seemed intent on staying. Cox escorted him out, but as they were taking the elevator down to the ground floor, the man muttered that he was going to kill him. Again, Cox called the police, and Denver officers searched the building but couldn’t find the man. Afterward, Cox says one of the officers told him: “This is the year of no consequences.”

These words rang in Cox’s head in March, when he witnessed a street racer slam into his neighbor’s car. The officer sent to the location declined to interview him about what he saw, Cox says.

A few weeks later, on April 9, Cox was walking home when he saw a large crowd cheering and hollering at the Skatepark. Thinking some kind of skating exhibition was underway, he joined the gathering, only to discover that “about ten to fifteen guys had this sixteen-year-old kid in the street, and they were kicking the ever-living shit out of him,” Cox recalls. Meanwhile, the teen’s girlfriend was being shoved back and forth by several people who pushed her to the ground at least once.

At that point, Cox moved out of the mob and dialed 911. “While I was on the phone with the dispatcher, three of these guys snuck up behind me and one of them sucker-punched me in the back of the head, causing my phone to go flying,” he says. After defending himself, he was able to retrieve his phone, and he and the girlfriend took shelter in the security area of his building. But the only cop he was able to speak with was an off-duty officer, who gave Cox his card and said that if the person who slugged him showed up at the Skatepark in the future, he could come over and write him a ticket.

Cox says he told the officer he appreciated the offer but was also confused, since he felt the assault warranted an arrest, not a citation. To that, the off-duty officer repeated an observation that Cox had heard before: “This is the year of no consequences.” He believes the phrase is in common usage among DPD officers, because when he mentioned it at a recent public meeting at which Denver District Attorney Beth McCann was a guest speaker, another attendee said a cop had delivered it to him, too.

Following the assault, Cox sent out another flurry of emails, and one of them reached Lieutenant Chris Jones at Denver Police District 6. In a reply dated April 12, Jones wrote that he would “advise the District Six officers to step up our routine patrols and enforcement efforts in the area” — and he was as good as his word. Cox says that a police officer was stationed at the Skatepark the next weekend, but he did not see any officer on hand the weekend after that, when Herrera-Lozano was killed.

The homicide changed everything. Cox says that police have been a regular presence around the Skatepark since then.

Westword contacted the DPD regarding Cox’s account and asked about patrols near the Skatepark. The DPD replied with a statement confirming that the District 6 commander has “directed officers across all shifts to conduct extra patrol in the Skatepark area during their patrol time. The goal of the increased patrols in the area is to reduce or deter additional criminal behavior. As always, we encourage the public to report suspicious behaviors by calling 720-913-2000, or if it is an emergency, they can call or text 911.”

As for Cox, he says he’s given his sixty-day notice at his apartment and is moving out of the area “because the crime around here has gotten so bad.”