Crime
We moved Boulder Crime News and police blotter out of News and made it a primary category. Even though crime news is the highest in analytic s some readers complain because it ruins non violent news. Our readers and viewers prefer science, tech environmental and entertainment news. So crime news junkies now have your own bad news section here.
Pikes Peak Ski Area is a Boulder Fraud case.
Nov 12th
The Resort at Pikes Peak was never going to open. According to the state of Colorado John C. Ball tried to sell securities illegally. They put a stop to him on the Pikes Peak Deal.
In his previous most recent deal gone bad, Ball also managed to skim all of the money out of Eller Industries, a Boulder based broadband company according to two of it’s main stock holders. That company was a pink sheet penny stock company which never produced anything, yet took investors for millions according to sources close to that company. Ball came in to help raise money for a second round, but sunk Eller further in debt. “He got paid, we lost everything” they said.
Pink Sheet stocks are notorious shells used to defraud investors. Companies like Eller were made famous in the movie Bolder room.
There are also questions about John Balls credentials not only as a businessman but as an engineer. Local media have covered this story with a lot of high hopes failing to see that the Pikes Peak Ski resort is just another stock scam.
There have been anonymous posts put up about Ball concerning another Ball company called Running Eagle. According to Scam Book Ball has taken loans out for this company and not repaid them.
Some Eller Industry Boulder stock holders who wished to remain anonymous told Boulder Channel 1 news on Friday that ” John Ball is a fake”. Much of Balls Linked in information could not be verified either.
Boulder Police, District attorney and Colorado Attorney General refused to comment on their investigations into John Ball fraud allegations, but one assistant AG did say “Our office gives theses kinds of cases the highest priority. It is the Lions share of our work. You would be amazed at the number of shady investment deals our office see.”
Actually, we wouldn’t. Boulder has been notorious for scams since Horace Greeley pitched a handful of bad investments concerning railroads in the 19th century. Boulder has seen its share of Gold and coal mine investments go bust too. We’ve had Oil well dusters for over 100 years. The Penny Stock scams of the 1980’s saw companies like NBI go bust. We had huge banking scandals in the 90s. The 2000’s saw Dot bomb busts such as Jared Polis billion dollar loser Blue Mountain Arts on line. It was sold to EXcite but 1000’s of small investors lost millions to Polis in the Excite stock deal. Polis walked away clean, even a hero, but Excite stock holders were ruined.
Some Boulder Billionaires scoff at Polis stock deals including Bob Greenlee former city council member and investor of numerous successful media ventures. Greenlee started the famous KBCO 97.3 in the 1980s. He sold it and then started other Radio stations, bought and sold media properties as well as restaurants and casinos. He has made a lot of people rich and has few losses in his portfolio. He happens to be a conservative Republican compared to Polis radical leftist leanings. Does this suggest that all leftists are crooks and republicans are ethical ?? Not by boulders standards. Leftists can do no wrong in Boulder. Alls fair in Startups and Stock scams There seems to be an ethics difference between those who run successful thriving companies Like Greenlee and Boulderites who create bad stock deals from the beginning.
Jo Pezzillo lost investors money in Go GaGa an ill conceived internet radio station. Pezzillo still prances around Boulder like a God, but he’s another guy with a losing track record with other peoples money. In his case he took some of Greenlees money as well as other VC money, but Go Ga Ga was a dud from the beginning. It is when the public is duped that scammy investments hurt most. Pezzillo still pushes himself in social media as a successful entrepreneur, but his records show a list of Start up failures including Metafly. Pezzillo represents hundreds of scammers who hustle money in Boulders coffee shops
VC’s can weather losses. But not everyone with money should be a VC. Current Start Ups pushed by Tech Stars have had their share of dry holes too. It is always the investors, the little guy, the husband and wife who put their hard earned money in these companies with hope of riches only to lose it that makes us wonder about Boulders start up craze.. Right now Brad Feld and David Cohen are Boulder darlings in the tech startup world. They are worth millions, but their high risk startups are funded by investors. Investors that Feld and Cohen have groomed into becoming Venture Capitalists. It is all a bit quirky. Will Tech Stars blow up too leaving investors burned?? The odds are in that favor.But Boulder always loves a good financial scandal and we never learn from them.
Our advice is watch your wallet and open investment accounts only with the most conservative of houses. Most of Boulders rich use Well Fargo Brokerage at the main branch on the Pearl Street mall. They have been in business there since the gold rush days and they don’t make wild investments.
In the end John Ball is in good company here in Boulder. He is just less skilled at conning investors.
Boulder police warn parents about two incidents involving suspicious males
Nov 6th
Boulder police are warning parents about a suspicious male or males who may be attempting to approach school-age children. Two separate incidents have been reported. No one was injured in either incident.
In the first incident, a 7-year-old boy and his 6-year-old sister were walking home from Whittier Elementary on Monday, November 5, when they say they were startled by a man in the area of 24th and Spruce. The boy said the man did not attempt to contact them or follow them, but he reported that he believed the man might have been carrying a gun and/or a knife. The children ran away and told their (mother) about the incident, which occurred at approximately 3:20 p.m.
The children describe the man as:
- Dark-skinned white male
- About 30 years old
- Average build
- Dark-colored baseball hat with a smiley face emblem
A second incident allegedly occurred at 3:45 p.m. in a shopping center located in the 600 block of S. Broadway. A 12-year-old boy said that a man seemed to be following him and attempting to make eye contact with him. The boy was frightened and went to a nearby store to call his mother to come pick him up. The mother reported the incident to police at 8:12 p.m. Investigators were not able to interview the 12-year-old boy last night because he was asleep by the time the incident was reported.
Police are at Southern Hills Middle School this morning to talk to the young man and gather more information about what happened.
He described the suspect to his mother, who shared the description with police:
- Dark-skinned white male
- Dirty blue jeans
- Olive-green colored hoodie
- In his 20’s
- Approximately 190 pounds
- Short dark hair
- Dark blue baseball hat
Boulder police officers are looking for the males, and ask anyone who sees a male matching the descriptions to call 911 immediately to report his location.
Extra patrol and traffic officers are in currently in place around Southern Hills Middle School, the Table Mesa Shopping Center, Whittier Elementary School and the area of the park on Folsom between Spruce and Pearl, where the first incident occurred. Detectives are contacting businesses in the shopping center on S. Broadway to try to obtain possible video of the suspect.
If video is available or if any of the children can provide enough information to complete a composite sketch, that information will immediately be made available to the public.
Police advise anyone who sees anything suspicious to report the activity immediately to police. Anyone with information about the incidents is asked to call Detective Kristin Weisbach at 303-441-4474. Those who have information but wish to remain anonymous may contact the Northern Colorado Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS (8477) or 1-800-444-3776. Tips can also be submitted through the Crime Stoppers website at www.crimeshurt.com. Those submitting tips through Crime Stoppers that lead to the arrest and filing of charges on a suspect(s) may be eligible for a cash reward of up to $1,000 from Crime Stoppers.
[includeme src=”http://c1n.tv/boulder/media/bouldersponsors.html” frameborder=”0″ width=”670″ height=”300″]
CU Boulder study finds racial ‘hierarchy of bias’ drives decision to shoot armed, unarmed suspects
Oct 24th
Both the police and student subjects were most likely to shoot at blacks, then Hispanics, then whites and finally, in a case of what might be called a positive bias, Asians, researchers found.
In the first study of its kind, Joshua Correll, Bernadette Park and Charles M. Judd of CU-Boulder’s Department of Psychology and Neuroscience and Melody Sadler of San Diego State University examined how police and a group of undergraduate subjects decide whether to shoot or not to shoot “suspects” in a multi-ethnic environment.
“Most studies on the subject of stereotyping and prejudice look at two (ethnic) groups, usually in isolation. It’s always one group against another group,” said Correll, a CU graduate who joined the faculty in August after a stint at the University of Chicago.
“But as the country becomes more ethnically diverse, it’s more and more important to start thinking about how we process racial and ethnic cues in a multicultural environment,” he said.
As with previous studies into the question, data were gathered from subjects playing a “first person shooter” video game, in which figures of varying ethnicity — Caucasian, Asian, Hispanic and African-American — pop up, either “armed” with a weapon or another benign object, such as a cell phone.
Participants — 69 CU-Boulder undergraduates and 254 police officers — had to make quick decisions as to which figures posed a “threat” and shoot them. The police officers were recruited from two-day training seminars in Florida, New Mexico and Washington and represented numerous jurisdictions from 11 states.
The research demonstrates how persistent cultural stereotypes are, Correll said. Even students who displayed little bias when interviewed demonstrated otherwise when faced with a split-second decision.
“I may not believe it personally, but I am exposed to stereotypes constantly through media or social networks … (such as) the idea that young black men are dangerous,” he said. “Those associations can have an influence on my behavior even if I don’t believe them.”
The study found that police were considerably more accurate than students at correctly identifying a genuinely threatening suspect, as opposed to those brandishing a cell phone or wallet, perhaps a reflection of training. But officers were still influenced by the target’s race — an influence that may derive from the officers’ “contacts, attitudes and stereotypes,” Correll said.
For example, police who endorsed more violent stereotypes about Hispanics and those who overestimated the prevalence of violent crime in their districts demonstrated more bias to shoot Hispanic targets. That raises the question of whether police are responding to real-world threats — and whether that means some ethnic groups really are more likely to be armed and dangerous than others.
“That is a very sensitive question, whether or not (police officers’) reactions are based on some kind of truth. Is this police officers responding to reality on the ground? The short answer is, we don’t know,” Correll said. “But this research almost demands that we ask that question.”
The researchers’ recent findings were published in the Journal of Social Issues. The work was funded by a grant from the Russell Sage Foundation.
In 2007, Correll (then at the University of Chicago), Sadler (then at CU-Boulder), Park and Judd collaborated with the Denver Police Department on a widely cited study that found police officers were less influenced than the general public by racial bias and less likely than the general population to make a decision to shoot at African-American suspects wielding a benign object.
-C