Chief not jumping to conclusion

Whitman won't tie gang activity to the slaying of Broncos cornerback

Charlie Brennan, Rocky Mountain News

Published January 18, 2007 at midnight

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Denver Police Chief Gerry Whitman on Wednesday said he wouldn't tie the Darrent Williams slaying to gang activity, even though two gang members have been linked to the case.

"I'm not going to say it's gang-related," Whitman told members of an ad-hoc anti-gang consortium that included several Denver Broncos team representatives.

Whitman went on to say he's optimistic about the status of the investigation into the Jan. 1 shooting death of the popular second- year Broncos cornerback.

"It's going along very well," said Whitman, addressing what was officially billed as a board meeting for Denver's Open Door Youth Gang Alternatives, but included other community members anxious for answers to the metro area's gang problem.

"We're making progress. I'm confident that it's going to be solved," Whitman said.

Despite Whitman's remarks, there was open acknowledgment by others at the meeting that Williams' death was prompting renewed community scrutiny of gang activity.

The 1998 Chevy Tahoe linked by witnesses to the Williams case is owned by Brian Kenneth Hicks, a 28-year-old Crips gang member who was in custody on unrelated charges when Williams was shot.

Willie D. Clark, the 23-year-old Denver man technically in custody on an alleged parole violation but considered a person of interest in the Williams case, is also a Crips member, according to gang experts.

Whitman's remarks were the meeting's most substantive on the Williams slaying.

Joe Ellis, executive vice president of business operations for the Broncos, echoed another participant's observation that heightened public awareness of - and attention to - gang crime in Denver seems to run in roughly seven-year cycles.

"We can't tackle this alone," said Ellis, whose team has posted a $100,000 reward in the Williams' case.

"We've had a lot of people come up to us in the past week or two saying, 'You ought to do this and you ought to do that' . . . But we're going to need to reach out a lot further than the people in this room. You just can't let another seven years go."

There was ample praise among those in attendance for the community-based intervention efforts of Leon Kelly - and his nonprofit organization. He has been taking on local gang issues for more than 20 years.

There was also talk about the need to "clone" him.

"Our greatest blessing is Leon Kelly," said attorney and former Open Door board member Keith Tooley.

"And our greatest curse is we only have one Leon Kelly. . . . We can only stretch him so far."

While saying he appreciated being "eulogized" under circumstances where he could hear it, Kelly acknowledged that the community would be best served by more people willing to engage in front-end efforts to steer young people away from making bad choices.

"I don't want to be doing this for another 10 or 20 years," said Kelly.

Retired FBI agent Bob Pence, a board member for Open Door who also serves on an advisory board to the Department of Justice on juvenile justice and delinquency, said gang problems have been partly fueled by the elimination or diverting of some federal funding, "partially because of the Iraq war."

The money won't come back, Pence said, without more comprehensive and accurate reporting of the problem's dimensions.

"If you can't measure it," Pence said, "you can't make a case to get it funded."

Citizens standing up against gangs

Those attending Wednesday's session and likely to continue participating in an ad-hoc consortium to stem gang activity in the metro area include:

• John Barry, superintendent of Aurora schools

• Jeannie Davis, Now Hear This, Inc.; Open Door Youth Gang Alternatives board member

• Norm Early, former Denver district attorney

• Joe Ellis, executive vice president of business operations for the Denver Broncos

• Barry Gatz, UBS Financial Services Inc.; former Open Door chairman

• Tim Griggs, general manager, Fox Sports Rocky Mountain

• Al LaCabe, manager of safety, City & County of Denver

• Rev. Leon Kelly, executive director, Open Door