18% of city homicides gang-related

Daniel J. Chacon, Rocky Mountain News

Published January 20, 2007 at midnight

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Nearly one in five Denver homicides in the last eight years has been linked to gangs, records show.

But the number could actually be higher because Denver police will only label a homicide a "gang case" if the suspect or the victim - or both - are known gang members.

The statistics, released Friday under a Colorado Open Records Act request, show that the number of homicides and those deemed gang-related fluctuate annually.

But they also showed gang-related homicides have dropped from a high of 23 percent in 1999 to 16 percent last year, which is lower than the estimate Chief Gerry Whitman provided earlier this week.

On Friday, the police department also released an updated estimate on the number of gangs, saying there are 8,811 gang members in 78 gangs in the city.

From 1999 to 2006, there were 496 homicides in Denver. About 18 percent, or 91, were classified as gang-related.

Yvette Marshall came dangerously close to being a 2003 statistic. That August, Marshall and five others, including Pittsburgh Steelers player Joey Porter, were wounded in a brazen shooting with gang ties outside All Sports - Denver's Best Sports Bar and Grill, 3800 Walnut St.

"I have been on both sides of the fence," Marshall said. "I was an innocent victim to a gang-related event, and then a year ago lost my cousin in California (by) some gang member taking his life."

In the Denver case, Christopher Wilford, 28, was shot three times and died. Denver police could not say Friday whether his killing was classified as one of the gang-related homicides that year. However, his sister said after the shooting that gang rivalry likely led to his killing.

In 2003, 12 of the city's 73 homicides were gang-related.

Last year, nine homicides in Denver had gang connections.

By comparison, San Diego, a city with 1.2 million people, reported 12 gang-related homicides from January to September.

Law enforcement agencies across the country use different criteria to classify homicides and other crimes as gang-related.

"If the case is unresolved and no known gang affiliation exists, then we will not know if it is gang-related or not," Suzanne Staiert, records coordinator for Denver's Public Safety Department, wrote in an e-mail. "We do not track in database form whether there was a gang-related motive for the homicide. This would require a case-by-case study."

chacond@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5099

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