DENVER — The history of crime in Five Points is complicated at best.
“Man, it got bad,” said Rev. Leon Kelly, founder of Open Door Youth Gang Alternatives. “It got real bad.”
Rev. Kelly is talking about drug activity, violence and drive-by shootings in the 1980’s and ‘90’s.
Denver7 file footage from news coverage in the ‘80’s and ‘90’s punctuates that sentiment.
“There’s too many guns out here, there’s too many drive-bys going on,” said a patrol officer in that file footage. “We see little 6-year-old kids shot and other people shot in the community that are innocent victims.”
Yet in order to truly understand the evolution of crime in Five Points, Brother Jeff Fard and Rev. Kelly say you have to go back much further than the ‘80’s and ‘90’s.
In this Denver7 360 report, we take a look back through the decades of crime, culture and activism that have shaped Five Points. This story is part of a Denver7 | Your Voice series that aired during a special, on-location set of broadcasts from the neighborhood on May 2.
Black influence of the 1950's & '60's
“We moved over in this neighborhood in 1955,” Rev. Kelly said. “My mom and dad bought our house for like $11,000. 37th and St. Paul.”
It was a neighborhood full of life, jazz, and trailblazers. We talked to Rev. Kelly about it outside the Black American West Museum & Heritage Center, which aims to tell the stories of Black cowboys and other African Americans that shaped the western U.S.
“That used to be Dr. Justina Ford’s home. Dr. Justina Ford could not practice out of a hospital because she was black, and she was woman," Brother Jeff said. "She was practicing her medicine in the community (out of her home). That is Five Points history.”
It was – for all intents and purposes – a simpler time.
Simpler time
“I grew up here in northeast Denver, and there was never a time where positive adults were not involved in young people's lives,” Brother Jeff said. “They were coaches, they were mentors, they were ever present in the community."
"And so that's the answer. Positive adults in young people's lives.”
“My dad came home after getting the job here at the Tramway Bus Company and making big money, you know, $1.25 an hour,” Rev. Kelly said. “That was the innocent times of those days. That was the time that we knew everybody on our block. Everybody.”
But then, Rev. Kelly and Brother Jeff both say – that way of life began to erode, in large part due to the cost of living going up, adults working more, kids with more free time and a huge wave of negative influences – mostly from out-of-state.
Wave of negative influences, gangs from California and elsewhere
“What we started to see in the late ‘80’s, in the early ‘90’s, was the influx of crack cocaine,” Brother Jeff said. “So, you're starting to see drug addiction.”
“You have places like California, Chicago, Detroit, other places that were dealing with some issues,” said Rev. Kelly. “But this is Colorado. Not colorful Colorado, man.”
“And then also the materialism in terms of fighting and killing over Starter jackets and tennis shoes and things like that,” said Brother Jeff.
The culture shift had started and was quickly snowballing.
Cultural shift
“I started to see a change in the mindset of many of the kids I was dealing with,” said Rev. Kelly.
“This is the first time that the elders became afraid of the youth,” said Brother Jeff. “It's a turning point.”
Rev. Kelly saw it changing quickly and sounded the alarm – but says he met resistance from city leaders.
“I tried to tell the city fathers back then: This is something we need to look at as becoming very serious if left unattended,” Rev. Kelly said. “I equated it to something like cancer. And it will eventually grow and then kill the body. Mayor (Federico) Peña was the very first Hispanic mayor in our city. And no mayor wants to blemish the image of the city.”
“It was a succession of murders and violence and incarceration and addiction,” said Brother Jeff.
Rev. Kelly said kids were getting shot daily. It was spiraling, and Five Points was at the center of the storm.
Center of the storm
Drive by shootings were becoming commonplace. Drugs had taken over city streets and the Crips and Bloods had marked their territories in Five Points, Park Hill and beyond.
Funerals of young people became an all-too-familiar scene.
Rev. Kelly’s list of people who died violently and died young was growing in the late 1980’s, and, by 1990, the numbers had skyrocketed.
In 1991 the list grew even longer, and the violence in Denver was splashed across headlines all over the country. Then came what the Rocky Mountain News dubbed ‘The Summer of Violence’ in 1993.
Summer of violence
“What took place is - there was a young white child that was hit with a bullet in the (Denver) Zoo,” Brother Jeff said. “And it always depends on who's impacted by the violence – not necessarily the violence [itself] per se, but who is this impacting?”
“Mary Ann Lowe, a school teacher coming from Jefferson County, excited about moving to Denver,” Rev. Kelly said. “Teaching in the school district here, the gangster went out, they saw her, shot her up, killed her.”
Then, there was 6-year-old Broderick Bell, a first grader on his way home from his first karate lesson – struck by a bullet while in the back seat of a car.
Bell would survive the shooting, but the public had seen enough. And Denver city officials had no choice but to ramp up enforcement.
Enough is enough
“The primary focus will be on gang activity and crack houses,” said an official at a city council meeting in 1993. “Six to eight officers in each district will be assigned to impact cars.”
Mayor Wellington Webb even gave police the greenlight to stop anyone suspicious, which he said was necessary even as critics argued it was profiling.
“Those individuals that are stopped that are not guilty of a crime need to work with the police department and understand that is what is necessary in order to apprehend the individuals participating in hard-core activities,” Mayor Webb said at the time.
At the state level, Democratic Gov. Roy Romer called a special session where lawmakers passed tougher penalties for youth offenders and gang members.
“It was a sense of panic, outrage,” said Brother Jeff. “What could be done? What must be done?”
“And we got the Pope coming,” Rev. Kelly said of Pope John Paul II's visit to Denver during World Youth Day in 1993. “We got white folks getting killed and all of this stuff."
“We are going to call a special session. What do you do? (The governor) got the people out of out of bed and said, 'You gotta meet up today. We gotta come up with these laws. We gotta, you know, deal with this.'”
Rise of community activism, youth advocacy
On the ground, community activism also took hold.
Brother Jeff launched Brother Jeff’s Cultural Center in the ‘90’s, while Rev. Kelly founded Open Door Youth Gang Alternatives.
“In Brother Jeff's Cultural Center, we're not going to have the hatred,” said Brother Jeff.
“Open Door is the oldest anti-gang program, still today,” Rev. Kelly said.
Families flee
As Five Points home values plummeted, families fled to Park Hill, Montbello, Aurora and elsewhere. Young people were locked up more frequently.
“Right there is the Gillian Youth Detention Center,”
During our interview, Brother Jeff pointed out the Gillian Youth Services Center on Downing between 28th and 29th.
“Right inside the community is a youth correctional facility," he said. "So – a lot of young people – that’s their first stop.”
The gangs were eventually squeezed out, too.
“And many of them [were] not claiming Crips and Bloods anymore,” Rev. Kelly said. “The housing caused a lot of the migrations to happen. Young people and families just can't afford to live in the City and County of Denver. So, where do they go? They go to Aurora, you know. They go to Commerce City.”
By the early 2000’s, crime had dwindled, home prices were depressed and the neighborhood experienced another seismic shift.
Gentrification
“So, what happened is gentrification,” Brother Jeff said. “You know, in the midst of despair, there were individuals that were planning the reimagining of these communities. I could get all of the equity of individuals who are fleeing or leaving, and the pain and the despair can become an investment opportunity.”
Today, as we walked Welton Street with Brother Jeff, shop owners and managers, like Jerry Morgan, could see us through the window and would pop out to greet us.
It feels like a community.
“Right here is GRASP enterprises,” Morgan said. “This is our social enterprise. We employ young people to give them a trade, a skill, keep them off the streets.”
And while the flavor and the soul of the neighborhood still exists, Brother Jeff sees a much different place than he did 10-15 years ago.
“It’s no secret there are billionaires that own some of this property,” he said. “I would imagine in Five Points, Curtis Park, San Rafael, Clements – this entire area right now – I don't know if you could find 100 Black families in this environment.”
The future: Preserving the past
It led us to the question: Is there a future where black families can move back to this neighborhood?
“It’s hard to say not practical, but it's not practical,” said Brother Jeff.
Yet there is no doubt that preserving Black history here – the good, the bad and the ugly – will most certainly define Five Points’ future.
“There’s no Muhammad Ali without coming to Five Points looking for Sonny Liston,” Brother Jeff said. “You wouldn’t have a Madam CJ Walker, who is the first self-made woman millionaire. I’m not talking about inherited wealth, I’m talking self-made. That’s the hope of Five Points.”
And Brother Jeff says names mean everything.
“When you start taking away historical names, you also start erasing the history,” Brother Jeff said.
Editor's Note: Denver7 360 | In-Depth explores multiple sides of the topics that matter most to Coloradans, bringing in different perspectives so you can make up your own mind about the issues. To comment on this or other 360 In-Depth stories, email us at 360@Denver7.com or use this form. See more 360 | In-Depth stories here.