When Denver police Cmdr. Brad Qualley drives through the area around South Federal Boulevard and West Alameda Avenue, it’s the things that are no longer there that stand out to him.
The bus stop next to Bungalow Liquors isn’t surrounded by loiterers and drug dealers anymore. A grassy spot near the Walgreens is empty. Broken down and stolen cars no longer line South Hazel Court. Graffiti still marks apartment walls, but there’s less than there used to be.
“As we’re sitting here now, I don’t see anybody,” said Qualley, who has worked in District Four for 12 years. “It was a highway of people, all the time. If you would’ve come out here in December — there’s still work to do, but it’s so much different than it was.”
His officers are also responding less frequently to shootings in the area — one of the successes of the Denver Police Department’s hot spots policing program. For more than a year, a team of officers has focused on the five-block radius around the intersection, which was identified as one of the most violent in the city in 2020. That year, police recorded 49 homicides and shootings in the vicinity. Through Aug. 31 of this year, there have been seven.
Homicides and shootings have fallen substantially over the last two years in three of the five crime “hot spots” identified in 2020 by Denver police. Former Chief Paul Pazen announced the program in May 2021 as part of a plan to mitigate a wave of homicides and shootings. Through the program, police focused on those areas and worked with community organizations as well as other city agencies to make the locations less receptive to criminal behavior.