The private company that provides security guards to the Metropolitan Transit System in San Diego, including the armed guard who helped hold down a handcuffed Angel Zapata Hernandez in a fatal encounter in October 2019, is being sued in Sacramento federal court for a similar death.
That death, where a trio of guards handcuffed and restrained Mario Matthews inside Golden 1 Arena, occurred in July 2019, less than four months before Zapata Hernandez died on an MTS platform near the Santa Fe Depot.
In both cases, the men were held down for an extended period by security guards employed by Allied Universal â nine minutes in San Diego, some 20 minutes in Sacramento. And both Matthews and Zapata Hernandez had a guard kneeling on their necks as they lay handcuffed and face down â Matthews for four minutes, Zapata Hernandez for six minutes.
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After celebrating a successful art exhibition showcasing his work in Denver, CO artist Raverro Stinnett sat at Union Station waiting for his train home. James Hunter, a supervisor with Allied Universal, lured Raverro into a bathroom away from any security cameras where he proceeded to beat him with leather studded gloves while three other Allied security guards stood watch. They left him without medical assistance.
. Raverroâs story is shocking, but itâs even more alarming to learn that there are similar incidents happening across the United States, and the world, by Allied Security, G4S, and other private security firms. Private security firms have a disturbing history of racially motivated violence in the US, yet local governments and businesses across the country continue to contract with them.
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After celebrating a successful art exhibition showcasing his work in Denver, CO artist Raverro Stinnett sat at Union Station waiting for his train home. Shortly after sitting down, an Allied security guard informed Raverro that he could not sit in the seemingly public Great Hall and told Raverro to follow him to another location. That guard, James Hunter, a supervisor with Allied Universal, lured Raverro into a bathroom away from any security cameras where he proceeded to beat him with leather studded gloves while three other Allied security guards stood watch. They left him without medical assistance.
The pandemic hit Denver’s arts and culture scene hard, forcing many businesses, performance spaces, museums and galleries to close, at least temporarily, at the end of March. In the months since, artists and curators have rallied to keep culture alive, to comment on social injustice, and to inspire us all to appreciate essential workers and health-care providers.
Along the way, the scene has shown its grit and ability to stay relevant through the toughest of times, though some longstanding cultural institutions have been wrangling with their own inner demons.
Here are the ten biggest arts and culture stories in Denver in 2020:
Amanda Berg Wilson admits there were some logistical challenges involved in staging a full-length play on a golf course. Some surprise elements were pleasant, like residents living on the outskirts of the course joining in for a nightly call-and-response section written into the script. Others were less so, such as cast members having to take turns serving as “coyote babysitters” on the lookout for a roving local pack.
For Wilson and the Catamounts theater group, all this was…ahem…par for the course. Back in 2019, they’d produced a piece called
The Last Apple Tree outdoors on a farm homestead. So when the city of Westminster approached the group in mid-May about producing a piece on Westminster’s Legacy Ridge Golf Course, the group responded with