‘That downstairs was too much’

Denver police will continue to monitor the Union Station area, Bowser said. If calls for service increase when the temperatures drop in the fall, officers will up enforcement again.

Some of the most vocal people who have been calling for increased police activity at Union Station say the situation has improved dramatically since the fall.

Six months ago, every time Allyson Thorn visited the Whole Foods at 17th and Wewatta streets across from her building, she would see several people being kicked out or apprehended. She hasn’t seen that in at least a month, she said Wednesday.

Orten, the president of the Lower Downtown Neighborhood Association, saw open use of drugs and public masturbation. Trash piled on the streets, as did human waste and vomit. Orten and Thorn both live at the Coloradan, the ritzy 19-story condo building at Wewatta and 18th streets.

“Most of the people you walked by were relatively harmless because they were so out of it,” Orten said. Assaults happened, he said, but rarely.

Over the last six months, Orten urged the residents of Lower Downtown to report concerns to the police and to contact the mayor, the city attorney, state legislators and the governor. It worked, he said.

“We have encouraged our people to raise their voices with them,” Orten said. “And they have. I think the public and elected officials are having an awareness — not just downtown but citywide — of what citizens are asking for.”

He credited the change in the area in part to the increased law enforcement presence and arrests as well as the increased number of people out and about downtown and in Union Station.

Although there may be fewer problems than in the fall, drug use and sales continue in the area, particularly in the underground bus concourse.

Inside the bus terminal Wednesday, Deliaha Nunn, pushed her 1-year-old in a stroller and shepherded her 7-year-old daughter past a man in the middle of the concourse screaming for tissues. A few minutes later, she saw someone smoking off a piece of foil. She went upstairs to wait for her daughter’s father to arrive on a bus, to avoid the yelling and the drugs.

“I don’t want my daughter down there,” she said. “That downstairs was too much.”

Nunn has lived in Denver for 29 years and comes to Union Station frequently from her home near 27th and Williams streets. She started seeing more drug use after Greyhound moved its operations to Union Station in 2020 and after the city closed Civic Center park in September.

She believes the city is trying to improve the area but wished police were more present in the bus concourse.

“The situation would probably be better if they would do their jobs,” she said, gesturing to a group of five RTD security guards standing and talking nearby.

Josh Moore sat on the floor in the bus concourse Thursday waiting for a bus to Pueblo and watched the police ask people to leave. He said he felt safe in the concourse and sympathized with the people police were asking to move along — he used to be homeless in Denver, too.

Last year, he spent his days working day labor and his nights sleeping on the streets near East Colfax Avenue and High Street or in the bushes at the Sculpture Park, where the 50-foot white statues of dancing figures loom above Speer Boulevard.

He decided to change his life after someone stole his shoes while he slept, forcing him to walk barefoot through downtown. With help from family, he’s since found housing and stability living in Indiana. He hopes the people being kicked out can find the same.

“I hope the best them,” he said. for