By Conor McCormick-Cavanagh, Westword | In mid-July, Denver Police Department detective Derrick Keeton emailed fellow DPD detective Paul Streate, concerned about incidents that Keeton said he’d witnessed at Beta Event Center. Keeton had been working off-duty at the nightclub at 1909 Blake Street, as had several other Denver police officers.
The 1900 block of Blake Street is full of bars and clubs, and had been the site of several violent episodes during the spring and summer. On May 1, the DPD had filed a report of “aggravated assault causing serious bodily injury” outside of Beta; a similar report was made on May 16. Early on June 5, police had filed another report of “aggravated assault and threatening to imminently injure with a weapon” in the 1900 block of Blake; the same report was made the next morning. Three more aggravated-assault charges were filed later that month for events on the same block.
Keeton, who began working at Beta on July 6, was reporting on conditions inside the club to his official employer, the City and County of Denver. Although Beta was paying for the off-duty DPD officers, Keeton had an obligation to rat on his part-time gig, since Denver’s conditions of employment for off-duty police officers require that any cops working at liquor-license establishments “report all liquor code violations and other criminal activity at the establishment.”
But as it turned out, Keeton’s observations weren’t the first report from Denver police officers who’d seen sketchy activities at Beta.
Read the whole story here:
https://www.westword.com/news/denver-police-moonlighting-club-beta-undercover-lodo-public-nuisance-12492237
[Thank you to Alex Teitz, http://www.femmusic.com, for contributing this article.]
