Desperate Measures Cannot Brake Broomfields Descent Into Anarchy

by Mr. Bad

2002-01-03 09:56:43

Broomfield: City of Crime

Faced with a brushfire disintegration of the moldy and tattered social fabric of their Beirut-like ur-city, Broomfield's desperate alderpersons took panicked measures to pull the urban motor home back from the cliff-edge of madness. Everyone said it wouldn't work -- and they were goddamned well right.

Torrents of crime-drunken citizens continued to plague the streets of Broomfield, CO, this week despite the city fathers' increasingly absurd machinations to find some kind of exit from the so-called Crime Crisis. The town burghers are better known for their penchant for pants-wetting insobriety than for sound civic practice, yet they continue to scramble to maintain some tenuous grasp on the soaking-wet reins of society.

Proposals for salvation have included so-called "No Criminal Rampaging Zones" around schools and churches within the city limits, where fines for criminal rampaging would increase by $25 on weekdays. Pop-up steel barricades, anti-personnel mines, and punji sticks have been placed on the main streets and boulevards around key government outposts. And the city has authorized $3500 to pay a certified psychic to contact "UFO space people" and ask them to come "take us all away in their saucer machines."

All, so far, has been for naught. November 2001 saw the first implementations of Broomfield's most desperate measures yet. On the theory that criminals had come to know and love the CITY of Broomfield, CO, local pols created a new COUNTY to throw the degenerates off the trail. "We kind of were hoping that folks looking for some crime action in the city of Broomfield might get confused and drive on by the new county," one anonymous source said. "It didn't quite work out the way we planned, though."

Indeed. After the county changeover, the level of criminal activity on the filthy, war-torn streets of "Crime City, USA" has not decreased as hoped, but actually ratcheted up to new and feverish heights of pointless mayhem. Basement invasions with NO APPARENT MOTIVE have skyrocketed precipitously. Paint-huffing Denverites face down exhausted police in tense standoffs on West 5th Ave. Drywall in new housing developments or even liquor stores is subject to violent puncturing for NO GOOD REASON AT ALL.

Although Broomfield has long been thought immune to white collar crime, its statistics are way up, too. Check fraud and tampering with US mail -- often scattering the remains all over the ground in a cheeky taunt for law enforcement officials -- are increasing at a shocking rate with no end in sight. Although less well-known, the turf war between Coldwell Banker realtors and the Kentury XXI Krew around the Telluride-Fairview corridor has heated up to a flashpoint.

In a city without hope, even the most precious cultural touchstones -- the eponymous wooden fence at Woody's Woodfire Pizza, the King Sooper -- are merely canvases for the barbaric spray-painted re-mapping of the NEW ORDER's civic anarchy plans. And whether at Bumper's Grill or K-mart, the entire commercial economy has faltered, with US currency no longer exchanging hands for lunch or even vacuum cleaners.

Few experts are willing to commit on record to blaming the county switchover for the ever-increasing spiral of crime in the city, but one thing is for certain: city or county, Broomfield as an entity is on its last legs.

Check it out yourself

jared@pigdog.org