The lead story on the front page of this issue of the Glendale Cherry Creek Chronicle discloses that the purported “investigative consultant” Charles Johnson who stalked and harassed the Glendale City Clerk and people who were quoted in the Chronicle critical of Mohammad Ali Kheirkhahi was, in fact, a top super-secret undercover Special Agent for the FBI. Visit the Chronicle’s website at www.glendalecherrycreek.com and watch the entire Glendale Police Department’s interrogation of Mr. Johnson pretending to be an investigative consultant in violation of Colorado law. God help us if that is the best the nation’s preeminent law enforcement agency has to offer.

Of course, it didn’t end there. Special Agent Kimberly Milka then went on to harass anyone who filed a complaint with the police departments of Lakewood or Glendale concerning Johnson’s stalking and harassment. Ms. Milka was clearly engaged in obstruction of justice and witness tampering, but who is going to stop the FBI when it violates citizens’ constitutional rights. The answer is no one.

We now know that Johnson’s and Milka’s criminal activities in Glendale are only the tip of the iceberg of FBI misconduct in this town of a little over 5,000 people. A former top Denver police officer who met several times with Mohammad Ali Kheirkhahi believed that Kheirkhahi was trying to get him to solicit a bribe from Mike Dunafon, the mayor of Glendale. The former officer wanted to wear a wire to record Kheirkhahi’s statements and even interviewed with the FBI.

It appears that the FBI in response did nothing with regards to Kheirkhahi and instead instituted a campaign with the purported help of Kheirkhahi to get others to try to bribe Glendale officials including Dunafon.

It is assumed the FBI did so because it believed city officials were susceptible to taking bribes. Ever since Glendale incorporated in 1952, to the vast annoyance of officials in Denver and The Denver Post who after World War II became the official cheerleader of the City and County of Denver, it was rumored that Glendale officials were corrupt especially considering liquor licenses. It was perhaps a case of self-projection, as in Denver at various times to get a liquor license one had to hire the right politically connected lawyers and know the right City Council members while Glendale granted them to virtually anyone who wanted one.

The City and County of Denver did not seem to understand Glendale’s laissez faire and libertarian attitude toward municipal governance. Glendale saw itself as too poor to turn anyone away who wanted to do business in the town. There was, of course, zero reason to bribe anyone in a town that would already give you what you wanted in the first place.

As a result of Denver being closed down and very restrictive as to liquor licenses and Glendale freely issuing them, Glendale became a youth and nightclub Mecca in the 1970s and 1980s with dozens of bars, nightclubs and restaurants along Colorado Boulevard, East Virginia Avenue, Leetsdale Drive and South Cherry Street.

In the 1990s Denver was able to revitalize downtown with the building of Coors Field and now issued liquor licenses to essentially anyone who wanted one in LODO. Conversely Glendale mayors Steve Ward and Joe Rice killed its downtown by trying to close one liquor establishment after another while preventing new ones from being granted.

When Glendale recently decided to try to bring back an eating and entertainment district along Cherry Creek and East Virginia Avenue the old canard that Glendale city government was corrupt was resurrected by the FBI. It would have been nice if the FBI had bothered to check that the Glendale mayor and his wife are independently wealthy and Glendale city officials are compensated and therefore highly unlikely to accept bribes.

The Glendale Police Department tried to constantly keep highly controversial Denver FBI Public Corruption Section head Jonny Grusing aware of everything it was doing with regards to Charles Johnson and everything else going on in the city. The Glendale Police Department believes that the FBI in turn continually lied to them especially regarding Charles Johnson.

Glendale now does not believe anything that Jonny Grusing has to say. Of course, if a member of the public lies to the FBI you go to jail, while the FBI states it may freely lie to anyone it wants without any repercussions which is what Special Agents Jonny Grusing and Charles Johnson have taken to new levels.

For many regular citizens in Glendale as well as Glendale public officials, the FBI is not in their minds the nation’s preeminent law enforcement agency but at least at the local level is composed of people who lie, fabricate, harass, stalk and obstruct justice on a regular basis while seeking public corruption that does not appear to exist in Glendale. Grusing, in turn, has developed the reputation in some Denver metropolitan police departments as being a type of untrustworthy and “dirty cop.”

After the escapades of former FBI Director James Comey at a national level, the reputation of the Denver office feeds the narrative that something is seriously wrong with the FBI. Once that perception seeps in it will be difficult for the many honest and trustworthy local FBI agents to regain the public trust and respect they once had.

— Editorial Board

 

 

 

 

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