In the two years since Mayor Michael Hancock’s administration implemented Denver’s Vision Zero Action Plan, the city appears no closer to making its streets safe for pedestrians and multimodal transportation than when it began.
HIN: Reducing crashes on Colorado’s High Injury Network (HIN) of roads is a goal that seems unreachable given current traffic trends.
Even though nearly 70 percent of Denver residents still support Vision Zero, according to a survey conducted by the Denver Streets Partnership, the results of the program, critics claim, are hard to justify.
According to the 2019 Vision Zero Report, traffic-related fatalities increased by 15 percent from 2018 while serious bodily injury resulting from crashes also increased. In contrast, Denver cited several case studies purporting to show that Vision Zero has made a positive impact. Those include setting up automated speed and distracted driving enforcement at the intersection of 6th and Lincoln, adding 24-hour transit-only lanes on 15th and 17th streets downtown, and improving signage at the 20th street and I-25 interchange.
However, these case studies show that Denver is focusing on solving only one side of a double-edged problem. While Vision Zero aims to eliminate traffic deaths by 2030 by focusing on infrastructure improvements and behavioral causes affecting Denver’s traffic-related deaths and serious injuries, Denver is only focusing on the infrastructure.
As an example, the report says the presence of a photo radar van at 6th and Lincoln for five days reduced excessive speeding (10+ mph) by 21 percent. But, reducing the number of overall speeding tickets has not influenced the frequency of accidents occurring at that intersection. Denver still lists the intersection as a hotspot for fatal accidents on its Vision Zero Data & Trends website.
Denver’s case studies also do not address the fact that most accidents do not occur at intersections and are not caused by speeding. In fact, over 40 percent of Denver’s accidents occur because of distracted driving, according to the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT). The Vision Zero Data & Trends website also shows that most accidents occur in neighborhoods and on arterial streets.
Low-Hanging Fruit
The mixed messaging around Vision Zero has also caused some residents to believe the city is just going after low-hanging fruit to make it seem like it is doing more to protect pedestrians.
In May 2019, Mayor Hancock lamented that not enough was being done to protect Denver’s pedestrians during a memorial ceremony for those who lost their lives in traffic crashes.
“Every one of those lives lost is unacceptable and preventable,” Hancock said before listing the safety improvement projects the city is undertaking. Those include adding 19 miles of bicycle lanes and 12 new traffic signals.
One of the ceremony’s attendants, Michelle Roche, who lost her son after a reckless driver hit him in 2014, told Streets Blog Denver that the ceremony itself seemed like a propaganda campaign to make the city seem like it’s doing more to prevent traffic-related deaths.
“If you ask me, that little trickle of dollars that they’re putting towards the action plan … it’s like in marketing, we would call that greenwashing,” she said.
In its 2019 budget, Denver allocated just $2.6 million to implementing the recommendations of the Vision Zero Action Plan, accounting for less than 10 percent of funds allocated for transportation improvement projects. In 2020, Denver allocated just $1.65 million for the same cause.
Since the ceremony, Denver announced it will add up to 124 miles of bicycle lanes throughout the city and is upgrading 15 intersections across Colfax Avenue, one of Denver’s busiest streets. The Department of Transportation and Infrastructure (DOTI) announced the upgrades consist of adding “bollards and paint to shorten crossing distances for people on foot and to carve out places where pedestrians can stop in the middle of the street.”
But, residents living along Colfax aren’t impressed with the upgrades. The bollards will cost $120,000 alone, and there is no guarantee they will improve safety.
One resident who walks Colfax regularly told The Denver Channel that he worries about his safety because drivers on Colfax don’t watch out for pedestrians.
“My neighbor got hit by a car down the street, I’ve yelled at several drivers because they’re not looking when I’m crossing over, they’re making turns without looking both ways,” he said.
Colfax is one of several streets listed on the High Injury Network (HIN) — the corridors in Denver with the highest number of fatal and injury crashes. HIN roads account for just five percent of the total roads in the city but have seen more than 40 percent of the crashes since 2013. Other HIN roads include Broadway, University and Evans.
Federal Intervention
Denver’s problems with Vision Zero haven’t gone unnoticed by people living outside the Centennial State.
In December 2019, the US Department of Transportation (DOT) sent officials to meet with CDOT, DOTI, and the Denver Police Department to discuss means of improving Denver’s Vision Zero plan.
Among the concerns raised by DOT officials during the meeting was increasing rates of fatalities among pedestrians and bicyclists and other vulnerable road users. DOT found this fatality rate increased by 23 percent from 2018.
DOT’s nationwide data also showed that 76 percent of pedestrian fatalities occurred overwhelmingly after dark, 38 percent occurred when many pedestrians had some alcohol in their systems, and 74 percent occurred when they were outside of intersections. Half of accidents involving bicyclist fatalities occurred after dark, while only 26 percent of such accidents occurred with some alcohol in their systems.
“We clearly have more work to do to ensure that Denver’s transportation safety needs are met,” said James Owens, acting administrator of DOT’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). “I’m confident that with the help of our safety partners, we can make the Denver area one of the safest in America for pedestrians, bicyclists, and motorists.”
In the past three years, NHTSA awarded Colorado $46 million to address its road safety concerns. Even so, nearly 600 people across the state were killed in traffic-related incidents in 2019, according to statistics from CDOT.
So far in 2020, 57 people have been killed in crashes.
Project Expansion
While Denver struggles to achieve its Vision Zero goals, the Denver Regional Council of Governments (DRCOG) plans to expand the program to become more regionally focused. DRCOG claims this approach will help cities and communities in the metro area deal with increasing traffic deaths.
“Vision Zero switches safety from being solely the responsibility of roadway users to a shared responsibility of system designers and roadway users,” the agency said in its announcement of the plan. “It is inevitable that roadway users will make mistakes, so roads should be designed to ensure these mistakes do not result in severe injuries or fatalities.”
However, the principles of Vision Zero and the implementation seem to be out of line with each other. Last year, DRCOG reported 242 fatalities resulting from crashes across DRCOG’s service area which includes Adams, Arapahoe, Boulder, Broomfield, Denver, Clear Creek, Douglas, Gilpin and Jefferson counties. This total is more than one-third of traffic-related fatalities reported in the state.
Denver admits there is still work to be done and plans to focus on improving the HIN in 2020. But, residents are still waiting for the program to make an impact.
Denver’s South Pearl Street saw three
businesses exit the market between November and December 2019, becoming the
latest victims to the city’s rising minimum wage and property taxes.
Tavern: Slumping sales and high taxes forced The Tavern Platt Park to close its doors on December 31, 2019.
Hanson’s Grill & Tavern, a 21-year
neighborhood staple, shut its doors in December. The Platt Park Tavern closed
on New Year’s Eve after four years of business, and Palizo Italiano closed in
November after just two years.
While it’s reasonable for neighborhood
residents to be concerned about the health of their local shopping district,
Mark Gill, Vice President of the Pearl Street Merchants Association says the
closures remind him of a time in South Pearl’s recent past.
“Seven or eight years ago we had a similar
situation where three restaurants all closed at once,” Gill told the Glendale
Cherry Creek Chronicle in an interview. “People were worried then, but the
neighborhood bounced back just fine, in my opinion.”
As a 21-year veteran of the neighborhood,
including the last 14 years as a member of the Merchants Association and an
owner of two buildings in the neighborhood, Gill says the neighborhood has seen
a steady upward trend. However, that hasn’t kept him from seeing some of the
issues businesses in the area face.
“The nature of the neighborhood hasn’t
really changed much,” Gill said. “A majority of the businesses are mom-and-pop.
But, there’s no denying that rents and property values are going up.”
The Chronicle reached out to Hanson’s, the
Platt Park Tavern and Palizo Italiano for comment but didn’t receive a
response.
Outdated Gallagher Problems
The state’s population boom and continued
residential development that follows are causing problems for businesses all
over Denver because of the criteria set forth in the Gallagher Amendment, a
state constitutional amendment passed in 1982 that altered the way Colorado
assessed and collected property taxes.
Long Standing Grill & Tavern: Hanson’s stood at the corner of Louisiana and South Pearl for over two decades before closing shortly before the New Year 2020.
Before the amendment was passed, Colorado
collected its property taxes through a complex set of formulas that most
property tax professionals couldn’t fully comprehend. Afterward, Gallagher
effectively decreased the assessment rates whenever statewide residential
property values increased faster than business property values.
The problem? By maintaining this constant
ratio between residential and business property tax assessments, Gallagher has
essentially prevented Colorado from capitalizing on its expansive residential
growth, leaving businesses to pick up the revenue shortfalls.
The Platt Park Tavern provides a perfect
example of this problem. In 2019, the land and real estate tied to the business
was assessed at value of over $4.5 million. The Tavern ended up paying a little
more than $123,000 in property taxes, according to Denver County property tax
records. In 2018, the business paid just under $97,000 in property taxes.
Meanwhile, a 32,000 sq. ft. mansion in
Cherry Hills Village valued at $22 million paid just under $74,000 in property
taxes for the same year. The mansion’s property tax assessment has dropped
nearly 24 percent since 2016 as well.
For perspective, a residential property
with a tax assessment comparable to the Tavern’s paid roughly $37,000 in
property taxes, according to Zillow.
“Right now, we’re seeing far more residential
development than we were two or three decades ago,” Gill said. “In the end
businesses end up paying for a larger part of a shrinking pie.”
New Minimum Wage Problems
Outside of the property tax issue, small
businesses in Denver have to contend with a minimum wage that is slated to
reach nearly $16 per hour by 2022.
For restaurants, a business with
notoriously tight profit margins, even the slightest increase in labor costs
can be detrimental.
The Colorado Restaurant Association reports
that over 200 new restaurants opened in Denver in 2019. On top of that, the
explosive growth of Colorado’s population and its increased reliance on tourism
to bring new faces to the Centennial State has sent restaurant sales
skyrocketing to $13.9 billion annually.
But, between the lines, Denver’s restaurant
scene is becoming more homogenized with chain and franchise restaurants taking
up most of the retail space in Denver County. Local staples like the original
Snarf’s Sandwiches has had to move through multiple locations as it battles
against its labor costs and property tax assessments.
Even The Denver Post is not sold on the
idea that increasing the minimum wage is right for Colorado. In an article from
October 2019, the Post lamented the wage increase as “an exacerbation of the
cost of living issues in Denver.”
Currently, a restaurant worker making the
city’s $12 per hour minimum will need to work 103 hours per week to afford an
average one-bedroom apartment costing $1,652 per month without paying more than
30 percent of their income on rent.
Meanwhile, restaurant owners are concerned
that the new wage hikes won’t be enough to account for the industry labor
shortage.
“Everything we’ve been hearing from our
members, (they) have been saying, ‘How do we find more workers? We need more
people to be working in our establishments,’” Carolyn Livingston, the
spokeswoman for the Colorado Restaurant Association, told CBS 7.
About one-tenth of Colorado’s workforce
works in the restaurant industry. However, the state’s record-low unemployment
rate has elongated the replacement rate once an employee decides to leave.
Sign Of What’s To Come?
Still, there are signs that South Pearl
Street will pull through. One aspect Gill always points to is that there are
hardly any “For Sale” signs hung in the windows of Pearl Street businesses. In
fact, most are sold by word of mouth these days, Gill says.
The neighborhood is also planning on adding
arches at the Jewel, Iowa, and Louisiana entrances as the Merchants Association
awaits the next rotation of businesses. Gill hopes the aesthetic additions will
help spur growth in the area for years to come.
“South Pearl will rebound. These businesses closing at the same time was just a coincidence,” Gill said. “There will always be people coming and going, and people wanting to come in once the others have left.”
Walmart Stores, Inc., the parent company of
retail behemoth Walmart, is suing half the counties in Colorado to lower its
property tax bills based on a shady legal idea known simply as the “Dark Store
Theory.”
Largest Retailer: Walmart has 96 locations throughout Colorado, making it the largest retailer in the state.
The theory says that the property value of
a closed down big-box retailer store should be tied to the traditional real
estate sales approach, where valuation is determined by the stores surrounding
it. Under this theory, a Walmart store that is listed for sale for $11 million
while a Hobby Lobby nearby is on the market for $5 million would be overvalued.
But assessors argue that this theory
completely misconstrues what gives a property its value: location. Walmart has
a long history of opening stores in areas that are strategically important to
the company, whether it provides logistical efficiency or a larger labor pool.
This strategy makes the company’s property more valuable because of the
web-like network that comes with it.
Walmart contends that its business
practices should not weigh into the valuation of its stores, and that argument
has gained little traction recently. In July, Colorado’s Board of Equalization
(BOE), the agency that sets property tax values across the state, denied
Walmart’s property tax complaint. This rejection prompted the retailer to issue
its lawsuits in county courts.
In August, a judge in Pulaski County,
Arkansas, rebuked Walmart’s argument that the company should pay fewer property
taxes because their stores are retrofitted to the company’s specific needs and,
therefore, cannot fetch a fair price on the open market.
The case in Pulaski County concerned a 2017
tax assessment of $145 million between Walmart, Sam’s Club, and Neighborhood
Market. Walmart tried to reduce the total assessed property value to $93.8
million, and then slashed the value to $74.3 million, a 48 percent drop.
Opponents argue that if Walmart prevails in
this argument, then the value of an empty store would be set by a vacant lot in
a different state.
Walmart’s Littleton-based attorney Brian
Huebsch tried to find a way around this impasse by arguing that Colorado county
assessors did not account for the store’s 24-hour operability into their
valuations. This causes the company to replace items such as cash registers and
furniture used in daily operations more frequently than other businesses.
Huebsch declined requests to comment on
this story, saying that he doesn’t comment on open cases.
The lawsuit also argues that Walmart is
experiencing difficulty reselling these items because other retailers are
closing, thereby reducing demand and value of the goods.
La Plata County’s assessor Carrie Woodson
told The Durango Herald that she and her staff have not seen evidence of
Walmart reselling its property, despite monitoring the company’s operations for
several years. In fact, Woodson asserts, she believes Walmart is actually just
throwing away their damaged products, making them fully exposed to being taxed.
Over $4.5 million in school district
funding was at stake in the Pulaski case while only $20,000 is at stake in La
Plata.
In Arapahoe County, Walmart sought to
recoup nearly $29 million in property taxes on eight stores located in Aurora,
Centennial, and Englewood. The company argued that “economic depression” of its
furniture and point of sale systems (POS) warranted a 25 percent reduction in
its tax value. Arapahoe County ended up settling the case with Walmart for a
12.8 percent reduction in its tax assessment, essentially handing the company
$14 million.
Other assessors, both in and out of
Colorado, are saying that this tactic is a symptom of a larger disease
spreading throughout corporate America. Namely, that megacorporations are
attempting to use their financial might to beat small counties into submission
in order to lower their property taxes.
One study by CityLab found that over 230
similar property tax claims have been filed across the U.S. since 2015, most of
which ask for a 50 percent reduction in tax assessments. However, a majority of
the claims were settled for 15 percent reductions because counties simply
cannot afford the cost of litigating the claims for as long as corporations
can.
Smaller counties typically feel the brunt
of this argument because of their fiscal constraints. However, all 32 Colorado
counties currently have plans to defend each other when the lawsuits are
brought before a judge.
Walmart brought in over $514 billion in total revenue, and employed over 2.2 million people across the country in 2019. The company earned a gross profit of $126 billion from its revenue. This represents a two-percent increase in profit from 2018. Walmart’s gross profits have increased every year since 1995.
Residents in the Huntington Estates neighborhood are crying
foul that two doctors are allowed to allow their property to continue to be in
disrepair and neither the neighborhood covenants nor Arapahoe County can stop
them.
No Response: Members of the HOA leadership team have tried to contact the Brauns on numerous occasions about the property but they have not received a response.
“All of us are tired of looking at the dilapidated and
unoccupied house,” Dick Pond, the treasurer of the neighborhood Home Owners
Association, told the Glendale Cherry Creek Chronicle in an email. “The HOA and
a few neighbors have tried to contact the Brauns about it, but we keep getting
the same answer, that they’ll be selling it soon.”
The owners, Tom and Carol Braun, left their house on East
Evans Way 15 years ago after purchasing a bigger home on the other side of the
neighborhood. Now, their old house sits on a plot of dead grass and overgrown
shrubs. Bits of glass from the windows litter the yard.
Pond and other members of the HOA leadership team have tried
to contact the Brauns on numerous occasions about the property. They’ve also
sent letters to their new residence warning the Brauns that if they hold on to
the property too long they might miss out on the wave of rising home values in
the area.
“Values in the city and our local area are on the rise and
several families in the neighborhood are trying to sell or will be soon,” one
letter dated April 28, 2013 reads. “This could again be a lovely home, if only
it were occupied and maintained. However, many solar panels are missing or
broken, gutters are falling off or missing, and the front yard is dirt and
weeds.”
The Brauns did not respond to repeated requests for comment
for this story.
Power Of Association
Broken Windows: Bits of glass from the broken windows litter the yard of the Brauns’ ome on East Evans Way. The Brauns abandoned their home 15 years ago.
State laws generally give HOAs vast powers to control the
aesthetics of their neighborhood. Each county adopts their own laws regarding
the powers of these associations as well.
However, those laws are only enforceable if the HOA is
registered with the state. HOAs that make more than $5,000 per year are
required to register with both the Department of Regulatory Agencies (DORA) and
the Director of Real Estate (DRE). Those making less than $5,000 annually only
register with the DRE and are not held to the same standards of reporting.
Huntington Estates’ HOA is informal, as resident Paul Hanley
describes it. While this structure may benefit homeowners in that there are no
monthly HOA dues to pay, it also makes it difficult to take decisive action
against the Brauns.
“The covenant governing the neighborhood was written back in
the 1960s, and it’s weak compared to today’s standards,” Hanley said. “But,
this is what happens when you don’t live in a municipality. You may pay less in
taxes, but you get less government in return.”
Residents have contacted Arapahoe County about the Brauns’
house many times, but the County’s answer is never simple. Since Huntington
Estates is located in unincorporated Arapahoe County, local ordinances don’t
carry much weight. Instead, the county relies on the principles of fairness to
adjudicate disputes among neighbors.
“They’ve basically told us that because the farmers and
ranchers nearby can allow barns and other structures on their property to
dilapidate, then so can homeowners in Huntington Estates,” Hanley said.
Hanley also admitted that some residents had discussed
attempting to strengthen Huntington Estate’s covenants, but doing so requires a
unanimous vote among homeowners.
“It would really just be more trouble than it’s worth,”
Hanley said.
Living Trust
Abandoned Home: This home in the Huntington Estates neighborhood has neighbors upset as two doctors abandoned their property in 2004 and have allowed it to be in complete disrepair. Neighbors are concerned for their property values as some gear up to sell their property.
According to Arapahoe County property tax records, the Brauns’
house is currently owned by a living trust in Carol’s name. Typically, wealthy
homeowners put property into living trusts if they plan on passing it on after
death.
Some residents worry that there may be a financial incentive
for the Brauns to let their property dilapidate, and that this incentive could
negatively affect their home values.
“Many neighbors have expressed concern about your disregard
for the condition of the abandoned house and about the market values of their
own properties as a result,” the HOA letter reads. “In addition, the community
is concerned about any potential health or environmental impact as a result of
the continued declining condition and lack of care for the property.”
Colorado is one of 38 states that doesn’t charge an estate
tax. Even so homeowners can still be charged a federal estate tax after their
death. Under prime circumstances, married couples can protect up to $22.28
million under the federal exemption guidelines. A single homeowner can protect
an estate valuing up to $11.18 million, according to the IRS.
By allowing their home to dilapidate, the Brauns could avoid
paying estate taxes all together. They currently own two homes, one of which
was purchased for just under $600,000 while the median home value of the
neighborhood is close to a half-million. Factor in a few savvy investments and
they could be leaving behind a nice nest egg with no tax burden.
However, the majority of the neighbors just want the problem
to go away. They’re tired of seeing the home slowly crumble while homes that
are near it have had a tough time staying full.
“This is really a case of buyer beware,” Hanley said. “We’re
basically subject to the goodwill of our neighbors on this one.”
Court records obtained by Glendale Cherry Creek Chronicle
detail how Biological Resource Center (BRC), a willed body donation company
headquartered in Arizona, illegally brokered infected body parts for profit.
FBI Raid: A former Arizona body donation center is facing multiple lawsuits after an FBI raid revealed body parts piled on top of each other, a cooler filled with male body parts and a head sewn onto another body.
Four years ago, the families who donated their loved ones to
BRC filed a civil lawsuit alleging that BRC misled some customers to believe
that their deceased would be left intact after donation. Instead, BRC dismembered
the bodies and sold the parts across domestic and international borders. The
lawsuit is ready to stand trial in the Maricopa County Superior Court on
October 21.
One invoice recorded the sale of two heads for $500 apiece
to a medical school in Israel. On another, a pair of shoulders went to Athens,
Greece, for just $300. Someone’s arms made their way into a surgical workshop
for $750.
This happened to families in Arizona, Michigan, and
Illinois.
“It’s really body snatching without them having to dig up
the graves,” Michael Burg, a Denver-based attorney representing eight of the
plaintiffs, said in a press release about the case. “[BRC] lied to them.”
Background
The initial FBI investigation began in 2013 after officers
in Houston caught wind of International Biological, Inc. (IBI), a body
brokerage, shipping body parts across the southern border. State agencies
recovered thousands of bodies and dozens of boxes of records from IBI’s offices
in Michigan. Those records also implicated BRC and Anatomical Services, Inc.
(ASI) in the crime.
Body Parts: Agents found “infected heads,” a small woman’s head sewn onto a large male torso and hanging on a wall “like Frankenstein,” and body parts stacked on top of one another with no identification tags. (Courtesy of YouTube)
After a lengthy investigation, it was determined that the
three companies had been acting as one since at least 2008, when it began
selling body parts to international clientele.
As a brokerage, the business marketed itself as one that
didn’t sell infected parts. But, the investigation found that it made most of
their money from bodies of people who suffered from sepsis, hepatitis B, C, and
HIV, even when family death records explicitly stated so.
BRC’s warehousing process exposed much of its inventory to
cross-contamination. A deposition from one of the FBI officers who raided BRC’s
Arizona office revealed that body parts were often organiz-ed by limb after
they were dismembered with infected parts mixed with clean ones.
Customers were never given access to any of the death
certificates, medical records from donors, or medical social history
questionnaires administered by BRC among caregivers or next-of-kin. If a
customer found out the body they purchased was infected, BRC would offer to
sell the body at a discounted rate in order to ensure the sale.
This is not the first time BRC owners Stephen and Sally Gore
have been in a courtroom over their business practices. AZCentral reported that
Stephen Gore had pled guilty to federal charges for the illegal use and sale of
human body parts in 2014. He was sentenced to four years in prison, but served
no time because of good behavior.
“Placement” And “Matching”
BRC also told donor families that they treated the deceased
with dignity and respect. They offered services like the recovery of and
“placement” and “matching” of tissue with scientists and medical researchers to
unsuspecting customers. They printed details of these services in brochures and
pamphlets that were given out in their offices.
To an untrained ear, this language sounds as if the deceased
will be kept intact during transportation. But, as one customer who worked in
the non-profit organ donation industry noted in her deposition, the terms
“placement” and “matching” are code words for dismemberment.
“These words are meant to disguise the fact that BRC was
helping medical providers find organ donors even after body donors asked them
not to,” she said.
That customer’s mother came to be known as BRCIL-2013164.
Her whole body was sold to IBI for $5,000 because her body contained hepatitis
B. It was later dismembered and shipped on an international course.
Lawsuit Filed: A lawsuit has been filed around what Denver-based law firm Burg Simpson has long called the “body parts case,” involving families who unwillingly and unknowingly donated their loved ones to a body donation program set up by the Biological Resource Center, Inc. in the U.S. under the false pretense of furthering medical research.
Will Power
Typically, an individual’s last will and testament dictates
how their body will be disposed of after death. However, enforcing the power of
wills can be tricky because it falls under the broad domain of gift law.
According to the Clinical Journal of The American Society of
Nephrology, the primary law governing organ donation in the United States is
the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act (UAGA). UAGA was enacted as a part of the
Uniform Codes, which are passed from state to state.
UAGA is “uniquely designed to support the system of
transplantation” in that it “excludes [transplantation] from the federal
prohibition, and because the donee of the anatomic gift is the transplant
recipient, such payments do not abrogate the legal construct of organ donation
as a gift.”
A key aspect of the law is consent, which differs from what
doctor’s refer to as “informed consent.” Organ donors must consent for their
organs to be harvested for transplants, which is as simple as having “ORGAN
DONOR” on your driver’s license.
On the other hand, doctors are required to gain informed
consent before treating a patient. Informed consent describes the process of
discussing the risks and benefits of all available means of treatment with a
patient. Since body donations don’t include the element of risk or benefit to
the deceased because the transaction occurs after death, therefore, informed
consent is not necessary.
BRC prepared questionnaires for customers asking if they
wanted the deceased’s body organs to be placed and matched. However, those
services didn’t only extend to those who marked “YES.”
Arizona has an especially lax enforcement system for these
laws, which helped make it one of the nation’s hotspots for whole body
donations. The entity in charge of overseeing these companies, Arizona’s State
Health Department, focused its resources on combatting the opioid crisis
instead of cracking down on illegal organ harvesting, according to an AZCentral
report.
In contrast, Colorado has strict laws governing the
operation of body donation companies and funeral homes, both of which are
regulated under the same statutes. For starters, someone who owns a funeral
home cannot simultaneously own a body donation company. Colorado also requires
owners of either company to maintain records of where human remains are
distributed.
Nearly 4,000 people — approximately seven percent of the
state’s population — are whole body donors. That is roughly five-times the
national average, the Illinois-based Cremation Association of North America
says.
This ecosystem helped BRC expand its territory across the
Atlantic.
BRC made little effort to conceal its business dealings,
according to the court documents. Potential customers would contact BRC’s
office in Illinois. If that location didn’t have the requested body parts, Gore
provided the body part from Arizona. Records for all of the transactions were
stored in each of the company’s offices.
To Burg and the other lawyers representing the plaintiffs,
the case does not question organ donation as a whole. It asks if the consent of
the dead matters as much as the will of the living.
“If someone says we’ll pay for expenses and cremation and
your loved one’s body will go to specific places (to help cure diseases), you
are pretty much going to say, ‘Sure, why not?’” Burg told AZCentral. “Am I
saying none of these places are legitimate? No. But there have been a sufficient
number of cases where misrepresentations have been made. There’s a price list
for everything from a head to a shoulder, like they are a side of beef. They
make money, absolutely, because there’s no cost in getting the bodies.”
