Headlines Wednesday October 29, 2025
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Colorado Early Voting Rates Up, Boulder County Vote Early Day, ICE Policy Struck Down, Boulder Budget Approved Jack Armstrong
Boulder Plans to Completely Encrypt Police Radio Scanners
The Boulder Police Department (BPD) is switching to a new, encrypted radio system that won’t be accessible to the public anymore. A spokesperson from the BPD said the switch is due to officer safety concerns and efficiency for big operations, like special events that require outside partners.
The Daily Camera noted that this means journalists will no longer have free and public access to the radio. BPD offered the Camera an encrypted radio if they signed a contract agreeing that they would not report what they heard “prior to the conclusion of law enforcement operational activities at the scene.” The Camera refused to sign the contract.
BPD was asked if police would commit to proactively sharing information about things like shootings and crashes, but their spokesperson did not commit to that.
Similar radio switches happened in 2019 in Denver, where the Denver Post refused to sign a similar radio access contract, and in Longmont, where Longmont Public Safety gave the Longmont Times-Call a radio without a contract. The Boulder Fire-Rescue Department’s radio and the Boulder County Sheriff’s radio will still be accessible to the public via online scanners.
1994 Boulder Murder Suspects Seeks JonBenet Ramsey Records – Boulder Judge Denies Records
A Boulder county judge on Tuesday declined to let a defense attorney in a 1994 murder case see the police department’s JonBenet Ramsey death investigation records. Prosecutors announced in September that Michael Clark would be prosecuted again in the killing of Marty Grisham after his 2012 murder conviction was overturned in April.
Clark was released on bail after serving more than 12 years of a life prison sentence. He has maintained his innocence throughout the process. Adam Frank, Clark’s attorney, filed 12 subpoenas seeking records from the first 48 hours of the Ramsey investigation and information about CBI policies related to DNA testing. The Boulder County District Attorney’s Office had asked the court to deny all 12.
Lawyers are expected to discuss whether or not some of all motions of Clark’s case be sealed once they are filed, but Clark’s lawyer said the public deserves court documents.
Dozens Protest Outside ICE Center After Father and Children Detained
Hundreds of protesters chanted outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) field office in Durango on Tuesday. A father and two children, ages 12 and 15, were taken Monday morning after they were pulled over by ICE agents near a mobile home park at the edge of town, said Enrique Orozco-Perez, executive director of the Four Corners Immigrant Resource Center.
On Tuesday, the two children were seen being removed from the building, making it unclear where they were being taken or where their father was being held. The family, asylum-seekers from Columbia, have lived in Colorado for over 18 months. None of the detained family members has a criminal record or history of noncompliance with ICE.
The protest was mostly peaceful on Tuesday but it escalated as more protesters arrived on scene. Over 200 protesters blocked an area near the office. At least seven ICE agents dressed in camouflage pepper-sprayed people in the crowd.
According to the Durango Herald, ICE agents broke through a human chain that protesters had formed to block the family from being removed from the facility. On Monday night, a legal representative of the Immigrant Resource Center said they received a call from the children’s mother saying that the children would be sent to Texas and their father to the detention center in Aurora.
Colorado Health Insurance Premiums to Double in Next Year
Yesterday, KGNU reported that open enrollment for government healthcare begins November 1st and is expected to rise after federal tax credit revert to pre-COVID levels. The Colorado Division of Insurance has given an estimate to the cost increase. The division announced that healthcare premiums are slated to double through this year – with higher income families expecting to pay up to $10,000 more than in the year previous.
Quasi-government healthcare marketplaces such as Connect for Health Colorado are paying more for those who use subsidies to pay for their insurance. This combined with rise in our population and increasing medication prices means a higher ‘sticker price’ for healthcare marketplaces and their customers.
The dramatic rise in price led the state insurance division to estimate between 75,000 and 335,000 people will go without health insurance coverage within the state.
The expiration of federal COVID-era healthcare credits is a pain point in the 29-day government shutdown. The Denver Post says that these credits expiring helped bring down the cost of extending tax cuts for the country’s top earners as part of Trump’s so-called Big Beautiful Bill.
The Colorado Division of Insurance said if Congress extended the healthcare subsidies, the would only rise sixteen percent and would not affect the country’s lower income earners.
