DENVER (KDVR) — Recent efforts to clean up around the Denver Convention Center area are underway but have not yet lowered crime in the short time they have been in play.
Denver’s so-called “convention corridor” is an area of the Central Business District neighborhood near the Colorado Convention Center and several large hotels. It stretches from Glenarm Place to Champa Street and 15th to 17th streets and contains a large share of the foot traffic on the 16th Street Mall.
There were over 1,100 crimes recorded in this area through the course of 2022, the highest number of which occurred in the final quarter of the year.
Monthly crime totals ebbed and flowed through 2022, but there was a noticeable uptick in the last three months of the year. October had the highest number of crimes in the corridor with 133. December had the second-highest number followed by November when officials assigned a task force on the issue.
The crimes included are not limited to visible street crimes, but those kinds of crimes are well-represented.
Over half the corridor’s crimes are shoplifting, trespassing, theft of or from a vehicle, possession of drug paraphernalia or assault. Shoplifting is the single most common crime cited in the area.
More serious violent crimes were much rarer but still common. There were about 50 aggravated assaults in the area, or about one per week, along with 15 street robberies and 18 threats to injure.