DENVER (KDVR) — New rules from Denver city officials will allow food trucks to return to lower downtown on Friday and Saturday nights in a limited capacity following a ban that was put in place after police fired at a suspect and injured six bystanders in the process.
The new emergency rules, released Thursday morning by the Denver Police Department and Denver Department of Transportation and Infrastructure, will allow seven food trucks to operate in the area until midnight on weekend nights. Additional permitted trucks are allowed to operate in the area but are required to leave by 9 p.m.
Four of the midnight food trucks will be located on Blake Street between 19th and 20th streets, three will be located on Market Street between 20th and 21st streets. The latter is the block where police confronted Jordan Waddy and three officers fired at him.
That shooting happened around 1:30 a.m. on July 17 after officers saw Waddy involved in a fight and confronted him. Video shows him walking down a crowded sidewalk while police are parallel in the street. At one point he walks into the street before returning to the sidewalk and pulling a handgun out of his pocket to throw on the ground.
Police say that the muzzle of the gun was pointed toward officers as this happened, and that’s when they shot him. Two officers on the street fired toward Waddy with the building behind him and one officer fired from the sidewalk toward an area where there was a crowd of people behind Waddy.
That crowd was gathered at a food truck outside of Larimer Beer Hall as that bar and others in the area were preparing to close at 2 a.m.
Food truck owners and operators began getting notifications that they would not be able to park between 19th and 22nd streets on Blake, Market or Larimer streets Friday and Saturday nights about a week later.
FOX31’s Joshua Short reported the plan to lift the full weekend ban after talking to attorney Justin Pearson with the Institute for Justice.
“The fact that the food truck owners are innocent, law-abiding business owners, but they’re being targeted while the brick-and-mortar bars and restaurants are being allowed to operate there — there is no constitutionally legitimate reason for that distinction,” Pearson said at the time.