Mortensen must pay $4.5M in settlement over Denver convention center By: Associated Press December 31, 2020
10:02 am
DENVER (AP) Mortensen Construction will pay half of a $9 million settlement to the city of Denver to resolve claims that it and a developer violated the city’s public procurement rules during the early stages of planned renovation work at the Colorado Convention Center.
Mortenson Construction and Trammel Crow Company must pay $4.5 million each and issue a public apology to the city, according to the settlement. Mortenson also will not be allowed to bid on city contracts for three years, KUSA-TV reported Wednesday.
“This case involved a serious breach of Denver’s well-established procurement rules by companies that should have known better,” Mayor Michael Hancock said.
> The video above aired Oct. 16 and looks at who Matthew Dolloff was actually working for.
Dolloff was contracted through the company Pinkerton by 9NEWS. It has been the practice of 9NEWS for a number of months to contract private security to accompany staff at protests.
Dolloff was not licensed to provide security services as required in the City and County of Denver, the department said in its announcement. City law defines a security guard as “a person employed or engaged by a private security employer to perform security services.”
Pinkerton on its Facebook page previously issued a statement shortly after the shooting of 49-year-old Lee Keltner, saying:
During two days in federal court this week, Denver officials and a group of homeless individuals who ve sued the city painted vastly different pictures of homeless encampment sweeps during the COVID-19 pandemic. I think the presence of encampments is a complex and very difficult issue. I don’t think there’s a clear right and wrong answer in how we handle this complex problem, Bill Burman, director of Denver Public Health, testified.
The evidentiary hearing stemmed from a lawsuit filed in October by Andy McNulty of Killmer, Lane & Newman LLC on behalf of Denver Homeless Out Loud and ten homeless plaintiffs against the City of Denver, the State of Colorado and a contractor that works with the city on homeless encampment sweeps. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advises municipalities not to sweep encampments during the pandemic, to avoid furthering the spread of COVID-19; the plaintiffs want Denver to stop the sweeps for the duration of the pandemic.