A construction site in the 100 block of Jersey Street is seen on Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2024. (Justin Wingerter/BusinessDen)
Last week, workers were excavating at a home project in the 100 block of Jersey Street, in the wealthy Crestmoor Park neighborhood, when one stopped to use a porta potty.
“He then comes out, sees a vehicle in the middle of the street next to his, and sees there is a person inside his truck,” said Ben Romero, the project manager for that job site.
“He asked, ‘What’s going on?’” said Stephen Brown, owner of the homebuilder Brown Group. “And the guy turned around and pistol-whipped him in the back of the head or neck.”
“Then he said, ‘If you call the police, we will come back and we will shoot you.’”
Word soon reached a private elementary school nearby, which sent an alert to parents.
“The suspects were reported to be driving a white SUV with temporary license plates and, to our knowledge, have not yet been apprehended,” Graland Country Day School wrote.
No one has been arrested for that Oct. 1 assault and armed robbery, which remains under investigation, according to Denver police. Its brazenness — it occurred around 11:30 a.m. and yielded nothing more than some grease guns — and its violence stand out to both Brown and Romero, even as they have become inured to crime at their custom home projects.
“In the daytime, when our guys are working, other guys are coming up, breaking into cars and stealing their tools. Every single job,” Brown said. “I’ve probably built 20-something homes in Hilltop and Crestmoor over the last couple of years and it has been every job site.”
Other homebuilders told BusinessDen there’s been a rise in robberies at construction sites; mostly tools and materials.
“This area has a lot of money, a lot of well-off people live in this area, but the crime is crazy,” Romero said of Crestmoor. “I’ve been working in the neighborhood since 2017, predominantly on new custom homes, and the crime is just getting ridiculous in that neighborhood.”
A sign warns against trespassing in the 100 block of Jersey Street in Denver. (Justin Wingerter/BusinessDen)
Across Denver, reports of robberies, thefts and burglaries at construction sites hit a recent high in 2022, when there were 591, a spike from 430 cases in 2021, police data shows. Such reports then went down in 2023, when there were 453. There have been 268 cases in 2024.
Thefts of equipment and other items from vehicles at construction sites have also dropped citywide, from 49 reported cases in 2022 to 44 in 2023 and 24 so far in 2024.
Those figures offer little consolation to the victims of such robberies, including last week’s.
“There’s no doubt that those guys are shaken. They are looking over their shoulders for sure,” Brown said. “This is their livelihood. These tools they’re stealing. It’s their livelihood.”
The injured worker, a Mexican national, was examined by paramedics, returned to work the same day and has been working since, according to Romero, who called the excavation crew “hard workers.”
“It’s really frustrating for those of us who are making an honest living,” the manager said. “You turn your back for five minutes or you make the mistake of leaving your vehicle unlocked and there goes your livelihood in a matter of seconds. And all in the middle of the day.”
It remains to be seen how many times the job site in the 100 block of Jersey Street will fall victim. The Brown Group’s most recently completed project, a home in Hilltop, was robbed seven times in a year, according to Brown and Romero. During a July 4 break-in, when the home was nearly finished, a crew of bandits kicked through two doors to get inside.
At another recent Hilltop project, a landscaper parked his vehicle, walked 30 feet to set down a box of supplies, and turned around to see robbers driving away with the power tools from his truck, Brown recalls. “Brazen is the word I’m going to use to describe it,” he said.
“These guys are driving around looking for stuff in the middle of the day,” Romero said. “I could sit here all day and tell you about all of the encounters we have had. It’s ridiculous.”
According to the homebuilders, whose Denver work is primarily in Crestmoor and Hilltop — “Pretty much every house that is being built there is north of $4 million,” Brown said — job sites are usually robbed as the project nears completion, when there are more items inside the home and more expensive equipment, such as paint sprayers, in the work trucks outside.
Confrontation is rare, they say, making last week’s armed robbery a distressing exception.
“These guys already believe that there’s nobody out there protecting them, so they are going to have to protect themselves,” Brown said of subcontractors. “They’re already looking over their shoulder and they’re going to be looking over their shoulder a lot more.”
Brown said that he doesn’t want laborers carrying guns but expects some are considering it.
“It’s a matter of time before people start taking matters into their own hands,” said Romero, the project manager. “You’ve got to protect yourself, right? And you’ve got to protect what belongs to you. Where do you draw the line and say enough’s enough?”
