Yesterday morning, Mayor Mike Johnston took to the keyboard for an hour-long “Ask Me Anything” session on the local r/Denver subreddit — and Denverites didn’t hold back. Users grilled the mayor on everything from Denver’s housing crisis and traffic enforcement to Denver’s best burger and the tunnels under DIA. While he didn’t answer all the top-upvoted questions, we rounded up some of his most revealing responses.
Dangerous Driving and Traffic Enforcement
Questions about traffic enforcement — or more accurately, the lack thereof — made up the majority of participants’ questions by a landslide. Participants wanted to know why traffic infractions like speeding, expired plates, and running red lights weren’t being taken more seriously, with one commenter suggesting that “it seems like a free for all right now.”
“We are focused on increasing traffic enforcement,” the mayor responded, “both on speeding, where I'll support putting in more red light cameras and speed cameras, and we have developed a strong system on unregistered tags where we will occasionally do surge enforcement on unregistered tags. DPD has issued nearly 19,000 total traffic-related citations this year so we are still enforcing."
Denver’s Best Burger
A user named FeistyBlackWoman was downvoted like crazy after the mayor chose to answer her question about the best burger in town. “Cherry Cricket,” the mayor responded. “I do cricket burger but add pepper jack cheese, jalapeno and egg ... and sometimes onion ring strings.”
Regardless of what they thought about the Cherry Cricket, this wasn’t what some reddit users were hoping to hear: “I'm disappointed that this is [one of] the first questions answered here when there are a lot of really good questions about issues that actually affect Denverites' health, safety, and quality of life,” one user replied. Tough crowd!
The Threat of Trump and the National Guard
The top-upvoted question in the whole AMA was what the mayor planned to do if / when President Trump attempts to deploy the National Guard in Denver to address crime as he has in Washington D.C. Johnston was firm in his response:
“Any first year law student in America could tell you that deploying the US military on the streets of American cities in times of peace to enforce domestic law is clearly illegal. Denver does not need any help from the national guard as we are seeing the largest decrease of violent crime of any top 50 city in the country. We will be prepared to take them to court on day 1 if they threaten to do so.”
Flock Cameras and ICE
When asked why the city continues to use Flock security cameras despite its known association with federal immigration authorities, Mayor Johnston defended his decision:
“Yes we are [still using Flock] because we think we keep people safe. We have not seen a single instance of Denver's flock data being used for the purposes of civil immigration enforcement and DA has already committed we will prosecute anyone who does. What we have seen are hundreds of arrests for everything from murder cases to kidnapping to car theft using flock cameras, so we do aim to keep them in place. If you have your car stolen, or heaven forbid have your car stolen with your kid still in the carseat, we want to be able to find it immediately.”
Homelessness and Drug Use
Homelessness and drug use was another hot topic of the hour. While the mayor has celebrated his strides in getting many unhoused Denverites off the streets, some Reddit users don’t believe it’s made enough of a difference. When asked about his plans to address homelessness in Denver, the mayor first tallied his accomplishments:
“We're very proud of the progress we've made on homelessness and committed to doing more. In the last two years we have cut street homelessness by 45%. That is the largest multi-year reduction of street homelessness by any city in American history. We have closed all large encampments and connected people [with] services, we’ve brought 7,000 people indoors and 6,000 people to permanent housing, and we've become the largest city to end street homelessness for veterans.
On crime, Denver has also seen the largest drop in violent crime of any city in America over the last year thanks to the outstanding work of the police and our community partners.”
As for next steps, Johnston reiterated his plan to crack down on “quality of life” crimes, like public drug use and theft, through outreach enforcement.
“We will always give you the option to go to treatment or access resources to get back on your feet. But if you refuse and continue to commit crimes, we will not tolerate that, and you will be arrested -- and if you are sentenced to our county jail we will connect you with the mental health and addiction treatment programs we have so you can actually get treatment.”
Other Odds and Ends
In addition to the topics above, Johnston answered a small handful of other questions:
Which peer cities does he look to for inspiration?
“Depends on the issue. We look at Boston for crime reduction, at Austin for permitting, at Houston for their homelessness strategies. … Also looking at Detroit for their deep city spirit and for their public accountability around city goals and city dashboards.”
On the city layoffs:
“This has been the hardest part of my job as mayor … One of the most important ways to build back trust with employees is to be able to protect the city from future financial uncertainty, not to have made these hard decisions would have set the city up for more potential mid-year cuts and recessions.”
Has he seen aliens in DIA’s underground tunnels?
“Nope, no aliens, no pyramids, no Illuminati. Definitely nothing else except boring tunnels, and JFK and Elvis playing cards with Marilyn Monroe.”
