Local Denver radio station DJ advocates violence against riders

[Aracheon]

http://www.9news.com/news/article.aspx?storyid=76926

DENVER - For years, motorcyclist Dana Straw has been an avid listener of Alice 105.9's morning show. That is, until, this week, when he heard something he could not believe.

He says one of the show's three disc jockeys, known as "Howie," was talking about an encounter he had with a motorcyclist on the road who was driving erratically.

"He said, 'I wanted to open a car door on these guys who were passing me on the shoulder of the road on the right hand side of the road,'" said Straw. "And then today, during his broadcast, pretty much was inviting other listeners to call into the radio and tell their stories, and was kind of egging listeners on to explain they would like to do the same thing too."

Since the broadcast Wednesday morning, word of what reportedly took place on the airwaves has sparked a massive campaign by local motorcycle groups to boycott advertisers and listeners alike from the station.

They are writing in by the hundreds, sometimes thousands, on Web sites like http://www.cosportbikeclub.org.

"When you have people telling you how to harm other people on the road, especially people who are unprotected like motorcyclists and don't have a cage around them, that's absolutely horrible," said Straw. "He's (Howie) a public figure, on the radio, a lot of people listen to him and to mention something like that was really bad."

Biker Siona Weaver, whose mother was killed by a truck while riding her motorcycle, agrees.

"We have as much right to be out there as anyone else, and we're not going out there to run people off the roads," she said. "I'm very upset that anyone would suggest to hit a motorcyclist. Period."

9NEWS contacted the station's program director, Dave Symonds, who denied the show ever mentioned opening car doors to oncoming bikers, and had no further comment on the matter.

9NEWS also asked Alice 105.9 for recordings of this week's morning shows to hear for ourselves what was said. Symonds would not give them to us.

Bikers like Weaver and Straw want there to be more education about safely sharing the roads with motorcyclists.

"The more people understand, the safer it's going to be for everybody," said Weaver.

They fear that what they heard this week on Alice 105.9 not only made light of doing harm on the road, but will encourage drivers to hate bikers.

"It's inciting people to do bad things to people when they're just trying to project themselves on the road," said Straw. "They had a caller on this morning that said she felt like nudging a motorcyclist."