DENVER (KDVR) — Public defenders ensure that anyone facing charges in the U.S. can get legal representation. But in Colorado’s municipal courts, children who want to defend their cases must hire a private lawyer — or even represent themselves.

That changes in Denver on July 1. A new city ordinance will provide free public defenders for young people in the municipal court system, making Denver the first in the state to do so.

“By providing holistic representation, we are dedicated to working closely with our clients, their families, schools, and local youth organizations to once and for all break the school to prison pipeline and allow for powerful self-autonomy,” Colette Tvedt, chief municipal public defender, said in a release announcing the change.

Cases before municipal court could be something like a ticket for fighting, trespassing or allegations from school — low-level cases that do not reach a level to be prosecuted by the state.

Historically, the defender’s office said any young person facing a charge in municipal court would meet with the prosecutor and a diversion officer to discuss how to resolve the case, whether through a plea deal, diversion or a trial. But neither could give the youth legal advice nor could the judge.

“If a young person wanted to challenge their case, and take it to trial, they either had to represent themselves or their parents would need to hire private counsel,” the release reads.

Denver council changes public defense law for youth

Part of the reason young people in Denver municipal court were not afforded legal counsel before is they did not face jail or removal from their homes because of the case, according to the defender’s office, which argues that any involvement in the criminal legal system can have lasting effects, nonetheless.

“The harm any court contact or law enforcement contact a young person has can ripple into the rest of their lives, especially the way they see themselves. The goal here is to remind them that they have a voice, they have a say, and they matter,” the release reads.

Denver City Council passed the bill 12-0 in December, with at-large Council Member Sarah Parady absent. Paul Kashmann and Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez sponsored the bill.

The Office of the Municipal Public Defender has said it expects an extra 50 cases each month once the change goes into effect. The office will also offer a youth peer support specialist to help navigate the process.

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza (AP) — Children in sandals trudge through water contaminated with sewage and scale growing mounds of garbage in Gaza’s crowded tent camps for displaced families. People relieve themselves in burlap-covered pits, with nowhere nearby to wash their hands.

In the stifling summer heat, Palestinians say the odor and filth surrounding them is just another inescapable reality of war — like pangs of hunger or sounds of bombing.

The territory’s ability to dispose of garbage, treat sewage and deliver clean water has been virtually decimated by eight brutal months of war between Israel and Hamas. This has made grim living conditions worse and raised health risks for hundreds of thousands of people deprived of adequate shelter, food and medicine, aid groups say.

Hepatitis A cases are on the rise, and doctors fear that as warmer weather arrives, an outbreak of cholera is increasingly likely without dramatic changes to living conditions. The U.N., aid groups and local officials are scrambling to build latrines, repair water lines and bring desalination plants back online.

COGAT, the Israeli military body coordinating humanitarian aid efforts, said it’s engaging in efforts to improve the “hygiene situation.” But relief can’t come soon enough.

“Flies are in our food,” said Adel Dalloul, a 21-year-old whose family settled in a beach tent camp near the central Gaza city of Nuseirat. They wound up there after fleeing the southern city of Rafah, where they landed after leaving their northern Gaza home. “If you try to sleep, flies, insects and cockroaches are all over you.”

Over a million Palestinians had been living in hastily assembled tent camps in Rafah before Israel invaded in May. Since fleeing Rafah, many have taken shelter in even more crowded and unsanitary areas across southern and central Gaza that doctors describe as breeding grounds for disease — especially as temperatures regularly reach 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 degrees Celsius).

“The stench in Gaza is enough to make you kind of immediately nauseous,” said Sam Rose, a director at the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees.

Conditions are exacting an emotional toll, too.

Anwar al-Hurkali, who lives with his family in a tent camp in the central Gazan city of Deir al-Balah, said he can’t sleep for fear of scorpions and rodents. He doesn’t let his children leave their tent, he said, worrying they’ll get sick from pollution and mosquitoes.

“We cannot stand the smell of sewage,” he said. “It is killing us.”

Basic services breakdown

The U.N. estimates nearly 70% of Gaza’s water and sanitation plants have been destroyed or damaged by Israel’s heavy bombardment. That includes all five of the territory’s wastewater treatment facilities, plus water desalination plants, sewage pumping stations, wells and reservoirs.

The employees who once managed municipal water and waste systems have been displaced, and some killed, officials say. This month, an Israeli strike in Gaza City killed five government employees repairing water wells, the city said.

Despite staffing shortages and damaged equipment, some desalination plants and sewage pumps are working, but they’re hampered by lack of fuel, aid workers say.

A U.N. assessment of two Deir al-Balah tent camps found in early June that people’s daily water consumption — including drinking, washing and cooking — averaged under 2 liters (about 67 ounces), far lower than the recommended 15 liters a day.

COGAT said it’s coordinating with the UN to repair sewage facilities and Gaza’s water system. Israel has opened three water lines “pumping millions of liters daily” into Gaza, it said.

But people often wait hours in line to collect potable water from delivery trucks, hauling back to their families whatever they can carry. The scarcity means families often wash with dirty water.

This week, Dalloul said, he lined up for water from a vendor. “We discovered that it was salty, polluted, and full of germs. We found worms in the water. I had been drinking from it,” he said. “I had gastrointestinal problems and diarrhea, and my stomach hurts until this moment.”

The World Health Organization declared an outbreak of Hepatitis A that, as of early June, had led to 81,700 reported cases of jaundice — a common symptom. The disease spreads primarily when uninfected people consume water or food contaminated with fecal matter.

Because wastewater treatment plants have shut down, untreated sewage is seeping into the ground or being pumped into the Mediterranean Sea, where tides move north toward Israel.

“If there are bad water conditions and polluted groundwater in Gaza, then this is an issue for Israel,” said Rose, of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees. “It has in the past prompted actions by Israel to try and ameliorate the situation.”

COGAT said it’s working on “improving waste management processes” and examining proposals to establish new dumps and allow more garbage trucks into Gaza.

Where can garbage go?

Standing barefoot on a street in the Nuseirat refugee camp, 62-year-old Abu Shadi Afana compared the pile of garbage next to him to a “waterfall.” He said trucks continue to dump rubbish even though families live in tents nearby.

“There is no one to provide us with a tent, food, or drink, and on top of all of this, we live in garbage?” Afana said. Trash attracts bugs he’s never seen before in Gaza — small insects that stick to his skin. When he lies down, he said, he feels like they’re “eating his face.”

There are few other places for the garbage to go. When Israel’s military took control of a 1-kilometer (0.6-mile) buffer zone along its border with Gaza, two main landfills east of the cities of Khan Younis and Gaza City became off-limits.

In their absence, informal landfills have developed. Displaced Palestinians running out of areas to shelter say they’ve had little choice but to pitch tents near trash piles.

Satellite images from Planet Labs analyzed by The Associated Press show that an informal landfill in Khan Younis that sprung up after Oct. 7 appears to have doubled in length since January. Since the Rafah evacuation, a tent city has sprung up around the landfill, with Palestinians living between piles of garbage.

Cholera fears

Doctors in Gaza fear cholera may be on the horizon.

“The crowded conditions, the lack of water, the heat, the poor sanitation — these are the preconditions of cholera,” said Joanne Perry, a doctor working in southern Gaza with Doctors Without Borders.

Most patients have illnesses or infections caused by poor sanitation, she said. Scabies, gastrointestinal illnesses and rashes are common. Over 485,000 diarrhea cases have been reported since the war’s start, WHO says.

“When we go to the hospital to ask for medicine for diarrhea, they tell us it is not available, and I go to buy it outside the hospital,” al-Hurkali said. “But where do I get the money?”

COGAT says it’s coordinating delivery of vaccines and medical supplies and is in daily contact with Gaza health officials. COGAT is “unaware of any authentic, verified report of unusual illnesses other than viral illnesses,” it said.

With efforts stalled to broker a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, Dalloul says he’s lost hope that help is on the way.

“I am 21 years old. I am supposed to start my life,” he said. “Now I just live in front of the garbage.”

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Frankel reported from Jerusalem. AP journalists Jack Jeffery in Ramallah, West Bank, and Michael Biesecker in Washington contributed to this report.

DENVER — People calling the Denver Police Department’s non-emergency number will be greeted by an automated operator instead of a live human come Thursday, the city announced Wednesday.

Callers into the non-emergency line, which is 720-913-2000, will be able to tell the interactive voice response (IVR) system what they need assistance with, and they will be routed to the appropriate city entity, person, or information, according to a news release.

Calls to 911 will still be handled by humans.

“This IVR represents the continued commitment of Denver 9-1-1 to leverage modern technology to better serve our community, upgrading a legacy system that has not changed in decades,” said 9-1-1 Director Andrew Dameron in a news release.

Officials said callers to the non-emergency line will still be able to talk to a real person by requesting a live operator. The computer will also transfer calls to a live person if the system does not understand what a caller says or cannot assist with the request.

The city said the new IVR system was launched to better handle the nearly 1 million calls the service receives yearly.