A mother in Arizona, a former Colorado Coalition for the Homeless employee who lives in New Mexico and a local public school teacher are among the people involved with DoBetterDNVR, a controversial social media account that stokes outrage online by featuring images of homeless people, public drug use and crime in Denver.
The anonymously run account, which bills itself as a “citizen journalist” dedicated to finding “compassionate, tough-love solutions to homelessness,” exploded in popularity during the last two years. Critics say it relied on shock and conspiracy to steadily build its platform to more than 144,000 followers across Instagram and X.
There’s a video of a man with his pants around his knees, twerking in his underwear at a bus stop. People who appear to be homeless sitting by a fire. Needles. Blood on the pavement. Fistfights. Surveillance footage with the sound of gunshots. A man holding a cardboard sign. A rat running down the street. People who appear to be high, or unconscious, or overdosing.
The content, which DoBetterDNVR says is crowdsourced, is often set to music and accompanied by the account’s commentary.
“What a vibrant scene showing the destruction of our taxpayer dollars,” the account wrote about a video showing a person pulling flowers out of a flowerpot near Denver’s Union Station.
DoBetterDNVR is a household name in some Denver circles and has grown to a point where it impacts city politics, drawing the attention of Denver officials and prompting at least one city investigation. The posts are often inflammatory, and the information presented is sometimes false, with tidbits of fact mixed with rumor, speculation and misinformation, The Denver Post found.
The Post investigated the people behind the account because of its growing influence and the misinformation it spreads. While the account claims to be a news provider, its anonymity, lack of transparency and absence of public ethical standards undermine its credibility, said Kelly McBride, chair of the Craig Newmark Center for Ethics and Leadership at the Poynter Institute, a nonprofit that aims to bolster ethical journalism.
“That gets at (DoBetterDNVR’s) motives, right?” she said. “They don’t want to take responsibility for what they are doing. As a journalist, you put your name on stories. You take responsibility for the work.”
DoBetterDNVR’s drumbeat of voyeuristic videos and photos — which made up about 57% of 1,900 posts on Instagram since July 2023 — is punctuated by screenshots of local news coverage, posts featuring publicly available criminal records, reposts from police departments, commentary on city policies, calls to political action and, rarely, proposed solutions for homelessness.
The account routinely excoriates Denver’s current leaders for the way the city approaches addiction and homelessness, and calls instead for tough-on-crime solutions like making it a felony to possess small amounts of drugs, shifting away from harm-reduction programs and forcing people into mandatory treatment.
DoBetterDNVR frequently criticizes Mayor Mike Johnston and sometimes levies personal attacks against his family and others. In a March post with more than 10,000 views, DoBetterDNVR compared a photo of Courtney Johnston, the mayor’s wife, to a picture of J.R.R. Tolkien’s fictional character Gollum, with the comment that she was “lookin’ a lil rough today.”
Courtney Johnston, who is a chief deputy district attorney in the Denver District Attorney’s Office, declined to comment for this story. Several city employees and people working at local nonprofits also declined to publicly discuss the account out of fear that DoBetterDNVR would bully them if they did so.
In an environment where the burden of sorting through facts, verifying information and curating stories has largely shifted to news consumers, readers must now rely on media literacy skills — like considering an information provider’s sources, ethics, transparency and motives — to determine what is credible information online, McBride said.
“Regular people can commit acts of journalism,” said Patrick Ferrucci, chair of the Department of Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder. “They can disseminate important information, and that’s great. But that’s only a piece of what journalism does. Journalism often puts that information into context, which makes it more useful for people. And, more importantly, journalism is not just defined by the end product. It is defined by the process that goes into it. Ethics, norms, verification — all these things that make the information that goes out different.”
Who is involved?
The Post tied Arizona resident Jill Osa, Denver resident Megan Anderson and New Mexico resident Alexandra Pacheco to DoBetterDNVR through requests they made to various city agencies under the Colorado Open Records Act. Such requests are public records themselves, and The Post filed open records requests to obtain copies of requests tied to DoBetterDNVR.
The account claims to have thousands of contributors. Anderson, Pacheco and Osa stand out because of their involvement in the account since its early days in 2023, their connections to each other, and because they did not just send a single video or photo to the account but pursued information through open records requests.
Between October 2023 and June 2025, Osa filed 12 open records requests for information that later appeared on DoBetterDNVR, The Post found. In five of those instances, DoBetterDNVR directly acknowledged that people connected to the account filed the records requests, The Post found.
“In 2024, we submitted a CORA request, paid $99, and received invoices from @therealcityofdenver documenting $2.133 million in costs for vacant migrant rooms, which I shared on my accounts on 9/11/24,” the account posted in May. “In 2025, we requested the remaining invoices, only to face repeated delays.”
Osa filed both of those requests, The Post found. (DoBetterDNVR framed a significant price increase between its two requests as “curious, to say the least,” and did not share with its followers the city’s five-point explanation for the higher cost.)
In January 2024, Osa filed an open records request that sought emails exchanged between two city employees that included certain keywords. Eleven days later, Anderson, the school teacher, filed a nearly identical open records request seeking the same information but during a different timeframe.
Aside from the different dates, Osa and Anderson’s requests matched word-for-word and both included the same typo, The Post found.
Pacheco, the former employee at the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless, has been connected to DoBetterDNVR since 2023. In December 2023, she filed an open records request with the Denver Police Department seeking a death investigation report. It was posted by DoBetterDNVR 10 days after she received a copy.
In response to inquiries from The Post, the three women each insisted they were not the main administrator of DoBetterDNVR and acknowledged only that they contributed information to the account.
“I do CORA requests for DoBetterDNVR,” Osa said. “And that is the extent of my involvement. I do not run the account. It doesn’t matter that I live out of state. I have a vested interest in the city of Denver. Colorado is my — I still call it home.”
She later acknowledged that she also does other “research” for the account, including perusing and taking screenshots of people’s LinkedIn accounts, which she said she does at the request of DoBetterDNVR’s administrator. She said she sometimes disagrees with the account’s tone and stances.
Anderson, who has worked at a metro school district since 2016, said in an email that she did not create DoBetterDNVR and is not responsible for it. She said she is no longer involved with DoBetterDNVR because she disagrees with the “aggressive tone or stance on immigration the account has taken on.”
“My initial interest in the account, back in 2023 and early 2024, stemmed from a sincere concern about drug abuse and homelessness in the Denver area; I am passionate about addressing these issues, which affect so many people in and around this city,” she wrote in an email. “However, my personal beliefs and politics do not align with the direction the account has since taken.”
Anderson is an unaffiliated voter. Pacheco and Osa are registered Republicans, with Pacheco switching from the Democratic Party in late 2024, according to their voting records.
Anderson did not answer a question about when she stopped working with the account. She did not dispute a text-message exchange DoBetterDNVR posted on X on July 25 that suggests Anderson was sending videos to the account as recently as June.
The Post on Monday spoke to an anonymous caller who claimed to be the administrator of the DoBetterDNVR accounts, but the person refused to identify themselves. The Post was unable to confirm the caller’s claimed role in the account.
The Post’s policy on using anonymous sources requires the reporter to know the person’s identity even if the person’s name is not published. Additionally, The Post declined to grant anonymity to the caller, who then refused to do an interview in which they would be named.
Pacheco told The Post she has not contributed to DoBetterDNVR since she moved to New Mexico in late 2023, and said she has never been an administrator for the account.
“I’m not going to City Council meetings anymore, I’m not hearing firsthand what is happening at (Colorado Coalition for the Homeless), I’m not hearing the mayor lie to people at micro-community meetings about crime in neighborhoods, knowing doggone well he is not telling the truth and feeling like I have to let people know what the real truth is by downloading premise reports,” she said, referencing city reports that show 911 calls at particular addresses.
Pacheco filed an open records request with the mayor’s office in June that sought information related in part to DoBetterDNVR. Pacheco said she did so to explore whether she could take legal action against Courtney Johnston over an exchange on X about DoBetterDNVR in 2024.
In an interview Monday, Pacheco said she connected with DoBetterDNVR after witnessing “tomfoolery” during the 10 months she worked for the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless, a Denver nonprofit that provides services to homeless people. She spoke with Denver7 in March 2024 about problems she perceived at the nonprofit.
Cathy Alderman, spokeswoman for the organization, said she was surprised and disappointed to learn a former employee was involved with DoBetterDNVR.
“I’ve certainly known people who have worked in the homeless response space who get so crisis fatigued and so frustrated, both with the system and sometimes with the people the system is helping, that they become completely disillusioned,” she said.
The social media account relies on an element of public shaming that the organization takes issue with, Alderman said.
“They’re not exposing problems and issues in a way that is driven toward solutions,” she said. “They’re doing it in a way that is hurtful, shameful and mocks people. And to me it’s just cruel.”
Alderman noted that DoBetterDNVR posts inaccurate information, like sharing details about a crime that happened near one of the nonprofit’s properties and claiming — without evidence — that the crime was committed by one of the organization’s clients.
DoBetterDNVR’s misinformation
In October, DoBetterDNVR alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua at the Cedar Run apartments on Oneida Street and at a second complex were meeting Denver firefighters when they arrived on site for emergency calls, questioning the firefighters about their purpose and then “escorting” the first responders through the apartment complex. Denver police, the account claimed, were usually “too busy” to provide backup for the firefighters.
“It’s obvious that TdA has infiltrated both of these complexes in Denver,” read the post, which cited no sources.
The unverified claim prompted an investigation within the Denver Fire Department, according to emails between Chief Desmond Fulton and Councilwoman Amanda Sawyer. Fulton told Sawyer that a fire operations chief immediately called over to the fire station in the area to ask about the claim, and that a police commander, fire division chief and fire district chief also visited the fire station to hear from firefighters directly.
The officials found the firefighters had no “negative interactions with TdA,” Fulton wrote in a Nov. 1 email, referring to the gang. They also discovered that Denver police “have been very responsive and have been onsite for most of our calls to these addresses.”
“Members at Station 19 have been followed and watched by male members while on medical calls, but not interfered with in the course of performing their duties,” Fulton wrote.
Capt. Dan Wilson, a spokesman for the department, clarified in July that firefighters did not know whether the men watching them were gang members. He said Fulton’s use of the term “members” to describe the observers borrowed from DoBetterDNVR’s framing, and noted that the chief also referred to firefighters as “members” in the email.
“There is no way of us knowing who is a member of (TdA) or not,” Wilson said. “…That term ‘male member’ was probably just brought over in the narrative from the DoBetter article. It probably should have just said, ‘followed by males.’”
He added that curious people frequently watch firefighters as they work. “We get that all the time,” he said.
Fulton referred to DoBetterDNVR ‘s post as an “article,” but the post should not be conflated with a reputable news story, McBride, the media ethics expert, said. The post about Cedar Run cited no sources and provided no evidence for its claim, she noted.
DoBetterDNVR ‘s posts are often couched with language like “I hear” or “word is” or “rumor has it.”
“Those posts show a very distorted image of the problem, right?” she said. “They’re meant to sort of shock people. They also lack any sort of context. So you don’t know who these people are in these videos or pictures, you don’t know what their backstory is, you don’t even know when the photo was taken or how long ago. So they are very light on facts and heavy on scare tactics.”
In August 2024, DoBetterDNVR claimed the Cedar Run apartments were “reportedly” under the control of TdA gang members. The post included images of needles, cigarette butts and blood-spattered trash.
The post didn’t show what DoBetterDNVR claimed, said Eida Altman, executive director of the Denver Metro Tenants Union, which worked with the complex’s residents at the time.
“What they were showing on their page was evidence of unhoused people living in the common areas,” she said. “And so there was some frustration that there is this influential, high-traffic social media account that is saying, ‘This is all TdA.’ …No one is denying that things were out of hand at Cedar Run, but they presented a very skewed picture that was definitely underpinned by political motives.”
Until this spring, the Denver Police Department’s X account regularly answered DoBetterDNVR’s public questions about incidents. The department stopped doing so in March, police spokesman Doug Schepman said, in a decision that came about “with guidance from the mayor’s office.”
“The volume and frequency of the requests reached levels that became onerous,” Schepman said, noting that the mayor’s office also determined the account’s content was “not solution-oriented.”
Jon Ewing, a spokesman for Mayor Johnston, said in a statement that DoBetterDNVR’s work does not improve the city.
“Those who truly wish to see their city do better seek to build others up,” he said, “not tear them down.”
‘Need to see the reality’
DoBetterDNVR’s supporters hail the account’s content as an unvarnished look at the city’s problems with homelessness and drug addiction.
The videos it posts — like one in October 2023 that showed a woman in a tent, inhaling a substance from a piece of foil through a long cylinder, surrounded by smoke — draw needed attention to problems city officials would rather look away from, supporters say.
“Smoking fetty of (sic) foil,” DoBetterDNVR wrote on the October 2023 video, suggesting the woman in the tent was using fentanyl. “I hear mutual aid groups are giving away foil to the homeless. Can anyone else confirm? This is going way beyond harm reduction — this is ENABLING. #methcampmike”
For Rae Martinez, who asked to be identified by her maiden name to protect her privacy, the video — which showed her 28-year-old daughter — shattered her heart.
“I was feeling like I failed as a parent. I felt like (I was) just waiting for the day I was going to get a call or a visit that she was no longer with us,” she said. “I felt hurt, sad, destroyed, heartbroken.”
Her daughter, a lifelong Denver resident and graduate of Emily Griffith High School, had been on the right track, Martinez said. She went to school to become a pharmacy technician, found her own apartment. She was ambitious, career-oriented, outgoing and bubbly.
She also struggled with substance use and with her mental health, Martinez said, and attempted suicide as a teenager. She became homeless about two and a half years ago after she was evicted from her apartment as her drug use escalated.
For a while, she stayed in touch with her family through sporadic texts, but eventually those stopped coming. Her family listed her as a missing person. They made fliers and walked the streets looking for her.
DoBetterDNVR ‘s post rocketed through the family, making rounds to her siblings, her grandparents and extended family, Martinez said.
“It’s hurtful when you see your own children, your own family members on there,” Martinez said. But she also thinks DoBetterDNVR shows a truth that is too easily ignored.
“I’m not mad at the account,” Martinez said. “I’m really not. I think that’s what needed to be done. We all need to see the reality.”
Is this doxing?
Serena Palacios’ first indication that she’d been featured on DoBetterDNVR was a concerned text from a friend who saw a post with a photo of Palacios and a record of her recent arrest at a protest.
“Initially, I kind of freaked out,” Palacios said.
She worried the post would block her from future job opportunities. Her concern shifted as people online found her social media accounts and started trying to interact with her. Two strangers recognized her in person in the days after DoBetterDNVR’s post, Palacios said, once as she was grocery shopping in a King Soopers with her young children.
“It made me really paranoid to be out in public in general, especially with people out recognizing me that first week,” she said.
On Monday, Osa told The Post that publishing her name and information about her could constitute “doxing,” which traditionally has been defined as publishing someone’s personal information online to try to shame or intimidate them. She and Pacheco both cited threats to DoBetterDNVR as a reason why their names should not be published.
Ferrucci, the journalism professor, dismissed both criticisms. DoBetterDNVR’s actions have turned the people behind it into partial public figures, he said, and receiving threats is an expected part of being a journalist. (He once received a dead bird in the mail, he said.)
“You are putting yourself out there,” he said. “This is what journalists do every day.”
Osa bought a home in Denver in 2013 and sold it for $10 in 2016 to Segen Properties, a Colorado company registered under her husband’s name, state and property records show.
The house is now a rental property, Osa said, adding that she was born and raised in Colorado. She describes herself on her personal Instagram account as a “Believer, wife, momma, infertility warrior, teacher, clean living, medical freedom fighter.”
Osa said she has never met Pacheco in person, though they sometimes spoke at the same meetings. On Monday, they shared information with each other about The Post’s calls within 90 minutes.
Pacheco told Denver city councilmembers in December 2023 that she was a former addict who grew up in a violent, drug-filled home.
“For years, I was resentful because I couldn’t understand why no one stood up for me and my brother,” she said, arguing that people housed in shelters should be required to participate in services like substance abuse treatment in order to keep their housing. “The policies that we stand behind have an impact, and this is a story about how the lack of barriers can have catastrophic consequences. Barriers aren’t always a bad thing. Sometimes barriers are there to prevent a car from driving off a cliff.”
Palacios had little sympathy for concerns that revealing the women connected to DoBetterDNVR constitutes doxing.
“Don’t dish out what you can’t take,” she said.
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