Welcome back to this weekly meeting of the Health and Safety Committee with Denver City Council.

Coverage of the Health and Safety Committee starts now.

Good morning, everyone.

My name is Daryl Watson.

I want to welcome you to the Health and Safety Committee for October 29th.

I am honored to serve all of the residents of the Fine District 9 and to be the committee chair for the Health and Safety Committee.

This morning we have one briefing and one item on consent.

The briefing will be on an update to the surveillance task force.

It'll be led by the administration, the mayor's office, and Denver Police Department.

Before we roll into this briefing and uh and discussion from city council.

We'll go around the room and have uh brief introductions.

First, let's start online.

I believe we have a uh city council member online.

I think Cashman.

Yeah, good morning, Mr.

Chair Paul Cashman, South Denver District Six.

Thank you so much, uh Councilmember Cashman.

And we'll start from our right when introductions are around the table.

Good morning, Jimmy Torres, West Denver District 3.

Kevin Flynn, South West Denver's District Two.

Mandasaur, District 5.

Flora Elvidres, Lucky District 7.

Good morning, Serena Gonzalescuch, one of the council members at large.

Sarah Perity, also council member at large.

Thank you all for being here.

Thank you so much to the administration to Denver Police Department.

We'll turn it over to Mr.

Hoffman for kicking us off and providing kind of uh the structure of uh today's briefing.

Thank you, Councilman.

Uh I'll first do an introduction of the team.

I'm Tim Hoffman.

I'm in the mayor's office.

I service his director of policy.

Uh Chief Ron Thomas.

Jake Murr, Commander DPD.

And Cliff Barnes, Commander of TPD.

Great.

Um, and we do have a PowerPoint presentation.

Uh yeah, great, it's pulled up.

Um, so just uh walking through what we're gonna be talking about today, we'll give an update on the surveillance technology task force.

We'll give an overview through the Denver Police Department as well as technology services on the city process for onboarding and monitoring monitoring surveillance technologies in the city, and then we'll delve a little bit into the FOC contract as well.

The surveillance technology task force was formed uh in the spring of this year, is based on discussions that we had with council members as um questions came up around the flock amendment that was put forth and the um the recognition I think by all parties that um there were maybe some gaps in our our system as it relates to surveillance technologies in the city.

Um, and so it uh it uh was built in the spring, comprised of folks from the mayor's office, several of the um departments you see around the table, the district attorney, city attorney, both the state and municipal public defender, the office of the independent monitor, the citizen oversight board, um several community groups, and uh including um CERC and the task force for remanaging police, as well as uh some subject matter experts, both local and national subject matter experts.

I'm happy to provide council members with the full list of all members of the task force.

Um, and I just want to before anything else um thank I know that there are some members of the task force who are in the room, others who are either watching or um online, um, thanking them for uh their efforts thus far.

It's not a um not something that we are done discussing.

We're gonna we're gonna be having task force meetings moving forward, but um, I want to thank every one of them for showing up and having some pretty tough conversations.

Um that's the other um framing that I'll have is um these are really contentious and important issues.

Um when you talk about surveillance technologies in the city.

Um it has real implications for privacy um of the residents of of this jurisdiction.

It has civil liberties considerations as well, and then it also has public safety implications.

Um and there are people who have very, very uh different views on how to balance those things.

Um and so it it has been um a group who have shown up in good faith each of the meetings.

Um it's been tough conversations, but um uh it's a really really important topic.

Um, so as I mentioned, the the goal was twofold, both studying the current state of surveillance technologies in the city, um, and then uh looking at rules, regulations, and potential ordinances for how to strengthen our policies and procedures moving forward.

Um we will uh I've been speaking with Council Member Watson um about coming back um at some point uh in January to give uh a status update of kind of where we are in the task force.

So um that is kind of the next uh the next um target that we're gonna be moving towards.

And then uh before we move on to the next slide, I also just wanted to um acknowledge uh specifically, there are uh three members of city council who are on the task force council members parity of consults Gutierrez and Flynn.

Um they have been uh great thought partners on both the substance of what the task force is trying to do, but also um working through some of the process and growing pans of setting up a task force like this.

Um, and so one of the things that I've had conversations about with the council members is making sure that moving forward with the future meetings, um, that there's a clear agenda of the next several meetings coming up, that there are materials provided in advance and other things so that we can have the most uh fruitful discussions during the task force meetings as possible.