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, and welcome to the Health and Safety Committee meeting for our November 19th.

My name is Darrell Watson.

I'm honored to serve all of the residents of the fine district nine and to be the committee chair for the Health and Safety Committee.

We have one action item today from Mimi Sherman and DHS, as well as a briefing from the Department of Safety.

And before we roll into our presentations, why don't we start with introductions around the table and we'll begin on my right?

Thank you, uh, Kevin Flynn, Southwest Members District 2.

Good morning, Amanda Sawyer, District 5.

Good morning.

Savannah Gonzalo Speaker is one of the council members at large.

Good morning, Amanda Sandbaum, Northwest Denver District One.

Let me just check to see if there's anyone that's virtual this morning.

Seeing none.

Just make sure.

No one's virtual.

Nope.

Okay.

All right.

So Mimi and team, I'll turn it over to you for introductions.

If you don't mind introducing yourself and your team, and the floor is yours.

Sure.

My name is Mimi Sherman.

I'm the chief program officer at Denver Human Services.

David.

I'm David Powell.

I'm the deputy director with the Office of Emergency Management.

Hello, I'm Clint Woodruff.

I'm the chief financial officer with Denver Human Services.

All right.

Thank you very much.

We will get presenting, and we have a team of people to answer any questions you may have.

And if we don't, we will obviously circle back with you all.

We're here to introduce an on-call contract, which I think most of you know is we don't necessarily.

Maybe a black screen, Mimi.

We have a presentation up.

Unplugged and put it back out.

We probably wouldn't hit a button up there.

We're back.

Let's try.

Yeah, let's do that.

There.

Great.

Here we are.

All right.

Okay.

So we I don't know if you all know the history of us attempting to get a mass care on-call contract, but we have tried a few times given that DHS is the um sole.

Well, we are the agency responsible for mass care, but we also partner with host.

Given the population who may need emergency services based on housing needs or displacement for any reason.

Um as you know, the last couple emergencies that we have had, uh, the migrant response as well as COVID, DHS staff have been called upon, as well as many, many other city staff, to staff this, make sure we're having the resources and things like that.

And that is normally acceptable for an emergency that you know typically lasts two weeks, maybe.

These have lasted months and years.

So we are hoping that a contract like this, should our resources be tapped in certain ways, and then we're the other services the city provides are in jeopardy, that we can call in a contract like this to help support us.

So I kind of went over all of this, but the IEM is the agency that we are looking toward the contract to.

They are currently under contract with the state and have stepped in in numerous occasions for us, including cold weather sheltering when we've needed support, uh, the migrant crisis.

They have been amazing partners.

They've done a great work.

Obviously, that was not what we were looking at only for when we were viewing the RFPs.

We had about four agencies applied, three that met criteria.

Um, host has most recently used them to support cold weather shelter this past year.

Um, we're very pleased with their response and their thoroughness.

Um, so we're looking to award this to them should again we run out of resources within our local work to not jeopardize the services the city provides.

Doesn't have to be used, and we can, you know, we can just say the city just doesn't have the resources to continue to support.

We have all sorts of man um ways to manage this, so just want to put that out there as well.

So, key focus.

So, when uh human services does mass care, we provide all of the current things on here as well as the next slide.

So, sheltering operations, feeding logistics, health and safety.

I'll move to the next slide just so you know, transportation, information and client support, as well as volunteer and partner management.

And we, as mass care already have a plan to support all of this, yet, again, if we needed to pull our resources back to our daily work, IAM can step in and continue to provide this with the direction of either host or DHS, depending on what's what emergency they are um supporting us in.

Let's see, on-call staffing is one of the biggest things that we tend to need.

As you have probably aware of the last several emergencies as well as hosts needing to staff cold weather shelter, staffing is or can be a real challenge.

We've done everything that we can to cover and make sure that we have what we need.

But again, should we not?

They are able to call in staff within 48 hours or less.

They are locally sourced here.

Training and standards, we were very clear in our RFP to make sure people had the trauma-informed care trainings.

They had training to talk about different languages needing language access, disability services, all those types of things.

So we were really pleased with what they were able to offer us.

This just goes over a little bit more in detail about what we can do, and just again reiterating that they would be responding to our mass care staff overseeing the work that they're doing.

So they wouldn't be operating solely without the guidance and support of host or DHS, depending on that emergency need.

Again, culture responsiveness.

We were very high scoring on the DEI efforts to make sure that they were covering all of our concerns and worries depending on the because we obviously have lots of variation in the clientels we serve.

And they are committed to equitable care.

They've been again very responsive, and we've had nothing but good feedback from the services they have provided.

The contract value is $8 million over three years.

We worked with hosts to see what they would potentially need, should they ever need to utilize this contract as well as what DHS may need.

If this were not enough, obviously we would come back to City Council and ask for an extension, but again, we don't even have to use it should we not need it or find other sources to help support us.

And we still do have partnerships with Red Cross and others to help support the needs, it's when those resources aren't utilized.

For example, if there is an emergency that crosses jurisdictions, the Red Cross may not be able to support all the jurisdictions in their need.

This is potentially something we would have to call upon.

That just covers it up.

It was pretty quick, a lot of information, but at the same time, happy to answer any questions you all may have.

Well, Mimi, concise and to the point.

Thank you so much for your presentation.

And if the uh production team could pull down the slides, we'll go to council questions and first want to welcome Councilmember Cashman to the meeting.

And so in the queue, we have uh council member Flynn and Councilmember Sawyer.

I was uh Mimi, I was hooking this over uh during the weekend of my first thought that occurred to me is where are all these on-call people now?

And what are the there's we have a long stretch of time between need.

So of these trained people who are ready at a you know within 48 hours to be on task, what are they who are they and what they're doing right now?

Yeah, they have um a local vendor that provides the staffing.

I don't um hung may be able to say which um agency they use, but every time we've had to use them, even with the state contract, they have produced staffing.

I don't know what their staff do.

Uh I don't know if they're in other emergencies, I don't know if they have other full-time jobs, but whatever it is that they they have been able to respond and they have guaranteed the staffing, and it's local.

Do they excuse me?

Do they sometimes come in from have to fly in from North Carolina or do the folks who are working from here sometimes go elsewhere?

Yes, I think that they do.

Um David, you know I am better to maybe respond.

Yeah, and uh feel free to chime in.

But I my understanding is they have a lot of, we saw the list of a lot of local vendors who use um for their services, but there may also be the need to fly people in, depending on kind of the response.

Uh, and I think that can be an advantage, is that we obviously want to lean on local resources, but if we have a um incident that affects multiple jurisdictions up the front range and they're tapped, we have a larger base to pull up.

And just to add on to that, so for example, if there's an initial response that we need them and they don't have enough local support, they'll fly in, but then they'll build the local support so that they can then not have the external and they'll bring in more local.

They just they've been doing this for years and they do it very well.

And Councilmember Flynn, I think we have someone from IEM in the in the audience.

Do we?

I think they may be on line.

Uh there may be somebody on the mic.

Is there if do you mind coming up to the mic?

And then you'll just need to turn that mic on up and introduce yourself, and if there's some line, it might be on it's on.

Okay.

Um Hung Wyn, contract administrator for Denver Human Services.

Um so there may be an uh representative from IEM on virtual.

I'm not sure if she.

Is there a name?

Someone raised their hand.

I saw the screen.

All right, can we promote um whomever's hand is raised and if you don't mind introducing yourself?

I just think that we can take this one I can take.

Depending on what their answer is the technology takes us again, it takes us, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

And Tim just let us know when we're when we've connected.

Hello, everyone.

Are you able to hear me?

We can.

Um, do you mind introducing yourself and your role with IAM?

And if you need Councilmember Flynn to restate his question, he he can.

Absolutely.

Good morning, everyone.

My name is Kirsten Roshko.

I am a program manager with IAM or Innovative Emergency Management.

It's a pleasure to be speaking with you all today.

Um, as I recall, the question is regarding our staffing capability and the location of those staffings.

And Mimi did a great job in in uh responding to that question.

Yes, we do have staff locally through a couple of different firms, one being CFW staffing that has supported us with cold shelter operations uh last year in Denver, as well as America's staffing, uh, which is also a local staffing firm.

But because of the nature of these emergencies, uh and because we don't know necessarily where the effects affected area will be, we do like to also have staff available from different cities and different states.

So we like to really cover all of our bases, and we do have staff that may deploy in depending on the kind of emergency that we're responding to.

Thank you.

Thank you.

That's uh excellent uh answer uh other question, Mimi.

Um does IEM provide its own when they have to provide transportation uh and shelter locations.

Do they use our transportation and locations or do they find their own?

How does that work?

It really depends on what we have available at the time we do the emergency.

So for example, our we anticipate that Denver Human Services andor hosts would be covering emergencies for the first week or two.

And by then you're gonna have to have locations identified as the city.

We work with OBM and the you know um BOC to make sure we're finding locations.

Should there be in Kirsten?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but should there be a need, for example, we need to stand up some tents or something because we're out of all options that we have, they can source that sort of um resource as well.

Um in the resolution request that mentioned uh source of funds, it could be state and federal reimbursements if they're eligible, but also local funds.

What local funds are we talking about?

Since hosts is involved, is it from their any other special revenue funds?

Is it from a general fund, uh DHS?

Where where would that come from?

I'll let Clint respond, but typically when there's any kind of emergency response, um the agency responsible for that portion of the response is responsible for funding.

But I'll let Clint.

Yeah, so for human services, it would be the property tax bill levy funds, the uh dollars we have accumulated in our fund balance uh under our contingency emergency fund uh line in the administrative section.

All right, um thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Um, my first thought on this was that I remember during COVID and the response and the shelter, mass sheltering that we did then really really put a strain on our on our city forces.

So I understand the need for this, and uh uh, sounds like a good idea.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Flynn.

Uh, and before Councilmember Sawyer, just want to introduce a welcome, Councilmember Perry uh to the meeting.

Councilmember Sawyer.

Thanks, Mr.

Chair.

Thanks, you guys so much.

Um, I'm also really supportive of this having seen I uh how many emergencies have we gone through in the last six years, four separate emergencies, I think.

Yeah, there's it's been insane in the last six years.

We have to just stop using the word unprecedented at this point because it's been chaos in the six years that I've been here.

Um, so really appreciate this and I'm supportive of it.

Just want to make sure I understand operationally speaking.

When we have an emergency, the emergency operations center opens downstairs.

So is like, are they is there gonna be a person there in the emergency operations center, kind of coordinating with the city on their end?

How does how's that gonna work?

Um, so typically how it'll work, for example, I would be a seat in the EOC, and then I have my DHS mass care doc back at DHS, who is then it's a department operations center who is kind of making all the magic happen, which is what happened during the migrant sheltering and COVID.

We were just getting started on that, so we didn't quite have it nailed down.

So I would be communicating with the mass care doc, the mass care doc would be doing that emergency immediate response for the first week or two, and then we would be bringing IEM.

Should we need that resource again?

We don't always, even if we need it, we may not have to use it, but should we bring them in?

The mass care doc and DHS staff would be managing the work of that contract and all the things they have to fall through.

And so I would be communicating with the EOC and to the mass care doc.

And so we have this kind of systematic way of communicating, and it works really well to make sure that the people on the ground can do what they need to, and then get the communication back up to the EOC and Dave, if you want to add anything.

Yeah, so we have two seats for mass care, one for host to one for DHS in the emergency operations center, um, and they provide direct uh connection to what's going on in the field or in the department of operations centers.

Uh, and that does a few things.

One, it helps us, you know, set that direction and make sure we know everything's going on, but also it allows us to get information and track costs and things like that in the EOC's finance section, so we're you know, tracking that on top of it and have that connectivity.

Okay, really appreciate that.

I um I know that we have struggled with the EOC and just sort of getting everything put together.

So did you kind of take the lessons learned over the last five years and in order to kind of implement this?

Yeah, so this was um, you know, we've done several things.

Um we've refined our mass care plan for the city, um, a few kind of iterations of that.

Uh we have worked with DHS and DHS has done an amazing job with their departmental operations centers that allows for a lot of the um you know details and tactics to get implemented quickly.

Um, but you know, with that we've taken a lot of lessons learned and put it in this contract, especially on the different line items of things we might need.

Um we put in things like transportation, um, which is something that we've struggled with because the city doesn't own a fleet of buses or anything like that.

And so we've taken a lot of those lessons learned that we know we'll need external support and we can include it in this contract, um, and I think it'll integrate really well with the system that plans the other place.

Okay, so I think transportation's a really good example of my next question, which is um if we need to implement a fleet of buses for whatever emergency has come in front of us, um, who's paying for that?

Are we is is that included in the cost of this contract or in that eight million dollars, or is that an additional cost to DHS on the side?

No, it is it is in this contract.

It's another, we kind of wrote it as an a la carte contract.

So if we need parts of it, not all of it, we can choose what we need and what support we need because not every emergency needs the same things.

Right.

Um but DHS would be if it's a DHS related emergency, our budget would be paying for everything.

And again, if we don't have any budget, well, then there's a different conversation that we have to have.

Right, okay.

Um, and if so, budget question.

I know you said um that this would be coming out of contingency, DHS contingency, not full city contingency.

Can you just walk me through the funding source a little bit again?

No, that would that's correct.

It's at a DHS contingency for the five, I mean, it's eight million, so you know, anybody either host us, whatever, we can use any portion of it, but we estimated about five and and host estimated about three.

Obviously, it was a host uh emergency, it wouldn't be coming out of DHS's contingency, but we do have a lineup in our administrative for all of our various programs that is contingency funding.

Um we first obviously would tap into any available federal funds, or if there were you know um FEMA funds or something like that that we could use to fund, then we would go there, but then we would go into that line, and that line is fully funded by the property tax mill levy fund.

Got it.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Thank you, Councilmember Sawyer.

Just want to look around the room, see if there are any additional questions.

Seeing none, um, first question that that I have, Mamie, and first to you and your team, thank you for providing the clarity of this.

I I I think it's absolutely necessary to have as um for our business continuity and the ability to execute um beyond really city resources, something like this is necessary.

My question for you is for indemnification or insurance covering when they come into the city and they are providing support.

Is that covered through um our city insurance?

For example, putting up tents, driving folks around, something happens.

Talk me through whose responsibility that lies under.

I'm looking at hung, but do you have do you want to respond?

If you're not certain with the answer, that'll be one you can get back to us, but that'll be very important for us to understand what's the line of uh responsibility as far as the city's insurance for indemnification for any impacts uh to community members due to the work of uh this on call consultant.

Um so as I understand it through our municipal operations, um city attorneys, that we have all of the requirements and the demnification language included in the contract.

So and on top of that, we also require um IEM to provide their own city um as well as uh nationwide uh insurance coverage as well.

So we should be all covered for that.

Can you provide that information?

Because I haven't I I didn't I couldn't see that.

So if if you can pull that out, uh that'll be great um before this goes to the floor.

Um my other question is on reporting.

Um, what is kind of the reporting structure for um when on-call folks are delivering services for the city?

Do we have Mimi from your team uh a quarterly update within the emergency um response of this is what on call did, this is what we did.

How are we segmenting that communication and and communicating that out?

Has that been a practice?

Um, I'm just curious as to your communication model.

You know, I think it would depend on the emergency and for how long and what kind of communication is needed.

Correct.

If I'm being credited because if it's a week or two, we'll get things stood up, we'll you know, respond how needed, and then we're moving on.

But if it goes on for months, then I think it's a conversation between city council, our offices, OEM, like what do we want to communicate on what basis so everybody's informed?

I think it's fluid for what the need is.

I I'm satisfied with that.

I'm just curious of whether there was a protocol from the four other emergencies, and I think that that makes sense.

It's based on what's happening on the ground.

Um I'll pause one more time.

This is an action item, so um, thank you so much, sir.

I don't think I have another question.

This is an action item, so if there are no other questions, I'll need a motion and a second.

Moved by Sawyer, second by Gonzalez Guterres.

Um, do we need a roll call vote or are we just thumbs up?

Thumbs up from everyone.

Um, thank you so much, Mimi and team.

Thank you for providing a presentation.

We'll see you on the floor.

Thank you.

We'll take a moment for the next briefing from Department of Safety.

Um, and so Emily and team, um, if you don't mind making your way up, and anyone that is going to be a part of the presentation.

There's room at the table.

So if you would like uh to come and sit up there, that will be great.

So we'll take a few minutes to transition.

And Emily, do you need help with starting the presentation?

Tim or someone from our production team can come out and provide you that support.

Um, I have a need for another seat.

There is another seat.

I think the presentation is up.

So Emily, if you don't mind doing introductions of yourself and the team, and then you can just roll with uh the presentation.

Certainly.

Good morning.

Emily Locke, legislation and policy director for the department of Public Safety.

Um, and pleasure to be here with the committee.

Thank you for the time today.

I'll just have our team introduce themselves, and I'll start over here with Major Bruning.

Uh Major Bruning, ancillary Services for the Denver Sheriff's Department.

Cliff Barnes, commander over the DPD Cyber Bureau and Root Q with Axon.

And we have several phone of friends in the audience and online as well today, in case of any questions.

All right.

With that, we will get started.

So this morning we're bringing you a briefing on two items that are coming into the council process now.

They relate to the current contract that our department has with Axon Enterprises, and then a rec, and that is a request to amend the maximum spend amount on that contract with no extension of term time, and then we are also requesting approval for a new contract with the five-year term.

So we'll go ahead and get into more details about that now.

So as I mentioned, item number one, this will request an amendment of 450,000 onto the contract that would bring a new maximum spend of roughly 22.5 million dollars.

The term of this contract ran from July of 2015, and then it will end December 15th of this year.

Our second item is requesting approval of the new contract that we've negotiated.

The term of this contract would be January 1st of 2026 through December 31st of the year 2030.

The maximum spend on this contract is approximately 27 million dollars.

We did want to acknowledge that we had some questions from council members as part of our budget hearing process and the follow-up questions.

So we just wanted to note the questions that we had received.

We believe we're addressing these in our presentation materials, but if we don't, please do flag that for us, and we're happy to discuss.1 million dollars as well.

So the current contract scope includes a combination of hardware, software, and professional services for our police and sheriff's departments.

This includes body worn camera or BWC technology, tasers, and associated and required training, interview room technology, which is the audio and visual hardware required to record interviews in interview rooms in the police department, as well as digital evidence management.

And we do have some limitations around the available training and digital evidence management in the current contract.

So the basis for our amendment, this is really related to services and equipment provided for the Sheriff Department over the life of the contract, specifically covering invoices for quarters two, three, and four of 2025.

So we can finish out our current contract.

This is really an administrative request because the maximum spend amount on the contract, we need to raise that in order to be able to register purchase orders against that contract in order to pay the invoices that we have, if that makes sense.

We did have several reasons why we resulted in having actual spending projected higher than the originally negotiated and projected maximum spend amount, and we can definitely get into more detail on these.

We had a need for additional body worn cameras, again, BWCs and licenses due to the passage and implementation of the law enforcement integrity act during the life of the contract, and also increasing staffing levels at the Sheriff's Department.

We did have some expansions of use beyond what was originally contemplated in the contract, both for entities within the Department of Safety as well as outside in other city departments.

And then finally, we had some accessory items that were not priced into that original max spend, but they were really necessary for the utilization of the equipment.

Specifically, examples here would be single bay docking stations and taser training cartridges, and we can definitely get into more details about what those are and why those are needed.

So, just some background around the contract.

This contract originated in 2015, and then an amendment was negotiated, I believe, during the time frame of 2020 with execution of that amendment in I believe January of 2021.

So, referencing back to our earlier presentation and the pandemic and the fiscal uncertainty and the operational uncertainty that everyone was facing in that time frame.

There were some specific pieces structured into that, specifically a pricing structure that was designated for some lower upfront payments with scaling over time due to that COVID recovery and that fiscal uncertainty.

So we have incorporated some lessons learned from that structure into this new contract that you'll see.

There's flat annual pricing.

We've also got inclusion of needed accessories, updated equipment, and also license amounts for set pricing.

So we'll have that certainty across these five years of our contract.

And then also we have unlimited digital evidence storage to support integration with prosecuting agencies.

I'll definitely let our police and sheriff personnel get into that, but really the need for digital evidence storage has significantly and drastically increased over the last number of years.

And so this is really a new, I would call it a newer crucial operational tool that we have need of.

So this is a summary of the contract spend.

We also wanted to give you some transparency into how we got here over the past five years of this most recent amendment.

Across the top of this slide, you'll see broken down by year, what were those contractual agreements?

What were those maximum spend forecasts and payments that we had negotiated out and planned for for the police and sheriff's department?

And you'll see that those total roughly 14.8 million dollars.

And then down on the second portion of the slide, below you'll see actual agency spend by year across those five years.

Again, you'll see that we had some different entities who had spend against the maximum spend of this contract in various years, separately from what we had obligated to the police and sheriff's departments up there in the top.

And you can see that at this time that totals roughly 14.5 million dollars.

And again, that the remaining invoices and obligations we will have on the current contract, which ends next month, are I believe covering quarters two, three, and four of 2025.

All right, so switching gears into the new contract.

Again, you'll see a somewhat similar scope of work here.

This time the contract will specifically include the police sheriff and fire departments.

It's still a combination of hardware, software, and professional services covering the same type of tools and technology for body worn cameras, tasers, the associated and required training, as well as change outs to our interview room technology and the centralized unlimited digital evidence management and storage.

The new term that we are requesting again runs from January of 2026 through the end of year in 2030, and with that maximum spend of 27 million dollars.

And we'll get into the specifics for some of those price increases shortly.

So just a little background.

We do appreciate as well the time that you all have been giving to us over the last week, week and a half.

And you've given us some really great questions and points to make sure we're highlighting as we're talking about these new contracts.

So one thing that has come up a few times, and we wanted to make sure to explain whether or not a competitive procurement process was done regarding this new contract.

So the original contract in 2015, there was a request for proposal or RFP process completed here in Denver regarding that contract award.

What we have done for this new contract beginning in 2026, we were able to leverage a national competitive purchasing process or a co-op agreement, as it's sometimes referred to, through an organization known as NASPO, which is the National Association of State Procurement Officials for the new contract.

And we had a few reasons for this, mainly around staff capacity and the length of time that it would take to run a Denver-specific procurement process, especially for a technology-related project that involves multiple city agencies.

And right now, the estimated timeline is close to three to four years to complete a process, especially for something as extensive as this need.

Just very quickly, the way that the national co-op or competitive purchasing processes work, there will be a state that takes the lead on running the due diligence in that competitive procurement.

They will make selection processes in coordination with the NASPO organization, and then additional states are allowed to, I'll say opt in for lack of a better term, and to sign on an addendum with that competitive purchasing process with state-specific parameters and terms, where municipalities and agencies within that state can then utilize that due diligence in that procurement process to be able to negotiate their own vendor contracts with those selected vendors.

This is a process that's authorized under our Denver revised municipal quote municipal code.

And so we've quoted section 20-64.5 here, just for uh the reference citation.

And we also did want to note that given the current financial constraints that we are facing as a city, this has been many months of ongoing negotiations and working very hard to identify any areas of extra spending or nice to have spending and really bring down the pricing and the inclusion structure, if you will, to really cover the basic needs and requirements only.

I've been using the analogy that we're not coming to you requesting to purchase the top of the line Cadillac.

We're coming in and saying what we'd like to do is utilize, we want to get a Honda Accord to meet our needs at this time.

So I'll turn it over to Ben to talk just a little bit about our cost comparisons and what that looks like between now and future.

Thanks, Emily.

Again, Ben Rookie with Axon.

Our goal here is to provide uh I think a comparison scope between what we did in 2020 versus what we're proposing in 2026.

Uh the majority of it is due to increase in staffing.

Uh so we'll start in the top left.

The police department requested uh 1,670 body cameras and licenses in 2020.

Uh today we're looking at a total count of 1725, and so the increase of 55 is showing a rough increase of around 260,000.

Uh, same program as sheriff.

Now, it's important to note on the sheriff's department.

In 2020, we did a scaled model.

So they started on day one with only 130 cameras.

Six months later, they added 150, six months after that, they added several more.

And so, within that type of model, you have quite a bit of cost avoidance.

So, you weren't paying for 640 licenses for all five years, you were only paying for 640 licenses at the very end of the term, and then still in 2026, we're increasing it to 730.

And so that's one of the primary drivers of cost increases relative to the last contract.

Um, while you're only seeing an increase of 90 cameras overall, uh, you're paying for 730 cameras across a five-year scope or a five-year time access instead of paying for 640 cameras over time.

Uh, the fire department added 12 cameras uh sometime in between 2020 and 25, but really wasn't included in the original contract in 2020.

Um, another big cost driver on this is the single bait docking stations.

Uh, we are uh recommending a one-to-one ratio of police officers and body cameras at these single bait docking stations.

When police officers take overtime shifts when they work Rockies games, for example, uh, they must upload their video uh according to policy before the next shift.

And so for them to do that, they must go to either a substation today and upload uh through uh what we call a multi-bade docking station.

This will allow them to upload in a remote location, preventing what we believe uh is some some uh significant overtime costs.

And so as we move into the taser program or the less lethal program, uh there is a pretty significant change in scope there as well.

Um, an original contract in 2020, we had a thousand tasers with the police department.

Um today that request is at 1,450, so an increase of 450 tasers, uh, the majority of which I believe are going to the airport, and uh Commander Barnes and Emily can talk about sort of the shared economic model associated with that increase, and then the sheriff obviously didn't have any tasers associated with their original contract.

They've been sort of buying cartridges a la carte, but no devices, nothing on a program, nothing at the scale that we're talking about today, which we're recommending 400 to be shared across all deputies in the um in the jails that modernizes their less lethal program, we believe reduces quite a bit of liability as related to your current less lethal program.

Um, and so as we look at the totality, roughly $7 million in increased scope relative to the previous contract.

Thank you.

All right, and now we'll turn it over to go a little bit more into detail about the specific needs and how we got here to those numbers for our police and sheriff's department.

Good morning, council members.

Happy to talk about some of the DPD specifics uh in this contract here.

We'll start with the unlimited third-party storage, although this one applies to Department of Safety as a whole, not just DPD, but I think DPD, we were the primary drivers on the specific uh item.

Essentially, what this does is it allows us to store an unlimited amount of digital evidence on the evidence.com platform that originates outside of the Axon ecosystem.

So this uh this streamlines our our digital evidence collection and sharing process.

When I say sharing, I mean with, for example, the district attorney's office, um, the office of municipal public defender.

It's worth mentioning that over the last few years, the Denver District Attorney's Office has standardized on the evidence.com platform, and and an expectation that they have shared with DPD is that they receive all of their digital evidence uh for specific cases that are going to trial via evidence.com.

So this uh assists with that.

It also allows us to consolidate a lot of the evidence that currently is being stored on external platforms uh outside of evidence.com and/or mediums, you know, like uh external hard drives and thumb drives, all that kind of stuff into a singular platform.

It reduces the potential for discovery violations and/or lost evidence.

So there's a lot of um criticality in that specific component.

Uh, okay, perfect.

We uh we recently made the transition as a department to the axon body for uh body warrant cameras.

This uh this next contract also uh provides for an iterative upgrade once our hardware reaches end of life.

As you can imagine, our officers can be pretty hard on these on these devices that are being used every day in the field.

Uh so we did have a slight number increase from 1670 to 1725.

There were a couple drivers there.

One uh we intend to deploy uh body cameras to our civilian report takers.

That's about I think 19 or 20 uh body cameras, and it provides us a little bit uh more headroom for maintenance and RMA, just making sure that we have enough cameras to equip everybody that needs a camera.

Uh the docking stations were I know that uh both Emily and Ben mentioned uh the docking stations, they're a uh critical to just uh the business efficiency.

We by policy our officers are required to upload digital evidence to evidence.com as as soon as possible.

Those docking stations are also important for receiving firmware upgrades, and any time we change a configuration, those configurations have to be pushed down to the cameras.

And and without those, uh it's difficult to make sure that we're all the cameras are in compliance with the with the rules that we're that we're pushing down.

So that will that will greatly increase efficiency.

And as Ben mentioned, there will be cost savings uh from overtime usage.

Uh, you know, officers won't have to respond to those uh to their nearest station or or location of a multi-bate dock.

Um next slide.

Uh we have a total of 13 interview interview rooms department-wide that have uh extremely aged um uh hardware that collects evidence, both uh audio and video.

And so this contract includes uh replacement of that hardware and the renewal of licenses for those 13 rooms.

Uh let's see, next slide.

Thank you.

And then uh as Ben mentioned, we are increasing our taser count, uh, mainly for Denver International Airport.

Uh previously, the airport uh purchased tasers separately uh outside of the previous contract.

It made sense to include them in this contract, and there will be my understanding from our finance department is that there will be reimbursement via the citywide cost allocation plan uh with the airport.

Um, the other thing I should mention is that our taser sevens um are aging out.

Um they are approaching five years old and exiting warranty, and and so this uh iterative upgrade is is important to just make sure that the uh we continue to operate those those devices.

And with that, I think I'll be passing it to the sheriff's department.

Great uh council members uh major bruning with the sheriff's department.

Uh we are currently looking to upgrade uh from our action threes to axon four body cameras.

Uh, with that upgrade, it comes with uh um advanced technology, also battery life.

Uh we have some of the same issues as Commander Barnes was talking about um through our uh different multi-I guess functions of our agency.

We have those that are working outside the facilities that are also under the same requirements of downloading the video.

And we we find that with having uh the docking stations um at every now post is what we would call it, would save some time and then having to review an individual from that post to go download the camera.

So we're constantly just swapping individuals around trying to take the cameras downloaded so they can um shift.

And the same thing outside of our facility when they're recording outside the facility, they're required to go either to our Roslin facility or a facility that has multi-bay docking stations to download their to download their cameras.

We're following under the same the same protocols as far as uh digital evidence um that uh the department of safety is going um through.

And then it's also again comes with warranty and upgrades uh for all hardware and software as we go through the five-year contract.

Uh the sheriff's department's currently using um uh we have what they're called X26 tasers.

They're about three uh versions or generations behind what the current technology is.

Um as we are looking there, you know, the reliability, uh the the effectiveness, accountability of those are not under warranty, um, they're not under any kind of support.

So we're looking to upgrade to uh the the what's basically best practice in law enforcement uh across the nation, which is the taser 10.

Uh with that also comes with uh uh it's it's got integrated uh metrics with that with that uh equipment so we can better um track how that equipment's being used when it's being used and um filling out uh the reports and and when the individuals themselves are actually um de-escalating, which we show what we have shown on our end uh has been a very uh important tool for us, uh especially inside the facilities.

Um because we have no other tools.

Um it's one of those where you know we try to do the best we can, but without taser technology, we have to go to physical physical force, which we try not to do in most uh circumstances.

Um again, it's uh better, you know.

Right now we're as Ben was stating, every time we train or qualify on the tasers, we're buying a la carte cartridges because they're not covered under the contract, so that is an increased cost to to not only the city and to the department.

Um but again, like I said, the de-escalation part of it and the program costs and software is going to save um money over this five-year program.

And I'll round it out.

Um, just speaking about the fire department, um, this is uh with relation to the fire department's arson investigators.

Um firefighters who are not assigned to the arson unit um do not wear the body worn camera technology, and no firefighters in any capacity carry taser equipment.

Um so just to make sure those differences are noted.

Um so the Arson investigators are currently utilizing the Axon Body 3 cameras.

Um they have 12 today, and I believe we may actually be moving to pay for a quantity of 13 in this new contract.

Um again, the digital evidence management, as they've spoken to previously through Axon Evidence and that unlimited device storage to help complement their work.

Um so with that, um, next steps.

So our council process is underway.

Um we've been completing council one-on-one briefings to answer questions.

I know we've gotten some requests for some data and additional information and follow-up.

Um so our goal was to also collect anything we need to follow up on from today, um, and then put that information out to all of you as soon as possible.

My goal will be by the end of the week.

Um, so we will our resolution requests are filed, and we will be returning here to the Health and Safety Committee as an action item for these two items on December 3rd.

Um, and so with that, um, we will open it up for questions.

Thank you so much, Emily and team.

Uh, we have a queue, and so if you wanted to get into the queue, please uh jump on in.

But we'll start first with Councilmember Cashman and then Councilmember Flint.

Thank you very much.

Um Thanks for the presentation.

Thanks for the briefing yesterday.

Um to clarify, Sheriff, did you say that as far as the docking stations?

They would go with each deputy or each location, each post-location.

Okay, great.

Thank you very much.

Um court marshals don't wear body cameras, I believe.

Um they do.

Correct.

All of the uh personnel in the court building.

Correct.

Good deal, thank you.

Um how is uh the use of body cameras monitored?

Um are there regular instances where we find uh the officers are forgetting to turn on, don't turn on.

So council member, I can speak to that a little bit.

So we we have a couple processes.

Uh one, if if there's a case in which um uh it goes to an investigator, the the detectives assigned to a case are required to review all body worn camera footage that was that was captured at the scene, and then our internal affairs bureau um is able to monitor um you know complaints and whatnot, and if there's a complaint that's submitted and an officer failed to activate according to policy their body warrant camera, then there's disciplinary actions that are taken in those instances.

Thank you very much for that.

Um I've heard two different versions of this, so you can straighten me out.

Um there's a 30-second buffer, either what what comes on first?

Is it sound or video?

Ours is both.

Yeah, so our video are the buffer contains both audio and and video.

Is that so?

We recently changed it.

I I want to say it's both now.

Yeah, but it used to be just uh video would turn on first, and then there would be 30 seconds that would transpire, and then you would hear the audio.

And I think we're now buffering both, but I I'll confirm that.

Yeah, any idea why you wouldn't have both at the same time?

Yeah, I think I I think it kind of depends on.

I think the original consideration was based on the types, you know, when an officer would theoretically turn their camera on and making sure that we weren't capturing things that they that you know were not intended to be or necessary to be captured, and I think the operational uh needs, you know, and based on the requirements by state law have changed over time, so we're changing the policy to better, you know, uh match with uh legislative direction.

Um and uh uh we spoke yesterday.

There's uh the uh body camera footage is is normally uh retained for 30 days unless there's uh evidence that it's needed for a particular case.

Is that sufficient?

Do you find or are we finding regular cases where we've 86 the footage and then a complaint comes uh either from a court case or from uh a civilian?

I don't think we've we've at least I have not heard of any issues with that from our internal affairs bureau.

Um I think what we were trying to do for you know since the inception is balance the amount of data that we're storing and try to have reasonable retention periods to balance the just the total amount of data.

Uh, we have some additional flexibility with with unlimited storage um of that, uh but it's a massive amount of data to to manage.

But to answer your question, I have not heard of any complaints or issues arising out of that.

Um a lot of the time uh officers when they're responding to a call, you know.

Uh so for example, if I were to just test my body cam in in the morning, right?

As officers are actually required to do prior to shift, uh, then that would be stored for 30 days.

But if I respond to any type of call, a domestic violence or disturbance, I that body camera is tagged differently, and there's a different retention period applied so that it's that footage will not go away for the duration of the disposition of that case.

Thank you very much.

And just one comment, Mr.

Chair, uh in our discussion yesterday regarding the tasers, um, you know, tasers are presented as de-escalation, and uh uh which for someone not in your line of work, it's go wow.

If that's de-escalation, what's escalation?

So I did ask uh family could uh gather information on had there been fatalities, have there been serious injuries.

So I'm just looking forward to getting that to enter into the discussion.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Thank you.

Councilmember Castro for asking that question as well.

Uh Councilmember Flynn.

Thank you, sir.

Councilman Cashman that uh I was on the use of force committee, the community advisory committee back in 2016 or 17 that Chief White put together, and a lot of that discussion occurred there about how uh the community wanted something between you know hands-on and firearm, and the taser was that intermediate escalation technique.

So that the firearm didn't have to be uh pulled out.

Lengthy, as you might recall because you were there.

I think council members Herndon, Lopez, and uh Kinich were also on that uh with us.

Uh there was lengthy discussion, it took so much time to get that implemented.

In fact, Chief White had retired by the time it was over, and uh Chief uh Pazin put it into into effect.

Just interested in how that has played out over the years, me as well.

Um a couple questions, Emily, on um uh maybe procedure, because this uh this contract amendment to the current contract, you said it will expire on December 15th, which was Saturday, last Saturday, so it will have it already expired.

Why is it not going through the end of the year?

I apologize, Costumer Flynn.

Did you say December 15th or November?

December.

Okay.

Um so council member, yeah, our contract expires in 2020.

Yeah, December 15th has not expired, so I was waiting for you to correct yourself.

It's already been a long week.

Um, so this is an I may phone a friend over to our fearless CFO, Sinee Cummings, um, if I miss uh misspeak on this.

Um so we actually have two different pieces in play here.

One is that the actual contract itself, um, and especially specific related to the equipment and services um for the police department, which is I would say the bulk of the expense under the current contract um does expire on December 15th.

Now, at the point where the Sheriff's Department was working with Axon Enterprises to negotiate their equipment and training needs, my understanding is that the way that that was structured, their agreement with Axon actually runs through December 31st of this year.

Um, and so in the discussions of what to do and how to manage that gap period for one of our agencies, but not the other, and then also recognizing I think we were all in agreement that we need to bring those in alignment um in a single contract.

Um, so one of the actual one of the additional pieces um in the new contract is a 15-day gap coverage for the police department to cover for this the last two weeks of December moving forward.

Okay, good.

If it expired, we have the authority to pay for anything incurred those last two weeks of December.

And this is where I may turn to Chine again to make sure that I've got the process correct.

So we can um if council those watching at home, I'm sorry for such a highly technical.

So if council approves um our requested amendment to increase the max spend, then that will address any invoices that we have through the end of the contract in 2025 um through December 15th and then December 30th for the Sheriff's Department.

Um, and then because there is this gap coverage for the police department that's part of the 2026 contract, um, so the money due for covering those 15 days for DPD um would be paid in that first invoice of 2026.

That is correct.

Shouldn't I come in chief financial officer for Department of Public Safety?

Emily is correct.

So we've already paid the full allocation for police department in January for the Denver Sheriff Department.

Again, as Emily just mentioned, it's quarters two, three, and four.

So in the quarter four invoice for Sheriff Department, it does cover a period from September 1 through December 31.

So it's not broken out into just like a 15-day period.

So yes, we would um have that coverage there.

Alright, thank you.

Um, related to that, uh, we keep talking about uh, you know, the chart that we were given from 2020 through 2025, and then looking forward, but we haven't talked about 2015 when the initial contract came in.

Could Emily could Department of Safety produce for us a year by year chart of the cost incurred from 2015 on, and what accounts for the additional, obviously, huge changes in state law requirements now that that all uh police officers wear body cameras, which wasn't in effect in 2015, uh, but yeah, that would be nice to have because the average annual cost uh is going up to uh under the new contract, five about five point four million dollars uh flat each year instead of just a flat payment each year.

So I'd like to get a better picture on how that's how that scope has grown since 2015, not just 2020.

It looks like the amazing Chine.

My friend has been phoned when I coming to Chief Financial Officer again.

Again, so councilman Burfly, you are correct.

What we can do is provide the uh original copy of the contract.

Unfortunately, back in 2015, we were under a different financial management system, which was PeopleSoft, and so the retention of that data uh moving from people soft to work day.

The only information we have available to us at this time is what is in the workday system, which was what was generated as of 2018.

So that's why we did not provide data prior to the 2021 period.

I agree.

If that can be constructed somehow, that'd be very helpful.

Yeah, for me.

Anecdotally, though.

Like if you just like the RFP was for I believe 800 body cameras in 2015, we probably quoted it in late 2013, right?

So we're talking about a 12-year gap in pricing models.

Um that's point one point two is there was no tasers.

Point three, sheriff's department wasn't on board with either body cam or taser.

So your scope is effectively quadrupled over the last 12 years, and so your costs have effectively quadrupled, right?

Like that's just just on a straight line.

That's the history I'm kind of looking for.

Okay, cool.

We can pull for visual ways as well.

Thank you.

That'd be good.

Last question, um, you mentioned that DIA has purchased their own under their own contract.

Now they're being added to this.

Can you tell us if you can extract information from that airport out there, tell us uh how much they have paid each year and how much they will contribute to this new contract on an annual basis so that I can do apples to apples in comparison of the costs.

Sure.

Yep, we can look into that and get back to you.

That'd be perfect.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Thank you, Councilmember Flynn.

Uh, Councilmember Parity and Council Member Sawyer.

Thank you so much.

Um, so thank you so much for the briefing on this.

A couple of questions um kind of arising from that and from what we're hearing today.

Um, I am I'm curious about our interview rooms because I had the impression that we were doing a lot of interviews remotely and not in those rooms anymore.

Um, Emily, do you think you could get really specific with me about the frequency of use of the physical interview rooms versus doing interviews on on like remote um, I'm happy to provide some information on that uh now, as a matter of fact.

So uh for example, any time there's a a significant uh major crime, you could think of like homicide, that type of thing.

Typically, uh the way that we we handle those scenes is we separate all the witnesses and we drive them, uh we transport them down to to headquarters and then we utilize all of those interview rooms to conduct all of those interviews of witnesses, uh victims and uh and suspects.

So that's how all that evidence is typically collected, and I can't say they are used very frequently.

Okay.

They're also used administratively.

So if there's an administrative investigation, uh, you know, like an internal affairs investigation, they're used for for those uh types of events as well.

And obviously, those kinds of interviews are really important.

I would still like to see like numbers, like literally how many interviews have been done in those rooms.

That would be helpful.

Um, similarly with tasers within the sheriff's department, looking at the use of force um portal, it looks like is it true that DSD has only deployed them like six times in the last couple years?

Yeah, I think we had uh some statistics over the last uh um so we we pulled some statistics and it looks like um and these are actual deployments, Captain Anson.

These are actual deployments, like probe deployments, okay.

So we have so we have 2020 deployments uh since 2021.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

I think I was looking at since 2023 and seeing the six, so that makes sense.

So um obviously that's a good thing because the concern with tasers is always that you want them to replace instances of higher force and not instances of lower force, and it's really hard to know when that's happening.

Um, but I wonder about the numbers.

So going over to 400 tasers assigned to to the sheriff's department.

Um, one of the things we heard in briefing is it's it's good to be able to track who the exact user was, right?

So in my mind, we're still gonna have overlapping users, it's not gonna be one taser per sheriff.

Um, and I'm trying to understand if the premise was sort of like um have a taser that's assigned to an individual officer per shift.

What would those numbers look like?

And we did ask for this in briefing, like sort of the breakdown of how they'll be assigned, but I'm just thinking about like if if they're not used often, um, why are we going from 60 to 400?

It just seems like a lot.

So I would like that chart to understand how you all are thinking about who to assign them to, so that we do have that chain of who the user is, but aren't buying more than we need, honestly.

Um, and then for DPD, I don't see taser deployments on the use of force dashboard, and I may be missing it.

I've asked about that, and so similar question about deployments would be great.

Um, and how we're trying to analyze whether they're used in in lieu of other amounts of force, you know.

And then on the Bays, um, I'm are we now gonna have a charging bay for each single officer in DPD who has a taser assigned?

Yes, that's the the intention.

So we had those for the axon body threes.

When we moved to the axon body fours, the the single bay um bays uh docs were not built into that contract.

So then there's been this period of time of a few months now where the officers have have been lacking that.

And so uh it's it's just an operational need, and and you know, we've we've had to um foot the bill for uh over time because of that.

What have what do we have exactly for the accent for the fours?

1720s.

So how many bays do we have right now?

Yeah, I wanna say Ben, do you know?

You have enough multi-bay docking stations to support all of your body cameras.

What you're lacking is the single bay docking stations.

So we have no single bay for axon fours, we have multiple multi-bay.

And how many multi-bay?

Uh it'd be one one bay per camera.

So there are eight bay cameras, so if you divide 1725 by eight, that would be roughly, or really it'd be 1670 divided by eight, that would be the number of multi-bay docking stations.

Okay.

Um, and here's my question.

Just because police also don't all work the same shifts, and so I also don't understand why we need a bay for each user, a single bay for each user instead of a single bay for each user per shift.

So uh there's a few different use cases.

I'd uh you know, I'd love to elaborate on.

So essentially when we and and traditionally we've always had the the single bay docking stations for body cameras almost as long as I can remember.

I keep saying taser and I meant body warrants.

I just realized that I was misspeaking.

That's okay.

At least I didn't get the month wrong, just joking.

So, and uh, I'm sure you're all aware of of the off-duty capacity that a lot of officers work in.

It's a it's a fairly significant number.

And so uh typically speaking, if an officer completes an off-duty shift, uh they would just drive home and dock their camera there, and then you know it would upload the footage there.

Instead, now what's having to happen is they would have to drive to the nearest station where who knows where that is, you know, uh related to where they're working off duty and then wait for all that footage to be uploaded and for the for the updates to occur and all that thing, uh all that type of thing.

So it's it's increasing both, um, it's decreasing the amount of time where you know digital evidence was captured and now is being uploaded into evidence.com for potential review.

So it's allowing our officers to to more easily comply with policy, and so we don't see any of the you know officers that are are delaying because they didn't want to make the trip into you know the district station and they just waited in until the next day and then are in violation of policy.

But again, if there was a single, these are basically like a docking charging thing, right?

If if there was a single one per shift, couldn't there be like a tag in tag out where you can you know get one at the beginning of your shift, have it with you?

I mean, I just because of the budget situation, every other department has been asked to reduce total contract spend, right?

Um, and this is a large amount of money.

So I just am trying to really understand um, aren't there other solutions potentially to some of these things, right?

Um I also want to know the price for the single bays for charging the body warrants.

Okay.

Yeah, I think um, and and Ben, maybe I'll have to lean on you a little bit.

I mean, based on the way that the technology works, I can say that you know, operationally they've always been assigned directly to a user because you know essentially when a user is assigned a body warrant camera, they're issued a dock, they're issued a camera, and it's they play together, right?

So, but that's always um that's always kind of been um the way that we've deployed them.

And I don't know if it's a possibility of of checking those in and checking those out, and and how feasible that would be given the type of technology.

Yeah, the docking stations are agnostic.

I mean, they're really just you know plastic switches.

They're not assigned to officers.

You can interchange them across substations.

Um, and in fact, uh with newer devices, you can actually plug these cameras into any docking station in the entire universe, and it'll know that you're with Denver and it will upload directly to your evidence.com account.

Um, we've done that because there's so many agencies on evidence.com that it makes sense in certain circumstances where the sheriff in the jail or the sheriff and the PD are separate that you're you know, dropping a prisoner off and you can upload your footage out the jail instead of having to go back to the substation.

So they are relatively uh, you know, ubiquitous.

Um, it is completely like we're agnostic.

You tell us how many documents agents you need and we can support it.

Um the the request from the PD was hey, based on policy, we need one-to-one.

Um, and so that's what we scoped and quoted.

Um, this is the only quote that you provided.

That uh we we quoted uh no, we quoted one with just uh I think a thousand uh docking stations, and then the request came back that we really need to be one-to-one for every camera.

Um, and so we updated the scope based on that.

Um, you know, look, I will say, like, there's other ways to upload.

There's Wi-Fi, there's LTE, there's other services that you can use in order to upload that that that uh that techno, excuse me, that footage.

Uh, we have evaluated that type of technology with Denver before, and based on the security of the Wi-Fi and the type of of you know enterprise grade Wi-Fi that you use in the city and county.

It didn't work at the time.

We're happy to revisit it.

Um, and potentially even give you a credit in the future, in a future like upgrade so that you don't actually need that second set of uh docking stations, and then you can just use Wi-Fi upload.

I mean, these are the kind of things like this is a million dollars for these docking stations, right?

That is a lot of money.

So I really want to understand this better.

I think I'm gonna ask a follow-up briefing to understand why we really why we can't get around one per bodyborne.

I just I just am having a really hard time seeing that we can't come to something else that doesn't end up adding up to overtime.

Also, I would love to know when you say it's adding overtime how much compared to the cost of a single um dock for every officer, right?

Like how much overtime, which you know, we got these huge lump figures yesterday about overtime that are not broken out in any way.

It's really unhelpful.

Um, my last.

Oh, sorry.

Yeah, the most recent estimate I got was between 80 and 100,000 dollars a year that we're spending on overtime currently.

This is a million dollars of um docking stations.

Yes, yes, but uh, even if we were.

Yeah, if we reduced that down, it would still be like there would still be an allocation for docking stations, it wouldn't eliminate that number in its entirety.

I get that, and the docking stations will be around a while, so that's fair.

Um I don't think they'll be around for 10 years given that we've we we keep going through generations of these things every year or two.

So I like we've got to think about these things.

Um Ben, my last question is for you.

So yesterday in my briefing or the day before, um, we asked about a partnership with Ring.

Um, and um Commander Barnes said not to ring ring cameras.

Commander Barnes said not to my knowledge.

Um, and then you then essentially said you'd have to look into it.

But then I looked at your website and it says that you're launching public portals from Axon Evidence or a mobile phone to collect digital evidence submissions from members of the public from things like ring cameras.

So you are doing that as a company.

If I ask you a question, you need to be forthcoming with me.

So can you explain that partnership and whether it's in effect in Denver?

Yeah, that is a new partnership for us.

And so what I I need uh what I will say is like that is an opt-in uh community engagement uh service that enables us, enables the police department or the sheriff's department to capture community evidence from the public.

Um, my understanding was that that was a partnership uh through the FUCS portal and not specific to this scope.

And so that's what I wanted to look into to see if it was specific to the FUCSIS technology or within uh specifically to evidence.com.

Okay.

And as we discussed during my briefing, I need to see this contract because um I don't want us being opted in or piloted into things like um AI generated police reports without oversight.

Um police reports are incredibly consequential, ring partnerships are incredibly consequential because um that essentially starts to create a surveillance network across the city.

So we can't be opting into these things without oversight.

I understand we need to build more policy around all of this, um, but part of that is you have got to be forthcoming with me.

So thank you for that.

That's all you need to ask, Mr.

Chair.

Thank you, Councilmember Parity, Councilmember Sawyer.

Thanks, Mr.

Chair.

Um, really appreciate this information, and I will just start by saying, obviously, tasers and guns both make me really uncomfortable, right?

But I have the luxury of sitting over here on this side of the table and saying that because you guys do what you do.

So I really appreciate um that these are tools, and I we have to provide our staff members with the tools that they need to be able to do their jobs.

And so, as uncomfortable as I am with the idea of guns or tasers, like it is my job to provide you the tools that you need to successfully do your jobs.

Um, so I really appreciate that this is sort of a tough conversation.

Um, it is tough for me too, right?

It just it makes me uncomfortable, and I don't want to think about it.

But I get to sit over here in Sunshine and Rainbow Land, and you guys are the ones on the ground doing the work.

So I just want to acknowledge that to start with.

Um I have a few questions about evidence.com in particular.

So, Ben, can you explain to me, is evidence.com a pre, is it proprietary to Axon?

Yes.

So evidence.com is Axon's evidence base, evidence collecting database.

Right, and every agency has a subdomain in Denver, it would be Denversheriff.evidence.com, Denver PD.evidence.com.

Okay.

So Emily, I think earlier in this presentation, you said to me that our DA's office requires our safety agencies to provide that stuff through evidence.com.

Is that can you explain that a little bit more to me?

Yeah, I can I I can I can explain some of that.

So uh over the last few years, so the Denver District Attorney's Office has contracted with Axon to um to basically get onto their evidence.com platform and they've they've had their developers develop um an integration with their API.

So basically they're they automatically grab evidence that is shared with them and they download it into their uh system called action.

And so that because of that investment and because of the way that the system and the data sharing works.

They they have said we we prefer to receive our digital evidence only via evidence.com.

It just makes the most sense for the way that they both have to do prosecution and provide discovery.

I think discovery has been a huge um source of concern lately with with legislative rules surrounding that.

And so we I can say that we have an ongoing working group uh bi weekly with the Denver District Attorney's Office on how to streamline discovery and make sure that we're not um engaging in any discovery violation.

So this is a part of that puzzle.

Okay, so really appreciate that, and thanks for that clarity because I will say it is not, then it is not optional, right?

If evidence.com is proprietary to Axon and the Dem the District Attorney's Office is requiring the evidence.com be used by our police and sheriff's departments, it's not optional.

Um so uh I I appreciate that there is concern around the stuff I really don't like, like guns and tasers, but this contract is not optional if this is what our district attorney's office is requiring our safety agencies to use to provide them evidence for discovery.

Okay.

That provides a lot more clarity for me, thank you.

Um, and then just in terms of the uh, so one of the things that we get all the time in my office is ring footage from our residents, right?

Um, and it sounded to me like from your explanation, kind of of the unlimited storage included in this contract.

Right now, when that ring footage comes in from our neighbors, and it is uh it is always like to our CROs, our community resource officers in our police department and my office, right?

Good times.

Um that just sits there, like it sits in email, and that's sort of where it's stored right now until someone uh either finds it useful or it just sits there.

Like I guess I'm I'm trying to understand the value of um kind of evidence.com and and this unlimited storage piece because this is expensive.

So I want to make sure that I understand like current state, um, for what we see in our office versus future state and how that's gonna change and how um this contract is gonna help that.

Yeah, I'll start with just like the broad picture of what why we think about community evidence.

Like the problem that we're trying to solve there is before we enabled you to capture uh or grab digital media from the community.

We saw officers, you know, let's say a citizen took a video or a picture of a crime.

We saw officers taking pictures of the picture on someone else's phone.

You'll see with them taking videos and then emailing it to themselves and where did it go?

Where was it?

No one knew, and and it wasn't stored in a secure manner, and CJ's just compliance, right?

So we said we'll build an app that enables us to send a link to community members and securely upload that digital media to the individual or investigating officer's evidence locker.

It's tracked, it's chain of custody, it's CJ's compliant, and it's with the rest of your digital evidence that you put into a caseholder, share with the district attorney.

That has been taken a step further, I believe, in the ring partnership to enable folks to just push on an opt-in basis media from their ring cameras to the investigating officer to the individual.

And so it's not opt-in basis from the PD's perspective, it's opt in from the community's perspective.

And so that I see.

So the ring footage from the neighbors across the street has been very, very helpful.

Cause you can hear the gunshots, you know, you can see all the stuff, but they just email it to us.

So, like, it's not like the officers are requesting it.

Uh how does that work then?

Absolutely.

And this and this will actually help streamline some.

So there's a couple of different ways.

So uh obviously, this this uh ring integration would be a new option that would potentially streamline that delivery to evidence.com, but today we can also provide you a link.

So the officer would respond to the to the call, provide the citizen with a link, and then you can take that footage and upload it directly into evidence.com as opposed to sharing it via email or other sources.

It just makes sure that one chain of custody is protected because anytime we're talking about evidence, chain of custody is extremely important.

We know it came directly from you and where it you know and where it went to next.

And uh, and then I was the other thing I was gonna mention is that you know it seems like daily that the the sources of digital evidence are constantly growing, right?

So we're talking about like cell phone extractions, um, you know, footage from from surveillance cameras that businesses are operating, right?

So we need a place for all of those things to go, and right now it's kind of uh it's kind of a mishmash of of different areas that that's being stored.

It kind of depends on on how the resident or the business operator decides to send it to us, right?

So this allows us to streamline all of that, put it in one place, make sure it doesn't get lost, and that uh that we're paying attention to that discovery.

So if the evidence exists, we know that it's being discovered downstream as part of the prosecution.

Okay, I really appreciate that.

Um, but I do just want to make sure I understand then the access to that database and who we are sharing it with.

Which database?

Evidence.

Evidence.com.

So it would be based on roles and permissions within the individual agencies.

It's treated like evidence, so it's highly restricted.

Uh so basically uh an officer is allowed to review any evidence that they've collected for specific case.

Um, detectives and investigators are allowed to to review the items that are associated with the case that they're assigned on.

Outside of that, it's command staff that can that have kind of broad discretion on reviewing and uh digital evidence, but all that is audited every single time somebody tries to access a piece of evidence, um, there's an audit trail for that, and there's there's policy controls behind that too, and we do not share um our evidence um outside of the criminal justice process because it is evidence essentially.

Okay, really appreciate that.

Thank you.

Thanks, Mr.

Chair.

Thank you, Councilmember Sawyer, Councilmember Gonzalez Guterres, and then Councilmember Flynn is back in the queue.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Um, thank you.

Uh gosh, I feel like a lot of the questions were answered, and I appreciate that, or at least the questions were posed.

Um I will say that with some of the requests that were made, I know councilman Flynn made some requests, and sort of councilwoman parity.

Um, I would love to have access to that information as well.

And I don't know if other council members would like to do that.

Yeah, we'll consider most of those.

Just send it to all.

Yeah.

That would be great.

Um, and as far as like going along the lines that councilwoman parody mentioned something about AI, the potential of like drafting reports, has this been something that has been discussed with Axon, or something that's being considered.

So I can speak to that.

This question has actually come up multiple times.

I had a recent uh meeting with the offices of municipal public defender too, who expressed some concerns.

And what I shared uh with Colette was that uh we are not considering draft one at this time.

Um my team, we like to stay apprised on all the on the technology developments, especially in the law enforcement realm.

We are monitoring closely kind of how this is working throughout the nation.

Um we have decided not to to go down that road right now.

And and um I think there was a question that came up in one of the individual briefings in the last day or two, and it's not draft one is not in the scope of this current contract.

Okay, yes, thank you for that.

Um, and then uh kind of going off of what councilman Sawyer was asking about the sharing with evidence.com and the data that's there, um, hearing that you know, the way um there's a lot of protections, it sounds like because it is evidence, however, one question that comes to mind because of other tech um tracks that we have.

Are we sharing with other jurisdictions if there is a request for footage?

And because we know that sometimes obviously people cross over, like in the case you're talking about with Aurora, we border with Aurora, we border with you know many other jurisdictions, or um, you know, there's just different, we know there are multi-just jurisdictional types of cases.

Are there times that that is shared and how is that shared and what kind of parameters are in place for sharing that evidence?

I think it's a great question.

I what I can say is that um any types of sharing would follow evidentiary rules.

Uh, a recent example that came up is is sometimes we assist other jurisdictions, you know, especially along borders.

And uh we've had cases in which other agencies have assisted us, captured footage of the incident, and we're we ended up being responsible for the discovery of that footage, so then they must share with us, but it's it's evidentiary rules, so it's treated like evidence for the case, we request it as evidence for the case.

They they give it to us, we provide it with the prosecution.

So only under those circumstances would we share information.

What about during investigation?

Uh, what types of so before it's a case, like before before, I guess when I hear evidence and discovery, there's like an ongoing court case, but if you're investigating to find out whether or not somebody did or you want to move forward with pressing of charges or anything of that matter, how is that working across jurisdictions?

So, like uh multiple jurisdictional investigations.

Um, yeah, I would assume if it's because there's a couple of contexts I'm considering right now, for example, task forces, right?

So uh, you know, like the Metro Auto Theft Task Force, things like that.

So I would imagine that task force members that are assigned a specific case would review evidence for a case that they're that they're working on together.

Um, I think that is within the realm of possibilities.

Uh, the way that most of those task forces, as you're as you may be aware, are handled is essentially they're they're onboarded as as city um uh resources or or employees in in some of those cases.

I think if there's um so I I guess I broadly just to summarize, I think there could be instances if there are multiple investigators from different agencies collaborating on a case, they would share evidence in some of those cases.

Okay, thank you for that.

I think what that says to me, I mean, I know we've been so focused on one particular vendor and one particular type of you know technology, but I know we do have the task force, the um surveillance task force that myself, Councilman Parity and Councilman Flynn sit on, and and um you've also been there and Commander Herrera, um, Chief, and I think this is another one of those things that I think would have been great for us to be able to bring to that task force where we have a myriad of folks from different um areas of expertise that handle this type of you know policy and things like that.

Um, and so I think it would be helpful in that conversation, especially as we are looking to create policy that is helping us provide guardrails to how we utilize these technologies.

Um I do appreciate the fact that DPD has, you know, I think started to do a better job of trying to implement those operationally, um, but again, as we've talked about even in that task force, that there may need to be some of these things put into our our municipal code of how we're utilizing these technologies because they are changing so quickly.

Um, and so that would be, I guess, an expectation I would you know like to put forth is that before more of these contracts come through, we really need to get that.

We need to get a handle on that.

And I know there are several things that are kind of in movement and in process right now in trying to do that.

Um, and so this is again like one of the things that I think it would have been great, just as we paid as much attention to the flock contract, it would have been helpful to have paid some attention to this as well as it was coming down the pipe.

Um the last thing I'll just say, and I did request this in my briefing, was to have the contract.

I would like the contract before this comes to the floor.

I would want to read and see what is in the contract, what are the protections that are in place?

What are the agreements around sharing?

All of those things, I want to see what's in it.

Um, so that you know, we can try to make this a smooth process.

It would be very, very helpful to have that ahead of time.

Yes, and council member, I can um, as we discussed yesterday, you know, we recognize the interest that council has in this contract and around technology platform-related contracts with our department specifically, knowing especially that we have a holiday, we have a furlough next week.

Um, so there's a compressed period of time.

We are committed to getting that contract over to all of council for the maximum amount of time to review before it actually comes to the floor.

Um, so I am working right now with the mayor's office and the city attorney's office um to figure out how soon can we get that over?

How quickly, how do we deliver that over?

Um, since that's not the not something I've personally been involved with before, but we're committed to doing that.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Thank you, Councilmember.

And Emily, to add to that, it would be very helpful prior to us voting on December 3rd.

So, whatever steps, I mean, we have moved this from an action item to a briefing.

We've been having this discussion for several months.

I know in internally there are steps you all are working on, uh, but we have a vote on this on December 3rd.

If we can impress upon your team that um council members have the opportunity to look at that contract before December 3rd, I would strongly recommend that that will have impact on whether this makes the timeline to get approved um from committee to the floor.

Uh councilmember Flynn.

Thank you, Chair.

Excuse me, I want to follow up on uh uh video evidence that's uh brought in by members of the public uh fellow across the street from me about two years ago's work then was broken into thousands of dollars worth of tools at about four in the morning.

I learned about it when uh when a police officer came to my door and she asked me if I had uh any camera footage that would show that so I went back and reviewed, and sure enough I did.

Um I had a devil of a time getting that two, three minutes, which is all it took, uploaded to wherever it went, and just reforestation, uh which maybe shouldn't be surprising for someone who didn't know November from December, yeah, a little while ago.

Uh but it was still very difficult.

So I'm hoping that maybe this makes it easier.

Uh, but I wonder would that app also uh burden the police department with videos of neighbors sending in videos of somebody didn't pick up their dog's poop on their lawn or stuff like that, or is it simply when there's a case, uh when there's a complaint file that we can put out a call and people can then send videos related just to that case.

In other words, are we we're not inviting the public as a whole to send videos of you know, you know, some kids went down my street and they look suspicious, stuff like that.

I think it is situational.

I think the officer responding to the scene would have some discretion on, hey, I'd like to provide you an up a video upload link, right?

Because they could see the value in that investigation, whereas if it's a if it's something that uh, you know, the investigation or the call could be concluded and and maybe that's not as necessary, the officer would probably not generate the link for for the upload if that makes sense.

I hope so.

Thank you.

Um regarding uh tasers and the number of deployments, um, because I saw the data also from DPD, and it's actual deployments.

Um, I find the value in the tasers and even your firearms to be in the fact that you may not use them.

But the data right now, the way I understand it, you don't without a lot of manual examination, you can't go back and determine how many times a sheriff's deputy in a cell, you know, back in a cell block.

Withdrew the taser from the holder, but didn't use it because it was effective in de-escalating.

I would much rather have.

For the five years of this contract, I would much rather have none of these tasers actually fired.

My understanding is the taser 10 has the capability of when it's withdrawn from the holster, that is a record that's generated, whether or not the tasers fired.

So going forward, this would allow us to see how many times it's used to de-escalate where it's not actually fired, which is a result I really want.

I don't want it used on people if we don't have to.

So is that am I understanding that correctly?

You are.

Okay.

And the taser seven does not have that capability.

Is that true?

How difficult would it be by December 3rd to look back in records and see how often deputies they fired it 22 times since 2021?

So we but how many times did they withdraw?

We have some preliminary data on our end.

We have 81 incidences where a taser was shown and was not fired.

So between the data we have as far as when the probes were actually discharged to not, we show seventy-five percent um success rate de-escalation, um, in those in that period.

That's good.

Thank you.

Yeah, that's all I have.

Thank you.

Uh Councilmember Flynn.

Councilmember Council President Sandoval and then Council Member Perry.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Um, thank you all for this work on uh an important contract, I feel, and but as my colleagues have specified, the devils are in the details, right?

On all of these technology contracts.

So I'm just gonna ask Emily.

Um trying to put my words so I don't sound brush.

It's very frustrating to do committee work when you don't have contracts.

There is a way to get us draft contracts.

It's called deliberative work product.

So your attorney can email right now the current contract that's being drafted to our attorney, John Griffin, right behind you.

And John Griffin can send that to all of us, and it's called deliberative work product, which gives us an opportunity to read over it, and then you can resend it back to us so that we can read the final contract.

It's really hard to do our jobs and read contracts on Sunday when they're uploaded in the legislature to vote on Monday.

So I'm gonna ask that this week your attorney get to our attorney by close a business on Friday, deliberative work product on this contract, and I'll just ask you, Emily, can you please just make sure that we use that tool?

It's not okay to get these contracts at the last minute.

I understand that that has been the process, and as long as I'm council president, I'm gonna not I'm gonna push back on that process because it takes hours to read those, and I think that you have a committee who read those reads those because we vote on them, and what committees do is just to remind everyone we have to make sure that the contract's ready for the floor, and so if you get the contract the night before, what that means is it puts pressure on all of us sitting here to read a contract at night, and then be prepared for all of questions, and it it's not conducive, and it's not I would never let me put this, let me say it a different way.

I would never do that to you.

I would never do that to my colleagues.

When I bring a piece of legislation, I usually give it a week in advance, and it says confidential, it's a deliberative work product.

So I'm just gonna ask that moving forward when we have these big contracts, technology contracts that are um have a big amount of money behind them, that we just continue to use that tool.

And so thank you.

If you have a problem, Emily, you have my cell phone number, contact me, but I'm sure John Griffin can attest, it would be a deliberative work product, and we can see that.

So I'll just clear that up, Mr.

Chair, so we could get that by Friday.

So next week we can all read it over our Thanksgiving break, and then we can be prepared the following week.

I will also just tap let everyone know that I'm the one as council president who made sure that this was not on consent the week of Thanksgiving.

I did not feel comfortable having a 23 million dollar contract on consent the week of Thanksgiving.

I felt like people in our community would say it felt like we were trying to um do hide something, and I don't want that to do to do that, so it would be for action on the third, and then it's up to the administration to skip mayor counsel.

It can skip mirror counsel and it can go and it can be directly filed.

So I made that executive direct executive decision because I felt like this was too big of a conversation to not have it back for action in committee.

So just all know that that's something that I did.

My one question that I did ask during my briefing, and that I just said I would go back on the record, is with these huge technology contracts.

What I've been learning as I've been going back to school is there's a lot of administrative um cost in it, and so I've been asked to be break broke it down.

What is the administrative cost?

Because we have the tasers, we have the the equipment that we get, right?

But what is the cost to have someone from Axon here?

And the reason why I'm asking that is because I think that the type of service, in my personal opinion, that the type of service that we're getting from Axon is like a concierge service.

I haven't really seen that addressed in any of our other Flock contracts or anything else, and so I want to be able to look at that type of service.

When I asked about the service that they get, any police officer can ask any time call 24-7.

If there's a technology break, we have a point of contact, we're not shuffled in between.

Because when we met with Flock, we didn't even have somebody.

I don't think we had 24/7 service, and so I want to actually look at what kind of what kind of taxpayers' dollars are going into have this type of um treatment of having someone sit here at committee with us, sit at the table with us.

Um, so that's something that I think it's gonna be hard for them to break down, but I asked them to break it down anyway, so that we can use that as a baseline looking forward to other technology contracts because as we move forward with all these other thin tech contracts, it's the it's gonna be moving.

Like I just took a class, and you know, um cloud-based technology is kind of going away elsewhere in the world, it's called blockchain, and it's actually much more secure and it allows people to go in and look like contact get your information, take it down instead of this cloud-based um, and it and it's ours if it's blockchain and we actually get out of taking having to have a third-party vendor hold all of our information.

We actually control the information, and so I'm gonna keep pushing that we try to explore that technology.

They're doing it in China, or doing it in a lot of other places where there's um other type of fintech.

Um, so those are my questions, and I just look forward to getting these answers.

And um, I I want to just make sure that we are having as a robust conversation as we need because that's what I'll just remind us again.

That's what we're supposed to do in committee.

I don't think any of us are I'm not in here saying I'm gonna intentionally kill this contract.

I just want to be able to do committee work in the committees, and I feel like um a little bit lately.

We're not doing as much committee work in committees, we're doing committee work on the floor.

And by the time it comes to the floor, if you have outstanding questions, 100%.

I should not be reading a contract on Thursday, being prepared to vote on it on a Monday.

It's just not working, it's too much for me.

And so I'm calling, I'm saying I'm not doing it anymore.

So moving forward, that's just something, and uh as chair, I used to do that as chair of LUTI.

I would ask for all contracts for deliberative board product to come to the committee, and it says draft, because it might change, and we all know it might change because last minute things happen, and that's what works for bureaucracy, right?

That's what happens, is but it's important that like the meat and potatoes are usually there.

Other things shift around, and that's what I want us all to be able to get to Councilman Gonzalez could do this point.

We just want to read the contracts that we're voting on.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Thank you, Council President.

Consider that done.

So going forward to practice of this committee, all contracts, technology, otherwise, um, deliberative product will be something we'll be gonna be requesting.

So, Emily, thank you for working with um our partners within the Department of Safety to ensure that we see that, and obviously before December 3rd, we'll have that deliberate process by end of uh business on Friday um as asked by the council president.

Uh Councilmember Parity, uh wise person in the queue.

Yeah, thank you.

I want to go back to something about the ring camera functionality that council member Flynn was also just following up on understanding that maybe that's through the fuseless contract and not through this contract.

Um but basically I I would be worried about um because I know that ring is um working on already has facial recognition capability.

Um a lot of times when video footage is uploaded, it comes with certain metadata, right?

And so it'll have like the timestamp, which is something we would probably want it to have.

I would be pretty worried that um again, down in the details of this, I would not want facial recognition technology from a ring camera uploading someone's identity with video without us having thought that through because it's error prone, it's not something we've approved in the city, you know.

So I just um that's yet another example.

And again, um, commander, I asked about this ring integration earlier, and um I'm hearing it's sounding like you guys actually have talked about it and thought about it quite a bit.

So we just we need sort of um more full-throated information about what's happening there.

Thank you.

Thanks, Mr.

Chair.

Thank you, Councilmember Parity.

This is a briefing understand next uh on the third.

This is an action item for voting.

Um we do have, I just want to remind um folks watching and the committee.

Um, I think it was uh two committee meetings prior.

We spoke on the task force providing an interim report by January, and so all of these discussions and the council members that are part of the leadership of that task force and part of the members of that task force, with a whole swat of community members and professionals and experts, um, the expectation that we put forward from the to the administration is that there is some level of an interim report in January, and that time is coming quickly.

So we look forward to um hearing from that committee with some level of update in January.

With that, we have and I have no additional questions.

I had um, I don't know how many briefings with you all, and I appreciate all of my colleagues asking all the questions.

We have four items on consent with no additional items on the agenda.

This meeting is adjourned.

Okay.