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

Coverage of the Health and Safety Committee starts now.

Welcome to the January 21st Health and Safety Committee meeting.

My name is Darrell Watson.

I'm honored to serve all of the residents of the 5th District 9, and I'm honored to be the chair of this Health and Safety Committee.

We have two briefings this morning, but before we roll into the briefings, why don't we turn it over to Councilmembers for introductions.

We'll start to the right.

Good morning, Amanda Sawyer, District 5.

Kevin Flynn, Southwest Denver, District 2.

Laura Alvitres, Lucky District 7.

Good morning, Paul Cashman, Southwest Denver, District 6.

Jamie Torres, West Denver, District 3.

It's a quick check to see if we have anyone virtual.

Yes.

District 4.

Thank you, Council President Pro Tem.

our two briefings this morning. We'll kick off with the Department of Safety, Continuing

Education. We have some good folks from the Sheriff's Department

and Denver Police. We'll turn it over to you to introduce yourselves. You each have

10 minutes each, and then we'll open it up for questions from City Council. We'll turn

it over to you to do your introductions and anyone in the audience that's going to be

providing you support, if you don't mind, introduce them as well. I'm Sergeant Mike Billings

with the Denver Sheriff's Department of Training. I'm Tim Mills. I'm the curriculum developer

for the Denver Service Department.

And then our captain over there, Captain Sims, is our support.

Hello, Rhonda Piasena,

Sound Police Department with the Professional Development Unit.

Lieutenant Jesse Campion, Director of Training and Overseas Police Academy

and Training Assembly.

And with us today is Commander Steve Addison.

And Council Member Parity just got in on time,

and so thank you so much.

Council Member Parity serves the entire city and city.

I turn it over to you all for your presentation.

Okay.

Well, thank you, council members for having us here today.

I'm providing the opportunity to really give you an idea of our training that we're proud

of that both agencies provide to our staff and really in turn serving the community with

our officers and with the skills that they deploy every day.

So today we're going to talk about a few things. We're going to start off with DPD, the Peace Officer Standards and Training for Policy Requirements.

DSC is going to talk about their CALEA and accreditation.

Then we're going to go into logistics, some challenges that we have, as well as highlights.

But again, we're proud of the things that we have put forth and initiatives we're continuing to work on.

So our post-train requirements, these are mandated by post through the state and are the minimum that we have to meet to stay in compliance with state law as well as our accreditation.

So they provide these trainings, these standards statewide, and they are for police officers or recruits that have to be trained and meet those certifications.

Right now, we have 24 hours that are required by post, 12 of which are in what we call perishable skills.

So that's going to be arrest control, defensive emergency driving, and firearms training.

So when you look at that, 12 hours really doesn't seem that much.

But when you look at trying to train 1,462 officers, that becomes a significant lift.

Because we have to do this while, you know, keep in mind our service to the community, making sure our officers are there and available to answer calls for service.

The staffing, trying to make sure that we equate this throughout the year and aren't really working blind, right?

Denver is a very busy city.

We have different demands, different things that come into the city that we also have to account for and plan for.

So 1,462 is what we certified last year.

And again, that is a pretty significant lift and coordination effort.

I think they do a great job. The academy does a great job. The CP team does a great job.

And the officers are eager for that training. That is a minimum, but they are looking to better themselves, to be better officers for the community.

In addition to that, POST requires that every five years we have training and proper holds and restraint, de-escalation, community policing, anti-bias, persons with disabilities, and missing indigenous relatives.

So that's a rotating training that we do and it keeps things fresh.

They introduce new information for officers.

And again, it's to make sure that we are in a position to really serve the communities out there in Denver, the diverse communities that we have.

So what I just mentioned were the minimum requirements by state post.

And I think a common trend you'll see is the trainings that we're proud of here is that we go above and beyond.

You know, we look at specialty skills.

You know, Senate Bill 217, we have our ABLE program that directly correlates to that.

And that's the active bystandership for law enforcement.

We have crisis intervention.

We have our annual supervisor training.

So with the active bystandership, the ABLE, we have an eight-hour session for recruits in the academy.

And then every year, we have a two-hour refresher that all officers are mandated to go through.

And that's, again, trends that are coming up.

And this information is provided, the training is provided by Georgetown University and their ABLE program.

So we're relying on the experts who created this and who are in that field to help us, you know, better prepare our officers.

crisis intervention, officers get introduced to that in the academy. And then again, once they're

out on the streets, they're going to go back and have the full crisis intervention training.

And the reason that's so important is it allows these officers to meet people in the situations

they're at, right? So the crisis, the difficult situations that they're encountering when they

call the police, and we're able to meet them there and then work towards the solution that

we're having to address, right? Maybe that's resources. Maybe that's getting them help.

Maybe that's just, you know, helping them put some things into perspective, calm down a little bit.

The next one we're going to look at is our annual supervisor training. So this is where we require

all our sergeants and lieutenants to attend a full day of training. And that, the topics will

vary each year, right? We look at leadership. We look at the administrative side of things,

EEO. We look at some of the trends that we're seeing within the city that have come through

complaints or current events. So we look at that and we provide that annual supervisor training to

our sergeants and lieutenants there. And then in the goal of trying to get hands-on training for

our officers, we do that citizen service training. Lieutenant Campion did a great job of really

advancing this program last year, and that was the first year we did this, but we got all our

patrol officers these hands-on training, right? Because of COVID, we had to adjust. We had a lot

of video training, but we realized that is not the best solution for training. And Jesse will go

into a little bit more, but you can't train arrest control off of the video. You need to be able to

be hands-on. You have to train in that element. So what they did was they made sure that all our

patrol officers went through these trainings. So they had two sessions broken up into the first

half of the year and the second half of the year, and you can see the topics that were covered.

So this allows officers to get that hands-on training, get that refresher, and really the

goal of that, again, is to have a well-trained, competent, and confident officer. Because when

we have that, our officers are better equipped to go into the community, see these situations that

are very dynamic, and be able to have that mindset to be able to really de-escalate things, look at

the situation, assess, analyze, and then, you know, decide the best course. So that is why training is

such an important thing here and that we really focus in on trying to get that hands-on training

and really better equip our officers. The next thing we look at is the promotional side of things,

right? We are proud to have our sergeant school. So every time people get promoted, they're going,

our sergeant's going to go to a two-week school. And that's the first introduction of being a police

officer. I mean, imagine going from just being a police officer. Now you're in charge and

responsible for others and having to make, being in a position to help them make good decisions

and hold them accountable. Drinking from a fire hose, really. So we give them the introductory

skills and techniques that they need to develop themselves and to be able to perform in that.

And that's just that beginning. It gives them that foundation. So they're going to talk about

in that class, how to deal with certain complaints, how to deal with EEO, how to deal with some

of the dynamic situations that come into play that the officers face day in and day out.

So that's when we have a, it's going to be equal employment opportunity. So when we have,

yes, sir, when we have someone who, I'm trying to give you an example here,

really comes in the workplace.

So amongst peers or a supervisor to subordinate or direct report where they may have felt

that some actions against them were not appropriate and directed at them.

So this is a partnership that we have with DU.

And so all lieutenants are provide the opportunity to go to this course.

It's a three-day course, and then another session broken out into two sessions throughout a two-month period.

The thing about this, of course, is that it gives our leaders, the executive command,

the next step of the up-and-coming command officers, the skill sets to better communicate with their subordinates.

One of the key things about this is you learn about yourself, your communication styles,

and how important that is when you communicate with others, your direct reports.

and setting that example.

Because when we can set that example of good communication,

then that is taken and learned by our direct reports.

And then they are going to teach that to their officers.

So setting that example, and that's really what we are able to do

with that public safety leadership course.

And then the next slide here.

Okay, thank you.

So these are some of our logistics, right?

We have 36 arrest control ACT instructors, 54 TASER instructors,

And that may seem like a lot, but when you look at the dispersal of that, we have officers, these instructors on every shift throughout the city.

So that way, when something comes up, if there is a performance issue, they can address that quickly.

They're not having to schedule time to come to the academy.

The instructors know their people.

They know their challenges and can step in when they need to.

In the professional development unit, the continuing education side, we have one sergeant, two corporals, and one professional staff.

The academy, do you want to talk about that?

The academy consists of myself as the lieutenant, two sergeants over academy operations,

the sergeant over the range staff.

There are 16 corporals and one professional staff.

And then the range staff, like I stated earlier, is one sergeant, eight technicians,

and we're responsible for that facility and the firearms qualifications of all individuals in public safety.

Teaching methods and methodologies, we talked a little bit about this.

And 2025 in service and the reason we highlighted that is there certain skills that need to be hands on taught those skills really encompass those 3 major skill sets that post requires.

So, arrest control, which would be handcuffing, defensive tactics, etc. Police vehicle operations call that DVOC or emergency vehicle operations.

Obviously, we need to have time behind the wheel driving, our patterns for safe decision-making and control of the vehicle.

And then, obviously, firearms training.

That needs to be done hands-on and incorporate that decision-making component.

The big kind of thing that sets those skills apart is you need to have a decision component into that training

and not just running through rote memorization without the conscious thought

because every single one of those involves the decision of the officer to use force or make a decision in there.

So those absolutely need to be done in person, and that was a big effort from Chief Thomas last year

was to get us back into that, and there was a lot of resources allocated for that.

One of them being, we'll talk about it a little bit, but the logistics of it,

and that was scheduled a year ahead of time so we could minimize the impact of overtime usage

and make sure that we didn't drop in our community services commitment to the citizens there, right?

Because if you pull everybody off the street, that impacts operations in your districts as well.

So we were very mindful to minimize that and make sure that we provided high-quality training for everybody last year.

So a couple of different additional resources we have in terms of training.

We have the Police One Academy, which is a platform owned by Lexi Paul, Gordon Graham,

who is a risk mitigator that he looks at. That's his background, his focus. And this platform gives

us the ability to tap into trainings that are created and are relevant because they're nationwide.

They are starting to present officers with exposure to things that are occurring across

the nation and be able to have a better foundation. So this is one of the resources that we use. And

again, it's good training, but it does not replace that hands-on training that is critical for

officers as well. Additional trainings. Police One is our online learning management system.

It's where we track things, right? So we're able to upload systems. That's where our records come

from. Additional trainings we have. So these are the ones that we've talked about are really for

patrol officers, but we have trainings that really go out and help officers in these specialty areas,

right? We have meth labs. So that's a very significant and intensive training on dealing

with these hazardous situations in the community and homes. We've got DUI certifications. We have

performance development trainings. Our bomb dogs are explosive ordinance technicians. So these are

very significant high intense and high intensity trainings that also occur outside of our routine

CEP. So we'll switch over to us, Denver Sheriff's Department. So we're a little unique. We are not

post-certified. So we run through what we call Triple Crown Accreditation. That's the ACA,

that's the American Correctional Association, National Council on Correctional Healthcare,

and CALEA, which is actually one that runs concurrent for both us and DPD. So we have 40

hours of training, which is defined by those requirements. We have specific topics that must

be covered each time. So I have some of them up here that you guys can see. For an example,

ethics, use of force, defensive tactics, medical emergencies is a really big one within our

facilities. So that's an area we focus on quite a bit as well. Other training requirements. So we

also have a CIT program. It's very similar to as DPD runs it. We have them come. We talk about a lot

in the academy and then we have them come back a few months later. So they actually have some of

that actual understanding of what the job feels like and looks like. So they can attach that to

the learning. New supervisors training, we do the same. We have two weeks for those. We do in-house

training on that, and we also try to find outside training. One of the big ones we try to partner

with is FBI LIDA, a very good organization. So we try to get them another week there as well.

Our certification program, so this is through AJA, which is the American Jail Association,

American Correctional Association, or the National Sheriff's Association. These are all,

they can choose to be a part of this as deputies or as leadership, and they can actually apply to

this, and then they get certified as a certified jail officer, certified jail trainer. There's a

lot of different options in there as well. So our logistics, again, are pretty unique.

So we run four 10-hour quarters of annual in-service. That's 18 to 25 sessions per quarter,

so we do a lot of sessions. We'll talk about kind of how that looks as well here in a second when we

talk about overtime and our logistics. So training academy staff, we have one captain, Captain Sims,

two sergeants, five deputies, one civilian, that's me, the lone civilian, two range instructors,

which are deputies, and they work along with DPD at the range. So we work a lot together with DPD

in different areas as well. And we do have a limited use of adjunct instructors with how low

our numbers are on the floors, it's hard for us sometimes to pull those adjuncts in to help. So

that's something we try to limit as much as we can. Our trainers are required to be post-certified

when it comes to the train-the-trainer course. So that is a CSOC post-level training that all of our

trainers and instructors go through. So that is a requirement for us, anybody who does the training.

Kind of from my seat, some of the things that I've made sure that we add,

Lieutenant Campion talked about this a lot.

We're really big in experiential learning.

So hands-on, right?

What does that feel like?

I come in with a lot of andragogy, which is adult learning methods.

How do we apply adult learning methods to the academy so we're not trying to teach in the old ways of everybody sits in front and has what we like to call sage on stage chirping at them?

We're actually trying to bring in problem-solving group projects, things like that, to make them have to think kind of on their feet.

So that's been something that we really focused on.

And again, we do the same, a mix of perishable skills, classroom discussions, reality-based training, and online.

So we use PoliceOne as our learning management system as well, so we use it the exact same way.

This is kind of our background.

First or either.

Go ahead.

Okay, so we'll kind of talk together on this one.

So for both of us, the goal is to minimize frontline service impacts when we talk about

overtime and training. For how we've decided to do it in the Sheriff's Department, we actually

assign them their training days on off days. While that helps with the numbers where we're

not having to replace them on the floors, it is a challenge when we talk about some of the

trauma-informed practices that we use that we're taking a day away from our staff to come in and

work. So we have to understand that as well, that that is a challenge. And we're very aware of that.

And we always try to meet kind of the middle ground when it comes to that as well.

So we can talk about the staffing challenges when it comes to

limited facility space. So we're going to kind of focus on that. That's a big one for us.

I'll talk about my view from the Sheriff's Department, then we'll let DPD kind of jump

in as well. So we have, when it comes to reality-based training, we would love for you all

to come see this. We have two padded cells in the basement of our training academy that we use to

be reality-based training. That is what we have in the current model. Is it ideal? No. When I first

got here, it was actually PVC pipes with a tarp over it. So we've stepped it up a little bit,

but it is an area of need for us that we really hope we can find better solutions for in the

future. And it's something we are always trying to work around as well. Training mats. So we have

a full area that we do our defensive tactics in. They're very good quality. Where we do our

scenarios are wrestling mats that have been there for, Sajj, what do you think, 20 plus years?

Maybe 30. Yeah, maybe 30. They've been there a long time. So again, we do the best with what we

have, but these are areas that we do play into the limitations. And when we talk about the

classrooms for us at the academy, we have three main classrooms. One's the event center where we

We do a lot of the big events there.

It is a huge challenge where we have two classes running,

and then we have to bring in the in-service or the CEP training.

That's very limiting to us.

So it's another challenge that we're facing all the time,

trying to make sure we have space to provide for all the different trainings

that we have going on.

And I'll let Lieutenant talk about his and then the range capacity.

Yeah, so the way we handle our in-service is we schedule that out a year ahead of time,

again, to minimize the impacts of staffing into the districts.

that's spread out between the districts. We focus on patrol officers, and then we have a curriculum

also that we work on that's unique and specific to the needs of detectives. It's slightly different,

especially when it comes to firearms training and stuff like that. Our facilities, when it comes to

mat space, reality-based training and scenarios, that's going to be done primarily at the academy.

We have the Blue House out there. I think you guys are familiar with our facilities. If not,

you can check them out. But we have that scenario house. We have our mats out there.

That's also where our DVOC track is located. That's part of the old airport out there. So

that chunk of runway left. And then we share services at the range. And that's really the

big choke point when it comes to trying to push everybody through is the 15 stalls that we have

at the range for both agencies to use for yearly qualifications. And that really is, I would say,

a testament to the partnership between the agencies, you know,

the two from the sheriff's department,

they work diligently to get everybody through.

And that is a scheduling.

It's a challenge, but we work through it the best that we can with the

limitations that we face. So anything else about the range?

No, I mean, that's, it's exactly that. So just to give you guys an idea,

Our time typically will be weekends or late nights.

We have to work around that as well.

It's a big challenge for us to do the training and logistics as well.

That really falls into that is also the range for academies.

So as we are running police academies,

currently there's two classes and 100 police recruits at the Denver Police Department.

I'm not sure.

I don't know where you guys are currently at.

We have one and another one about to start.

About to start.

So Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.

There's academy classes.

Mondays and Fridays are in service for the police department.

Saturdays and Sundays is the sheriff's department for academy classes.

And then in between those off days, wherever they happen to fall,

is when we start to squeeze in yearly qualifications for everybody else.

And if you could find me on ath, I'd appreciate it.

I'll talk to the Beatles about this.

So we're going to end with some of the highlights and innovative training.

I will let DPD go first with the top part of theirs.

Thank you.

So, again, you know, we talked about it a little bit earlier, so I won't go into that too much.

The ABLE program, the partnership with Georgetown University.

We've got our remedial training program.

So when we find authors that are having a performance issue, being able to address it quickly and early on

and give them the skills and techniques through CEP with Academy to improve that.

We have reintegration.

So one of the things that we really recognize and support are officers coming back to duty from leave of absence.

That leave of absence can be an injury, right?

They've suffered a significant injury either on duty or off duty.

They've been away from the line for a while.

And again, we don't want to put them in a position where they are going from recovery to now we're at full bore patrol operations.

We want to be able to give that progressive, get them that confidence, that muscle memory of how to do things, how to be that patrol officer again or that detective.

Just get them that incremental increase to that level.

We have peer support.

We're pretty proud of that.

That is a very, we have about 50, actually 60 peer support members.

That is a 32-hour training that they go through for certification.

And then we have quarterly trainings for that.

We have the FBI National Academy, another example of our partnership, Northwestern School of Police and Staff Command.

Those are going to be courses for command officers to better lead our troops.

And I'll just turn it over to you.

And so we were one of the early adopters of ABLE as well.

DPD and DSD were really early in that, actually.

We are now moving to what they call HEROES.

So this one is going to be more focused on corrections, civilian, fire, emergency, kind of those areas.

So we're going to be doing that February 9th.

We're actually hosting the first one there where they're coming in with County

Sheriffs of Colorado.

So we have several other departments coming to be a part of this training.

So we're really excited as it adapts it more from not street focus to

detention focus.

So what does this look like to be an active bystander in these situations

within the facilities?

So that's a big one we're really excited about.

We have a huge mentorship program as well.

This one is pretty neat.

We have from every rank coming in during the academy,

and they will partner with one of the recruits, and they walk them through the whole process as

a support. So it's been really well received. We're really excited about that as well.

And like I said, we use crisis response and intervention training, so it's a little different

than CIT, but that is one that we've been using for the last several years. One of the big projects

I've been working on for a couple years now is a trauma-informed project. I don't know if anybody's

familiar with Dr. Bruce Perry. So he wrote several books, The Boy That Was Raised as a Dog and What

Happened to You with Oprah Winfrey. His team is called the Neurosequential Model. Outstanding

Model. I've been working with them to say, how do we get this model to apply to law enforcement?

So I'm really focused on trauma awareness for our officers and what it does in their life.

And also, how do we deal with people in trauma? So those are two big areas that I've really

focused on. And hopefully we'll get that wrapped up this year. And I'm really looking to start

pushing some things out from there. And again, we do the same thing with remedial training.

This is given to us from the CRO, Conduct Review Office, or the public. What's PID?

Why can't I think of it? Public Integrity Division. See, that's why Captain's here to

keep me in line. And so those are sent to us, and then we will triage those, and we will do

specific training situations.

So that's what that is.

Refresher training, same.

If you've been on long-term leave, sick or injury, and a lot of military leave, we bring

you in.

We get you back up to speed.

We walk you through defensive tactics, arrest control, those pieces as well to make sure

you're ready to go when you get back out to your post.

And with that, I believe we're done.

I should be very careful about talking about padded cell.

My husband may want to have me do that a little more frequently than you all are recommending.

But I do appreciate the thoughtfulness of your continued improvement process and training for both DPD and DSD.

Thank you so much for going into those details.

I look forward to hearing the questions from Council Members.

Council President Pro Tem, I just wanted to make sure if you are interested in joining the queue, please let me know.

But we have a queue that's formed beginning with Council Member Torres and Council Member Flynn and Perry.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. My questions revolve around how things get added to your training, particularly as a result of either maybe state requirements or even locally.

We did an expansion of advisements to the monitor's office last year in code for non-monetary, which is usually a training element.

So when those come down, how quickly are they incorporated into your curriculum?

How long do officers have to kind of get caught up in that kind of a thing?

I'm just noticing the Department of Safety has one non-monetary protocol listed, and it comes with a training bulletin.

Just if you could walk me through kind of how that transpires from maybe a settlement or state law and how it makes its way through officer training.

So on the DPD side, a couple different things. The way we get training comes from, like you said, post state requirements. We have something that we've had for the last two years, three years now, we call it our quarterly trends.

And that's where the commander of maternal affairs, conduct review, the independent monitor, the executive director of safety's office, we come together and we discuss what are some of the trends that we're seeing.

And then once that is identified, then creating a training.

That falls into the professional development unit to create that training and disseminate that out to officers.

So, for example, the turnaround can be pretty quick.

Or if we're involving other partners, the DA's office, city attorney's office, can be a little bit longer.

But usually within a period of time, we can get that training out.

And it's the method of training, whether it's a training bulletin, whether it's going to be something that we're using as an in-service,

if it's going to be a skills-based training issue.

I would say, for example, we had a situation with bail bondsman.

And so once we identified that, we got a training bulletin out there,

and that was done within a month.

I want to estimate the time frame.

I don't know exact time on that, but it was fairly quickly,

and that went out to all members.

So again, that's using our electronic system to disseminate that information to everyone

and then verify that they've had that.

Additionally, there was conversations with their patrol sergeant certain roll call.

Hey, when you have these situations, this is the best way to progress.

So that collaborative group decides, like, what are all the manners that this needs to roll out?

And it's really dictated by the method to retrain, right?

Yeah.

So look at field force operations, right?

Obviously, that's going to be very different than a policy change.

So that's really the driver is how long it takes.

and the amount of time it takes.

Ultimately, whether that comes top down from the agency or outside, you know, through post and red line,

and then all the curriculum is reviewed in its appropriate places, whether that's PDU or the academy.

Usually it's a collaboration between everybody to make sure that everything is within line,

and then we decide what's the most appropriate method to retrain or disseminate that information

and start the process of doing that.

And that can be as short as, you know, obviously like weeks in some cases or much longer if it takes much longer to get everybody through.

It just kind of depends on what it is.

And it's iterative, right?

Like the changes will come.

They go out immediately.

It takes a little bit of time to get everybody through the appropriate skills training if necessary.

Is there ever any concern that an incident might happen and officers haven't had the chance to get trained up?

I'm just thinking in terms of maybe like crowd control or protest response and new protocol for where you aim, right, less lethal, something like that.

And again, that really comes back to the appropriate methodology of training.

Target areas are usually quite easy to move out.

But this is also why we have so many trainers in district, right?

And some of that is not everybody having to come to one central location.

If it's appropriate, we can push out, you know, kind of through in-service or in-house trainers and get that rolling.

But it's, again, we're changing behaviors.

So we want to make sure that the training is sufficient to cover the needs.

So it may start there, but it wouldn't end there, right?

Okay.

I just wanted to add in as well to what Lieutenant was saying that especially in cases, for example,

where we had the ordinance change around the non-monetary settlement agreements and more

transparency added there to what we are doing to react to those, that our office, our assigned

city attorney, the special counsel for the Department of Safety, work really closely

with our agencies, with our academy staff and other trainers to make sure and understand

what is it that we need to train on, what are the things that staff need, and then provide

any support that they need for that legal review or other, you know, how are we going

to make this work logistically to make sure that our agencies have what they need.

Okay.

Got it.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Council Member, Council Member Flynn, and then Council Member Perry.

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Chair.

I've been concerned for quite some time about the staffing levels.

in the jail, particularly the downtown detection center.

I'm wondering, when you mentioned the HEROES adaptation

of active bystandership training,

I'm wondering, does the short staffing,

until we get up to an optimal level,

does that require any rethinking of training

or special training outside of what we normally would do

if we were fully staffed?

have maybe a limited number of deputies available for a shift under different procedures to handle situations.

Because that goes beyond what I think HEROES is meant to cover.

They cover the whole gamut of their situations that come across in their shift.

Is there anything you can talk about in that regard?

I'm not aware that we really focus on specifics for being low staff.

That's really operations on the floors is where they're focused on that.

So they have policy where they're engaging that.

From our view, it's very hard to get people to training because we know the taxing it's having on them and their families.

So, for example, for Heroes, when I just talked about rolling that out, usually we would do that in in-service and it would be an eight-hour day throughout the thing.

What we're going to do this time is actually do two trainings per month for a year.

So, again, we're mitigating as much as we can the stress on people being away from their families and kind of that whole area.

So but on that other part, we'd have to get back to you on that.

I don't have the exact details of how we do that.

Yeah, I'd encourage you to think about it.

I'm not in law enforcement.

I'm not in your I hate the term wheelhouse.

So I don't know if it's even a consideration.

When a situation arises and there's one deputy instead of two, is there a different protocol

that needs to be trained?

That's what I'm going to hear.

I'd like to hear if the department's given some thought to that.

That's a great question.

We won't get back to you on that for sure.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you.

Councilmember Paradis?

Yeah, thank you.

And I just want to, I definitely may have also requested this presentation because I

know it's been an area of interest, but I definitely also asked for it and I'm very,

very grateful for it.

I feel like I know about 100 times more than I did before you walked in the door.

So thank you.

I think I was trying to sort out like where my remaining questions are.

And one thing I will say too is that the word training is in the operations manual over 400 times.

So it's complex, right?

And without being, as Council Member Flynn said, sort of subject matter experts,

what I think I've been trying to get a sense of is how this ends up looking for an individual officer.

So there's going to be the 24 hours a year, right?

And then there's mandatory topics annually.

There's mandatory topics every five years.

I'm curious what people's transcripts end up looking like.

And then also, like, I don't want to disregard field training because that's probably in

some ways sort of the most important piece.

But I would be really curious to see some samples of, for like, expert officers at different

experience levels, how that ends up coming out as a transcript.

And then the other question I have is, especially for the things that are every five years for

individual officers, obviously you're, I assume you're holding them continually so that everyone

can meet that requirement. And I'm curious how often we like revisit the content of those programs

because some of those are things that I think the kind of scholarship about moves fairly quickly. So

like the topic of bias, the topic of de-escalation, I'm just curious if we've

changed the actual modules and sort of how you guys think about revisiting the content on some

of those that's kind of a lot but yeah go ahead i mean so yeah the content we always try to provide

new training so topic but a new perspective of so when we're talking about that five-year training

and then can you clarify that when you mean the transcript of an individual yeah i think it's just

an ask i would love to see some examples of transcripts without anybody's names on them

but like what it looks like for sort of a typical tenure officer with their training record all of

And that's going to be very unique and specialized to the individual.

Because they do different things.

Correct, right?

So if you look at a 10-year patrol officer versus a 10-year homicide detective, it's going to look very, very different.

And that's another part of CP and training in general is the 24 hours is the absolute minimum floor that has to be met.

Yeah.

Most officers go well beyond that.

And we encourage them to kind of explore different avenues within the police department and areas of expertise that they want to develop.

One that gives you the best cops possible.

So we also have to provide enough training to cover those specialty needs as well.

So it's a logistical balance, right?

Staffing, when we take someone off the line to go to training, that's their workload that they can address for the day.

But we do encourage them to progress.

I mean, that's part of the CEP program there.

and what we're going to be rolling out is our career tracks, right?

So if you want to go be a detective,

what are the skills that are going to make you that best detective?

Because if you can get that strong foundation,

then you have that room to grow and really make an impact in your role as that detective

or as a sergeant or as a corporal.

So we are part of it.

It's been very informal where we had trainings here and there throughout the year,

and we tried to keep that availability.

Well, we looked at it and said, how can we better structure it?

So that way there's a progression.

So people are starting to track or they know how they're getting to where they want to go.

That person may not know what the best classes are for them.

They just see that as an offering.

Whereas they say, hey, this is really the holistic view.

And getting that information from those people, those detectives, like, hey, this is what really helped me.

Or this is what a new detective would need to have a strong start in that role.

Okay.

And you have thrown this number out already.

If you did, I'm sorry if I missed it.

It also may be kind of impossible.

Maybe I'll just ask it sort of individually.

how many hours of training do you think not counting things that are actual formal you know

this is a training you're doing at different points in your approach like a minimum a maximum

i don't even know like i'm not going to hold you to it i just have no idea recruit the first year

they're north of a thousand i think we're right over a thousand field training that's just academy

training with the minimum being and i don't have this number so hold me to you like 650 ish yeah

And we're, you know, yeah, but we're at a thousand in our police academy.

Then you go into 16 week field training program, right?

That's minimum 16 weeks.

Each learning is a nonlinear, right?

Like people go at different paces at different times and that's okay.

We try to make sure that we develop them appropriately.

So 16 weeks for one, maybe a little longer for somebody else and it'll take different twists.

And people are done training when they're done training.

Yeah.

Yeah. So it's not just this check the box approach in anything that we do.

What about when you're further in, though? Like you're inexperienced, you're like a 15 year officer.

Like how many hours do you think you're doing in a year? And I'm sorry, Mr. Chair.

We have about seven more minutes for a presentation and two other members in a queue.

But Councilman Perry. So one of the things that we really stress is that, OK, maybe you don't want you.

You're happy being that detective. And that is that's what you want to keep on doing.

Congratulations. What else can we offer for you to be better in that position?

So that's really keeping up to date with industry trends, right, or going out to trainings to be able to accomplish, gather new perspectives.

What are other agencies doing?

What are other organizations seeing?

So really trying to better themselves.

That is going to be up to that individual detective.

But if they're not performing, then that's a different situation, right, if they're not progressing, if they're not being able to hold themselves to the expectations.

It's just hard to give you a number because we have officers who will do another 20 or

30 hours above that minimum 24.

But that could just because they went to a class, maybe they went to an interview class

or a crime scene class.

But does that happen every year?

No.

Right.

That gives me an idea of kind of a high-women remark.

Okay.

That's really helpful.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Thanks for coming.

Next question, Councilmember Parity.

Councilmember Alvideris, Councilmember Solier.

Thank you so much.

all for the great presentation. I will be quick. I do worry about one thing that you mentioned just

with exhaustion with a high reliance on overtime. So I'm curious for both of you, how are we really

taking care of the mental health and doing that reintegration training specifically to make sure

that our officers are able to be present and hold the work that they're doing that can be very

traumatic. I think that's a really good point because an officer who is well taken care of

is going to be a better officer, right? And we do have the stress that comes from injuries coming

back to work, just the job stress itself. We do recognize that those are factors that play

into the performance and really the wellness of the officer. So with that, we have that

reintegration program, like I mentioned, where we are very structured about bringing them back up to

to speed, but we also have a very strong wellness and resiliency team.

So that is one sergeant and two technicians, and they are constantly engaging with officers,

whether it's a friend of theirs saying, hey, I think Jesse is going through something.

I don't know what, but do you mind reaching out to him?

And then that conversation between the wellness sergeant or the wellness technician and Jesse,

that's them, and that's being utilized quite a bit.

And that's why we have that peer support program, which is just another decentralized version of that where they can talk to people in their assignments.

And so that combined or communal experience they can relate to.

So if Jesse and I are working together in the academy, we know the stress that we're going through.

So it's easier for me to talk to him versus someone from headquarters or from a district, right?

So that's really something that we stress and we encourage and we hold these peer support classes that's trained by Nicoletti's office.

So they're getting that really that clinical education side of things.

And we front load that with the academy, with partnering with Nicoletti to Nicoletti Inflator's office to build curriculum for our new recruits.

We build upon that in scenarios where we put them in these positions.

They integrate on those days as well.

So not only are we giving them the classroom component and the knowledge of it, but we're teaching them how to apply that too.

right so on some of our more um in-depth scenarios nicoletti will actually come out we'll

talk with stress management performance issues in context of training which has been very

beneficial for us as well so and one thing i'll just add to what jesse said is one of the benefits

we get from nicoletti it's not just it's not just talking it's not just venting but the skills that

they teach we use them in our educational side of things but also teaching how to be resilient

because there is no doubt you are going to have these challenging situations you are going to have

this trauma in your career and you're going to face that. But how you better yourself to be more

resilient to work through that. And those are the skill sets that we're getting from Nicoletti's

office and I'll encourage that as well. So we do really similar things. We work with Nicoletti

and Flatter too. And we also, a couple of other things that I think I'll highlight. One of the

things we do is a family night, which I think is really important. So in the academy, we bring the

families in and I'm huge on this. So hypervigilance, we talk about it with our officers. Coming home

with this job is scary, right? For a lot of people, it's hard for people to understand the

trauma that you just saw in a day and bringing that home is scary for a lot of people to understand.

And so we engage that conversation a lot in the academy and in service with what I'm developing.

That's an area I'm looking at. Another one is to normalize the idea of asking for help.

Traditionally, law enforcement has been a type A personality focused area. Asking for help is

weakness. And we're trying to really change the view of that, that it's not weakness, that it's

strength. Then it takes courage to ask for help when we're dealing with things from the trauma

and from the stress of the job. So that's a big area we're really focused on. We have an excellent

wellness coordinator also, and we also have the peer support program. So we do everything we can

from our angle to provide as much support and also too for them to figure out how you move forward

through this job in dealing with those situations and circumstances that come up that can be very

traumatic. So I think we're doing it from every level from when they start in the training academy

and then it's available to them throughout the process and throughout their career.

Nickelodeon Inflator Code 4 is also used.

So I feel that we're doing the best that we can,

but it is very, very challenging right now for our deputies in the environment

based on the amount of overtime that they're doing.

It's a stressful environment as it is.

It's challenging sometimes doing 12 hours in there, let alone a 16-hour day.

So I think we are seeing that a lot, but we're doing everything that we can

to reach out and let them know that somebody is there for them.

and they have that support. I appreciate that. And just one, I'll try to summarize my follow-up

questions into one long question, which is just curious about training for the continued training,

how much is online and in person? And then I am concerned about firearm training and how

that is being accessible. Will that be improved with the Vibrant Bond project? And also, I have

heard that for practice officers and deputies have to pay for their own ammunition? Is that

still the case? And then last part, just I am a mother of someone on the spectrum,

and so I'm curious how the rising rates of autism have played into your training and how

you interact with the public. Those are all excellent questions. Let's maybe hit one of

those and then obviously provide that information because all the counsel will be very curious

to that outcome. We have Council Member Sawyer still in the queue for the transition, please.

So I think the autism training, we can probably show you that offline and have a more detailed

conversation. When it comes to firearms training, the ammunition is not bought by the deputy or

the officers, right? That is part of our budgetary process that we submit every year.

And those have been submitted for this year. That takes into account academy classes,

in-service training, et cetera, and that's where we do that.

There was another part to that as well.

How much is online and in-person with the training?

So I think an important thing to remember is what's the appropriate way to teach the skill.

There are certain things that we can absolutely do online,

and if used appropriately, online training is okay.

There are certain things that need to be done hands-on,

and those are kind of those skill things that we mentioned.

And as far as the number of the breakdown hours, I don't have online bursts in person.

But I think what's important is, are we teaching it in the appropriate methodology?

And if online training is appropriate, then we use that because that obviously allows us to maximize reach with minimizing impact to operations.

But there are certain things that just have to be done in person.

That's good to hear because I agree.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Councilman Albedar.

It's Councilman Sawyer.

It's all right.

Don't worry about it.

We got to move on to the next one, but thank you guys so much appreciate it.

I'd say thank you all so much for your presentation. Obviously provide answers to any of the questions that were asked that you may not have been able to speak to, but I do appreciate each of you for being here.

We're going to transition to our next briefing and presentation from Marley and team.

Also want to make sure I thank Captain Sims and Commander Addison for being here.

Thank you both for being here.

So Marley and team, if you want to start making your way up, we'll transition over to you.

I appreciate the briefing and presentation from DSD and D.

Thank you.

Marley, whenever you're ready, the floor is yours for introductions of you and your team.

Wonderful.

Thank you, committee chair and members of city council.

Really appreciate being here and having the opportunity to let you know what PACE does.

So with that, I am Marlee Bordowski.

I'm the director of the prosecution section of the city attorney's office.

With me at the table is Linda Laughlin-Pettit.

She's a director of community affairs and does a lot of our collaborative work.

Reggie Newbine and Genevieve St. Ledger are also with PACE.

They are two assistant directors in the section and then packing the houses are a lot of the members of the PACE section.

They are very dedicated to what we do and passionate about our work.

All right.

I'll just launch in.

We'll get some things covered.

So just a reminder, we are a charter agency.

Our charter function is to appear on behalf of the people of the city and county of Denver in all actions and proceedings alleging violations of any charter provision, ordinance, or rule and regulation.

of the city and county of Denver. We do that in PACE, but we do other charter

functions as well as you'll see as I get through the presentation. All right.

PACE structure on the courtroom side is we have four trial courtrooms. Right now

we are staffing those courtrooms with about two and a half attorneys. We are

working as quickly as we quickly as we can to get that staffed back up to three

attorneys per courtroom. We were on the verge of trying to staff those

courtrooms with four attorneys in early 2025 given the increase in cases which

I'll get to but budget happened and here we are so we are significantly less than

that we handle a hundred percent of the cases that are filed so we don't have a

filing deputy we don't have an intake unit like the DA's office does

everything that comes into our municipal courtrooms comes directly from officers

on the street. We don't screen them at all. We get cases from DPD, RTD, police officers, the

CSP, Colorado State Patrol, Auraria PD, from DDPHE, all of the letters, DFD, zoning, the community

planning and development. So I could go on and on. So we get citations and cases from Denver Police

Department. That's the bulk of what we get. But we also get a lot of cases from our city agencies.

and outside agencies that have been delegated the authority to enforce city ordinances.

We have two arraignment courtroom.

Courtroom 2100 is in the Denver Detention Center, downtown detention center.

It operates seven days a week most of the time.

If there's a holiday, we have two dockets the day before to ensure that we're complying with state law.

So we are staffing that courtroom seven days a week all year round.

In that courtroom, we also staff it with a victim advocate so that we are ensuring compliance with the Municipal Victim Rights Act.

We have two traffic courtrooms.

These operate all day on Mondays, half day on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

We staff all of those dockets as well.

And then we have one juvenile courtroom.

It operates half a day once a week.

with all of the budget reductions that have impacted PACE, we can only staff that with a rotation of attorneys from our regular courtrooms.

We cannot dedicate attorneys to that courtroom at this time.

All right, so some statistics from our courtrooms.

We handled over 14,300 cases last year.

That is up 2% over 2024, and 2024 saw a 12% increase over 2023.

So the trends in our municipal courtrooms are going up in our case filings.

Of those 14,000 cases, over 2,500 of those were domestic violence cases.

That number is up 19% from 2024.

It's a 10-year high in Denver for domestic violence cases.

On the flip side of that, our municipal JV cases decreased by 6%,

and I think there are some reasons for that that I'll go into here shortly.

All right, and so we have the courtroom side that everyone's familiar with.

We also have what we call the other side of the house.

So we are the legal guidance.

We provide legal guidance to the Department of Licensing and Consumer Protection.

We excise in licenses.

I might slip during this presentation.

It's a hard one to remember for me.

But we provide all legal support to that agency in the city.

We draft their ordinances.

We've drafted, I think Reggie's drafted, I don't know how many, marijuana and cannabis related ordinances.

He drafted the cabaret ordinance that's moving its way through the process now.

We assisted with the commodity metals ordinance that Councilman Watson championed.

We also draft all of their final decisions.

So when you apply for a license in the city, oftentimes you're entitled to a hearing.

That's changed a little bit with some recent legislation.

But we draft the final decision for the executive director of that department, and we handle all of the licensing hearings that that department does.

We also have the public nuisance abatement team.

Just a quick, if you don't know what the public nuisance ordinance is, it's a civil action that's filed against either a vehicle or real property that's been used in the commission of crime.

It's not a criminal case.

It's a civil action.

It's not a forfeiture case either.

it's just an action to remove that property from being used in criminal

activity for a temporary period of time so that you're not using your vehicle

over and over again to commit crime. It can't be used for that purpose for a

period of time. We have a team that provides legal support to the DPD PNAU

team and handle all of the civil PNAU cases. We also have the mental health

team housed in in PACE. This is the team that handles all involuntary

commitments in the city and county of Denver. It's in the district court,

probate court. This is where people may need involuntary treatment for their

mental health challenges or with addiction challenges. They also handle

all of our extreme risk protection order cases in Denver, ERPO. That's the red

flag law that passed I think about five years ago at the state level.

That is they are the most experienced team in the state handling these extreme risk protection

order actions and what that does is if either a police family member I think the DA's office

can now file if they believe that someone poses an imminent risk to themselves or others

and we believe that they own firearms or have reason to believe they own firearms,

an ERPO case can be filed and we can temporarily take their firearms from them during that period of time.

And then we also have the Neighborhood Partnership Team.

This team works directly with community members, agencies, members of city council, outside agencies,

state agencies, people, members of the community, nonprofits, all kinds of agencies and individuals

to come up with outside-the-box solutions to problems that might plague a community.

It could be a challenge for the community.

This team also was heavily involved in working through the commodity metal stakeholdering that was done

and figuring out a workable way to draft that ordinance.

Created what's called DMAP.

That's the Denver Methamphetamine Abatement Partnership.

I'll go into that a little bit more later.

And the Denver Hoarding Task Force, just to name a few things that this team has worked with the community

to form in the city. So statistics for that side of the house. Last year, we had 33 residences that

tested positive for methamphetamine contamination above regulatory levels. This is in partnership

with a dedicated team over at DDPHE, who was actually out on one of these just yesterday when

I was chatting with him. So this is when many times if you rent an apartment, for example,

And it was on the news this morning.

A church in Fort Collins was found to be highly contaminated with methamphetamine.

But you may move into an apartment, and you have no idea that it may be contaminated.

This partnership is able to, because we're bringing different groups together that have the information,

like DDPHE, DPD, DFD, to identify places that might be contaminated and then have them abated

so that that methamphetamine contamination is no longer there.

We had 48 ERPO cases last year.

That's a statewide high for ERPO filings.

We assisted in the crafting of the commodity metals theft ordinance

that dealt with the challenges around commodity metals theft.

And for our mental health team, they had over 1,300 cases

for folks that were needing mental health treatment.

intervention. So that's a pretty staggering number of folks that needed

help and it's such a great team and they are statewide experts in this area.

Right as I said earlier our municipal case filings are increasing. I'm not going

to read this slide to you but you can kind of see where we are. Last year we

had over 14,000 municipal case filings that's up 2% from 2024. 2024 was up 12%

percent and so on. 2023 was up 19 percent from 2022. So the trend has been upward for municipal

case filings. Traffic cases are a little all over the board. 33,023 went down in 24 and then

they creeped back up. So the bulk of the cases that we handle in our municipal courtrooms are

what we call GS or general sessions cases. We also have general violations cases. It's basically

a case number. There's still violations of the Denver Revised Municipal Code, but they're more

code focused, like mechanical code, building code, zoning code, animal code, those kinds of things,

health code. So that's where these cases fall, and they come into our out of custody arraignment

program. This is just a slide from the presentation that I was part of to Policy and Budget Committee

last week, I think. I won't go into this again, but I just want to reiterate that our approach

to animal cases in particular is to, number one, public safety and make sure the public is safe

from the horrific dog bites, the pictures that DAP passed around last week, but also

So to get better owners, to change behavior, that you're actually paying attention to your animal and making sure your fence is fixed and it's not getting out all the time and terrorizing the neighborhood.

So really at the end of the day, that's all we want in this and the protection of public safety.

And in many cases, the restitution for the victims because medical bills and vet bills can mount up pretty quickly in some of these bites.

So, and then finally, well, probably not finally, finally for me for a minute, we are also the voice of victims.

So often the voices, you know, victims don't have to come to court at every court date.

And so, so often their voices aren't heard in the proceedings.

And so we are that voice for the victims.

We also, you know, I mentioned it earlier, we have the Victims' Rights Act here in Denver.

That was passed by this council, I think, two years ago, if I'm not mistaken.

So we have we take our duty and our representation of victims voices very seriously.

And so that's a very large part of why I think this room is packed by my folks out there.

So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Linda Laughlin-Pettit.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for this opportunity.

I am the manager of the victim advocacy team.

Many of our victim advocates are here this morning.

These are unspoken heroes in the city and county of Denver.

Just by way of introduction, I've worked with domestic violence on both the nonprofit side, the system side, victim side, and the perpetrator side.

I ran an agency that provided court-order treatment to defendants for almost 10 years.

So what I can tell you is that you all should be really proud.

Denver is known nationally for our response to domestic violence.

We started getting national grants back in, I want to say, 2021.

And it's because of the collaboration that we have with the district attorney's office, the fact that we prosecute cases at the state level and at the municipal level.

And it's because of our collaboration with our community-based partners, whether it's the Rose Annab Center, Safe House, Denver Project, Safeguard, Colorado Legal Services.

We really come to the table as a whole to try to address the epidemic of domestic violence systemically.

So we've got just a few slides here to bring some of our cases to life because, as Marley said, the victims don't always get to speak.

In this case, you see bruising.

What you don't see is the fact that she went deaf in one ear because of this assault that was charged at the municipal level.

Next slide, please.

In this next case, the defendant got drunk.

We see this a lot in our cases.

Began punching the victim on her head.

She'd been hiding in the bathroom trying to get away from him because she knew his pattern when he was drinking.

couldn't escape. In this case, you can see she had severe pain, physical injuries.

In our next case, the victim was beaten on her head and face by her boyfriend. He was accusing

her of cheating. Four days later, after this municipal arrest, she had a seizure that her

doctors attributed back to this case. In this next case, the victim too, like our defendants,

the victims sometimes are also battling their own issues. This victim was so proud of herself,

She'd been clean and sober for two years.

She was employed.

She dated this guy for about two months.

And then he started showing up at her workplace.

He began following her, assaulting her.

And at first, people tried to intervene.

Strangers would intervene.

And I have to tell you, one of the hardest cases I've worked was with the witness, not the victim, the witness who intervened.

He was a physician.

He also was assaulted.

It blew up his world.

These people suffered trauma just even by being involved in these cases.

Anyway, back to this case. Eventually, she stopped reaching out for help, and people stopped trying to help because they were getting hurt, too.

Police, Denver Police, did a great job. They kept arresting. Our attorneys here did a great job. They kept prosecuting.

We worked with pre-trial services on the last case we had with him, got GPS on him. We thought, this is finally some safety for the victim.

within an hour he violated the GPS for another arrest. So in this case our

assistant directors worked with the prosecuting attorney we got the case

up filed for stalking at the DA's level. That's one of the wonderful things that

we can do is we have a really great relationship with the DA's to try to

up file cases whenever we can. I will tell you I looked this guy up this

morning we now had in 2025 had six new cases with him. So the severity of our

cases is real. In 2025 alone, we had 28 cases involving strangulation. 28. We try to up-file

these cases with the DAs, but they don't always take that. We're not always successful in that.

In one of the cases I pulled, she lost consciousness because of the strangulation.

In another, the victim told us, I was so terrified I lost control of my bowels,

had to wear turtlenecks until my bruises healed. So really, really difficult cases.

But perhaps the more difficult cases are our threats cases.

And I want to note that in these cases, there is no state identical charge.

So if the cops can't, I'm sorry, law enforcement can't arrest and bring the cases to our prosecutors sitting here today,

there's no hope for these victims.

There's no arrest to be made.

There's no prosecution to be had.

So I want to start at the bottom one.

He threatened to rape me when my pants were down.

in another case. He beat me and threatened me to, he threatened to cut off our children's fingers

in front of them. I know some of my staff are here today who dealt with that case. That one

still haunts me. And in another one, he threatened to take her inside so he can strangle her to death,

strangle the kids, and then himself. So I've worked with risk assessment factors and research

for over 25 years. And what I can tell you is these threats aren't like the kind to hear on

the street. Ah, hate this guy. I could just kill him. These threats are specific. They show

intentionality. And that's why we take these cases so incredibly seriously. We need to really work

with these victims on safety planning. And the really great thing is that by taking these cases

to court, if we can get treatment for him, I'm a true believer in domestic violence counseling.

I can cite you all kinds of statistics about how well it works, but that's a positive outcome in

these cases. And then we have our wrongs to minors cases. This is a quote from one of our kids.

The only thing my dad abused more than alcohol was my mom and me. So again, we're trying to get

intervention in these cases. We're trying to get safety planning with the moms, not offending

parents. We're trying to get treatment for parents who are the offending parents. And in our next

slide, we can show that over half of our cases for the last three years involved assaults

in the domestic violence cases. So I truly believe that in intervening in these cases

at the municipal level, we are in the business of homicide prevention. Again, we're getting

services to victims, which I'll go over here in just a second, but we're also hopefully

getting defendants into counseling to give them the new tools they need in their toolboxes

to have healthy relationships that don't include violence.

Next slide, please.

So Marley's already covered this, that we have a rising caseload.

What I can tell you is that in 2024, we were amazed.

We had 2,126 domestic violence cases.

That was our highest caseload of domestic violence since 2009.

That went up 19% this last year.

There's a reason our staff retired.

We had 2,529 cases of domestic violence in 2025.

So what are we doing for victims? I have staff here today who already contacted victims. Their assaults happened in the last 24 hours. We're in touch with them that fast. These are the victims at the municipal level. They don't get. Sorry, I just saw my time limit. I'm going to hurry through this. We are contacting them before arraignment. We're doing safety planning. We're giving them protection orders. We're informing them their rights. On the next slide, it lines this out a little bit more. I won't read this to you.

what I want to highlight is that we're doing bilingual and bicultural advocacy thanks to

some of our staff. We're helping them with food insecurity. We're trying to help them find housing

if need be. A couple of quotes on this one. One of them on the fourth bullet down, this was not

a domestic violence. The victim said to us, I'm not here for revenge. I'm just here for accountability

and closure. Another victim said, thank you for making me feel heard. And that's what our staff

do on a daily basis. So Reggie Neubine, I'm one of the assistant directors supervising

our folks that are over on our JV docket. Just to talk about juvenile, so this docket was

primarily designed as a helping docket. It's meant to help kids and provide them and their

families with support and resources to hopefully keep them out of the state criminal justice system.

We don't have a lot of options, I think, in that court.

Really, if you look at the codes, the main options that we have are going to be to put the kids in the detention center for two days, which we never do, or find them, put them on probation.

But what we're finding is that one of our best options is to work with diversion and put most of these kids on diversion.

We're finding that Kevin and his team, they know these kids.

They know the outcomes that are going to be best for these kids.

and the resources that they need.

They're developing these individually tailored programs for the kids,

and they have an incredible success rate.

So as much as we can, we're trying to push kids over to diversion.

So this next slide kind of shows the age groups of our cases.

You can see here that most of the kids are teens, around that 15 to 17-year-old range.

I let you all know that most of the cases that we're seeing, we had about 600 so far this year, and most of those are assaults, around 195.

After that, a lot of them are trespassed, and then we have about 65 of those were destruction of private property, and then the next is theft and shoplifting.

So not a lot of truancy or low level, but kids fighting or stealing or trespassing.

On the next slide, so Marley kind of talked about this at the very beginning.

We are seeing cases, new cases come down in that docket, which has been great.

And a lot of that has been through the work that Marley has done with Sergeant McGinty's team over in DPD and then Kevin with OSCI Diversion.

and making alternatives to citation, which is a program where if a kid gets caught shoplifting,

instead of ever even getting a citation, the officer is basically routing them directly to diversion,

so they never see the inside of a courtroom.

That originally started in the schools only, and thanks to the work that our team, Diversion and DPD, did,

we rolled that out citywide in 2024.

And so we're seeing lots of the cases go down in addition to offering many of these kids diversions.

And diversion is getting a ton of work.

And then finally, just to note, again, you know, diversion, we're offering it in about 90% of the cases.

And in the cases where we're not, they are kind of what Linda said, too, in our adult cases.

They're cases that we are really working to try to outfile.

They're bad assaults.

They're shoplifting or thefts with a ton of money and having a lot of restitution.

And so, in those types of cases, we might be working to file or doing some other sort of resolution.

We are finding that most of the kids that are in this courtroom are accepting diversion, which has been great.

The case numbers are going down offerings for diversion are going up, which is exactly what we want to see.

And we're also seeing more and more victims of crime say they're okay with diversion through a lot of the work that Linda and her team are doing and the attorneys that are in that courtroom.

who are here making those calls to victims and explaining what diversion is.

They're showing that they're good with it too.

All right.

So that's kind of a quick overview of what we do formally.

We do a lot of community engagement as well.

We're not just a prosecutor's office.

So I'm going to start with kind of the court-related things that we do

that are kind of outside the box.

One is the outreach court.

We helped build this docket and create it back in 2016

when Alice Norman was head of OMPD.

and we actually held it. I think Reggie was one of the first attorneys in there. We held that court

over at the Denver Rescue Mission, so the intent was to bring court to them, to folks who were

struggling to get to court, so we would come to them. It was hugely successful and is continuing

on a different level. I think we're doing it at the library every other week now, but

it's been very successful. We've been part of that from the very beginning.

The wellness docket, we've been part of every iteration of that docket for the last 15 years at least.

So we keep trying to find ways to more creatively and effectively offer options for folks who have mental health challenges or substance use challenges.

The Fresh Start program was a program that was started by Beth McCann when she was still in the office.

And we participated in that in its first inception in 2024.

I want to say, where we, it's, folks could come in, it's on the weekend, it's not in

a courtroom where people can come in without fear and have their warrants vacated and courts

reset so that they don't have to run, you know, around in their lives worrying about

being arrested.

So it's been a great program.

We held it again twice, I think, last year, and I think we're going to hold it again this

year.

So these are a lot of the other things that we've been involved in finding creative solutions to.

One that kind of came up earlier today in another conversation was noise complaints.

There are creative solutions to noise complaints, and that's just not, you know,

your neighbors being loud with the vacuum cleaner late at night.

It's, you know, really loud bars that are making people not be able to sleep at night

or just off-the-charts kind of behavior that some neighborhoods are facing.

So we are really involved in different creative ways to attack a situation.

The Denver Methamphetamine Abatement Partnership I mentioned last a little bit ago was actually created by our partnership team.

So that's one of our we're really proud of the DMAP program and it lives on to this day.

It's probably been around for about seven years now and it's been so successful.

All right. We also do a lot of training.

We do a statewide training on domestic violence, sexual assault in later life.

We do all the district-level DPD trainings.

We're involved in a lot of what you heard in the previous briefing.

So there's a lot of training that we do throughout the state and in our city.

And then we also get out into the community.

We've been involved in the pride parades for the last five years, pretty proud of our float, our love and justice float.

So we are involved in extreme community makeover projects, graffiti removal projects, those kinds of things.

And then we've also partnered with the DA's office for the last, I'd say, 10 years or so in the Courtrooms to Classrooms program,

where we go to a fifth grade class for an entire school year once a month, talk to them about making better choices, about the criminal justice system.

They get guest speakers like the bomb dogs and such.

And then they culminate the school year by having a field trip downtown

where they all get to play a part in the trial of Goldilocks

for her alleged breaking and entering of the Three Bears House.

So that's just one of the things that we...

And these are their own little outfits.

They came up with their outfits and their costumes themselves,

so it's pretty...

Guilty.

He is often found guilty.

Sometimes they split the verse.

That is awesome.

So that's kind of a quick overview of what PACE does on a daily basis.

It's a pretty dedicated team that I'm very proud of.

So any questions for us?

And thank you for letting us be here.

Thank you so much, Marlee and team.

And production team, can you pull that down good?

Before we go into the queue, I'd like to ask for all the folks here from PACE,

if you don't mind, if you're able, please stand so we can recognize you.

Thank you so much for the work that we've been doing.

We do have a full queue of questions, as you can imagine, and we'll start with Councilmember Cashman and then Councilmember Sawyer.

I'm going to make it easy. My question was answered, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you. Councilmember Sawyer.

Thanks. Thank you guys so much. Really appreciate all of the work that you do.

And wanted to just acknowledge the fantastic work that you've done with us on vacant and derelict buildings.

So thank you for all of your work on that, because I think that will directly impact the safety and welfare of the community.

So thanks for that.

One of the things that you did not put on your slide that I know has been very, very successful is nuisance abatement and street racing.

Yes.

Can you talk a little bit about that?

Because this is something I talk about.

My community asks about it all the time based on the significant street racing we see over in District 5, particularly along the borders.

But you didn't talk about it at all.

It's only so much time.

I know.

Great question.

So back to kind of explaining the ordinance just a little bit, particularly in street racing.

So there's a lot of times where we can identify a car because they're very distinct.

We can identify a car, license plate, description of the car, but we can't identify the driver.

In that case, we don't have probable cause to file a criminal case against anybody because we don't know who was behind the wheel.

But we can identify the car that was involved in the street racing or the criminality.

And so we can get a warrant for that car and end up filing a civil case against that car.

If you guys remember, it's been a little while, a few years ago, it was an event called Kill the Streets, where a bunch of motorcycles would come in from all over the place, Denver, but also out-of-state cities, and ride their motorcycles in a row across I-25, slow down, and stop all the traffic, and then start doing wheelies and things.

We were able to identify three of those motorcycles through their Facebook postings.

They're proud of themselves. And we ended up crushing two of them.

We went through the civil abatement process and they didn't redeem, didn't come back to get their motorcycles.

That event has never come back. And so the nuisance abatement process can be a really powerful way to stop that kind of behavior or at least slow it down.

Yeah. Well, I really appreciate it. I think it's such a creative way to manage that.

But I know that there were 11 vehicles that you worked with, the District 3 Police Department a few years ago to confiscate under our nuisance laws as a result of a halo camera that was put up at Sports Park where they captured a number of different street racing activities happening.

And then you guys went and did that.

So I just want to acknowledge that work.

I think it is something that our residents ask about so frequently, and it's such a really creative way to solve the problem as best you can.

Right. So I just wanted to acknowledge that and say thanks, because I think it's really fantastic.

Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Sawyer.

And I was remiss of saying thank you, Councilmember Alvideris and your team for also co-sponsoring the commodities change.

I mean, it was excellent work from your staff as well.

Councilmember Paradine and Councilmember Alvarez and Flint.

Thank you. I appreciate the overview of what you all do. I think it was probably overdue for us

to get that, so thank you for coming in. I have some questions. I'm having a tough reaction to the

slides with images, to be completely honest. Did you get permission to share those?

We blocked out their... You can't identify who they are.

I think if you knew them, you could probably tell who they were, and the case numbers are on there.

You can look up the case number and see their names.

This is a public meeting.

The slides under our open meetings law, I think, now have to be attached to this where they can be looked up.

Plus, we were on Channel 8 for this.

And just so you have some context for this, Linda, because I think we maybe have met a really long time ago in our careers,

but I represented many, many, many victims on the civil side of things.

And so I would sit with them a lot of times for their criminal cases just to be there for them.

I don't have a role in that.

But I was over in Lindsay Flanagan with people very often.

I mean, and so it's not something that I lack context for.

Also, the slide that says the voice of victims, like, I don't know that victim rights groups love that kind of voicelessness narrative these days.

Like, it just, it's just sitting really poorly with me.

And I also think given PACE's overall caseload, you know, half of the DV cases that you guys prosecute are not assault cases.

So this is also kind of a sensationalist view of the overall scope of what you're doing.

If we're here to make policy, we just need statistics, information, the full scope of the office's work, which is what most of the presentation was and is super helpful.

The, you know, five slides, especially the image of that child.

I mean, again, someone could recognize that child from that photo if you knew that child.

So I just, I don't know if there's anything we can, I don't think we can take them off the slides at this point.

We can maybe at least take off the case numbers.

And I will ask our legal counsel, Bryland, if you could find that out, if it's an open meetings violation for us to remove those case numbers from those slides so that people can't identify these folks.

I would really appreciate that.

If it's possible to take the pictures out, I would really appreciate that.

So that's just some feedback.

I wouldn't assume that you're talking to an audience that doesn't have familiarity or experience with this, including personally in some cases.

Councilman Gonzalez is not here, but she was a DV case worker for a really long time.

So we didn't I personally all use I statements didn't need the quotes and all of that.

And I found it hard to even concentrate on the rest of presentation.

I think my only other question is, is it still accurate?

This was under the last city attorney, but I got information in 2023 that about 54 percent of people who were prosecuted by PACE were experiencing homelessness.

Is that still true?

We don't track that information, council member.

Okay. Carrie estimated that for me when she was here.

I'm not sure where she would have gotten that information.

I can show you the chart.

Try to follow up on it.

Yeah, I can send you the chart.

And I asked back at the time, and I think it's still important, we should be tracking that because that's just part of how we understand the full cost of how we handle homelessness.

And I've been asking for that information from this office for years now, and I've never really gotten it.

That's what we need, data more so than the pictures, in my opinion.

So thank you very much for being here.

And I do really appreciate the advocates.

You guys have helped a lot of women that I've worked with over the years.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Council Member Alvideris and Council Member Flay.

Thank you so much.

This is, you know, very serious, and it's something that we're seeing.

I actually came to work one day and found a woman crying in the hall on my way to the office

that was trying to file a restraining order, but you have to do that by 9.30 a.m.

And she was at a loss.

So I'm curious if there's been any looking at how do we help support victims

in a way where they're able to come and get services that they need?

Because I don't think they are because I have found them in the hallways,

kind of confused and lost, trying to seek help, taking days off of work

to come here and get help and not really feel like they're getting that help.

So we will work with a victim if we can to get them into civil protection order court.

You have to actually be here by 8 to get all your paperwork in time.

And then Project Safeguard has advocates that are in the courtroom staffing that too.

What we've talked with Safeguard about is, is there a way since the pandemic to get some of these online so that they don't have to physically come to the building?

That would be great.

And that's something that we're continuing to have discussions on.

I was able to help an elderly victim recently appear online.

So I know it can be done.

It's just a matter of working with the courts to try to make it more systemic because it's so difficult.

And the parking down here just adds to it.

Yeah, I would agree with all of those things, and we definitely need to do better.

And then going back to the data point, I think it would be helpful to have part of the conversation is why is domestic violence up?

how are we, can we work, you know, as council members to reduce that in our communities?

Are you tracking any of that data?

Do you provide any kind of, you know, supports to prevention as well?

We're working on that.

So in 2025, we partnered with Safe House Denver at the time and the Roseann Center and Project

Safe Guard to reinstigate the Denver Domestic Violence Collaborative to bring us system-based

organizations as well as nonprofits together to talk about things like this.

And so it's this ongoing discussion.

We're meeting every other month right now.

It's just in its first year of completion.

But those are the kinds of things we're trying to bring to the table so we can address it collaboratively.

I appreciate that.

And thank you all for all the work that you do.

I just want to end on that note.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Alvideris.

Councilmember Flynn?

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Quickly, if you have an answer, and if you don't, maybe you get back to us.

because of time. But the reduction in domestic violence cases, 25 over 24, when I looked at the

chart, it actually fluctuates. And 25 was higher than 2021, for instance. Do we have any reasons

why such a significant drop occurred year over year in the last year versus any other fluctuation

in the prior years?

We saw a drop during the pandemic.

Yeah.

Beyond that, I do not have a strong answer for you.

I'm sorry.

If we did, we'd probably be able to market it

and solve a lot of worlds.

I appreciate that.

On the methamphetamine contamination,

what kind of follow-up occurs

when someone is forced out of their residence?

I had a case in my district last fall

December, I think, November, December. And the person initially refused services. So I'm trying

to find out what kind of follow-up we have to get people back eventually to their residence.

I mean, it really depends on the facts of that case. Sometimes, a lot of times what we're seeing

is that it might not be the person who lived at the property is the person that caused the

methamphetamine issues. And so I know DDPHE was working really hard to push through.

They might've actually gotten it pushed through an ordinance that would require that landlords

provide alternative housing if they had to go in and placard the location. And so that's one of

the big things that they're doing to try to make sure that people are able to have a different

place to go to. It can be kind of tough if we're finding that the person that owned the home was

the person that caused the methamphetamine exposure.

And then Marley explained it.

It's also really bad when that happens because the meth can also spread to the other units,

right?

And so the whole property at some point can be an issue.

It was the owner and it was a family member.

Right.

And so I know that DDPHE also is, they are looking to figure out ways that they can do

funding for those folks.

But a lot of that stuff and a lot of stuff, a lot of the outreach gets done by by their group.

And I think that for most of it, you know, we're they're looking to make sure that the landlords or the property owners at those premises are providing those people alternative housing.

OK, we can find more detail for you.

I would hope that I know it's a lot of different agencies involved.

There is DPD and their outreach and the host and DDPHE all collaborating.

And I don't know how difficult it is to collaborate when you're all in different agencies.

Maybe let me, is that a difficult thing? It's usually is in this city.

Yeah, we can certainly follow up and get you some information. Thank you so much. Council members. I want to say once you have to pace me, thank you for your leadership and the collaborative approach with with deep with that for public safety and all of the other departments.

I know from my office at least three of our bills, including the housing habitability bill that Reggie was describing, that your team was essential in that dialogue and discussion.

And council really took the lead with passing that legislation last year.

Thank you to all of the advocates and the attorneys that are sitting in the audience.

I mean, your work on a daily basis is stuff you see and the stuff you deal with that you take home to your families as well.

I really appreciate, and I think council really appreciates your leadership and your work.

With that, we have one item on consent and none of the items have been pulled off, so our meeting is adjourned. Thank you all so much.

Thank you.