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

Coverage of the Health and Safety Committee starts now.

Good morning and welcome to the Health and Safety Committee meeting.

Today is Wednesday, February 18th.

My name is Darren Watson.

I'm honored to serve as the chair of the Health and Safety Committee as well as to serve all of residents of the Fine District 9.

We have two briefings this morning, but before we roll into the briefings, why don't we have community community?

Why don't we have city council introductions first?

Uh we'll start first to our right with Councilmember.

We're here, we're here, Flynn.

Hi, how are you doing?

Good morning.

You just start on the other side.

Uh good morning, Kevin Flynn, Southwest Denver District 2.

Good morning, Amanda Sawyer, District 5.

Good morning, Paul Cashman, South Denver District 6.

Uh good morning, Sadana Gonzalez Piquetez, one of your council members at large.

Jamie Torres, West Denver District 3.

And online we have, I believe Council President Proten.

Uh good morning, Diana Romero Campbell, Southeast Denver District 4.

Let's do a voice check, see if Council President Sandoval is on, even though I've got the notes.

Seeing that she isn't, once uh council president joins, we'll announce her.

So we have two briefings.

Uh, briefing on Denver homicide decline, and we'll start off with Chief Thomas and Chief Thomas.

If you're on the team, don't mind going around uh introducing yourselves as well, and then the floor is yours.

Well, thank you.

So I'm the police chief Ron Thomas, and we are excited today to uh to talk about our substantial declines in both homicides and non fatal shootings.

Certainly much of the credit for our success is due to the hard work of the men and women of the Denver Police Department, the officers, the investigators, our crime analysts who provide us the data with which we can build our strategies.

Um the two uh key figures uh in our strategy are going to be presenting today.

So uh to my left is Commander Matt Clark.

Uh he's the commander of our major crimes division.

Uh so his investigators do all the work, provide the surety of consequences, and also his uh data team uh provides a lot of the statistical data by which we um uh identify causal factors, which again inform our strategies.

And then to my right, Commander Jay Carrera, who works out of my office, and he is the one who operationalizes a lot of our uh strategies uh based on data and smart practice.

And before you all jump in, I just saw that Council President uh Sandoval, I believe, just joined a meeting.

Council President, thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Sorry for being late.

No problem.

Thank you so much for being here.

I'll turn back over to the team.

Thank you.

So we are presenting on the homicide decline, and to put our recent successes in context, we'll give a brief overview on the last 30 years or so of Denver Homicide history.

So Denver Homicides trend has a clear arc over the last 35 years.

There was a peak in their early 90s from 1991 to 1995, and then a pretty substantial decline during the 2000s mid-200 tens, except for a peak in 2003 and 2006.

And this was a localized localized surge in homicides that was not carried out uh that didn't show up nationwide, which leads to the point that homicide rate like politics, everything is local.

So what happens at politics, federal level certainly influences local politics, but just like uh mayor in the 80s could forget to plow the streets, and that leads to a big deal.

We can have localized strategies, successes, failures that are responsible to some degree for changes in homicide rate.

The years 2020 to 2023 were the worst in this period, and we've with a peak in two 2021 with 96 murders, and since that time we're at a 60% reduction.

How we compare to other our peer sister cities, which are all cities between 250,000 residents to one million, so this data is from the real-time crime index, which is run by the professional criminologist Jeff Asher.

He's fantastic.

He uh and and we we are reliant on him because the federal government only produces crime stats once a year, and we won't know last year until this October.

So he uses a team to gather statistics once a month, and this is what this is based on.

Rates are expressed per 100,000.

That's what the number on the left is to give direct comparison.

So for cities our size, last year, the majority of them averaged together saw a 20% decline.

We saw a 45% decline, which has us, according to the Council on Criminal Justice, as the largest year-over-year reduction in murder.

And although there was the 20% average decline, murders did not decrease all over, notably in Little Rock, Little Rock and Milwaukee.

There were spikes, increases year over year, and some of our cities in our weight class, such as El Paso and Raleigh were flat.

As a reminder, last year, these were our three core strategies to achieve a reduction in gun crime.

And I'll go over these briefly.

That crime does not become a pattern.

It's deliberately a band-aid or a tourniquet strategy to stop the bleeding at the location so that the violence does not become persistent.

We were able to show that within our our first year, the sites averaged a 30 to 45% decline in violence compared to when we were not there.

That's our intermediate strategy, our short-term strategy.

The intermediate strategy is called gun violence awareness and intervention, and we briefed this body last fall on this.

It went from October, October, and it's an open question if that returns.

Our long-term strategy is called place networks investigation.

This has been very successful, and we have very strong evidence that this has been contributory to the reduction in violence.

For example, in 2023, there were six murders that occurred in our place network investigation site.

So these are the geographic pockets, small squares or rectangles, other polygons that have the most violence in our city.

In 2023, we had six murders.

In 2024, 2025, and thus far, we've had zero.

So we've been really happy with that success.

The work is done by all of city government team that's called the PI board, and actually our last one, last uh two weeks ago, we had 48 people there from the city to talk about how we improve projects uh within our PNI states.

So that is our long-term investigation, and we are actually have 30 minutes, I believe, next month to delve into that in more detail.

With that, I'll turn it over to Commander Clark.

If I can just jump in for a second just to provide a little bit more context.

So I know that place network investigations for the term investigations seems very police enforcement centric, uh, but place network investigations is actually, more of an investment strategy using all of these other city agencies to provide investments in these communities to I think kind of change the dynamic so that crime no longer exists or embeds in those locations.

Thanks, Chief.

Uh I'm again, I'm Matt Clark over to the Major Crimes Division for the police department.

I'm uh very proud of the um reductions that have been achieved as it relates to gun violence, non-fatal shootings, and homicides, and excited to kind of describe that for you.

Um I'm happy to get as much into the weeds with questions as you want in terms of statistics, but let me give you a higher level overview.

So Jake took us back 30 years.

I'm gonna come back uh just 10 years to give a little more clear overview of the specific counts.

Um we've struck a line in the middle.

The blue line is our uh three-year average.

So our three-year average for homicides, homicide victims um is 64.

Uh we saw a significant reduction, as has been described, about 45, 46 percent um from the year prior.

And while while it tracks uh some of what we're seeing around the country, ours was far more significant, and there's a lot of work that occurred to get to that point, both from the patrol side uh that was described, and then the uh the the diligent work of the investigative team there.

One of the things we do is take a hard look at each of these cases to look at causal factors, really drill down to determine why they happened, and is there an opportunity in the future to prevent future violence and uh help inform some patrol responses and investigative strategies.

In doing so, we were able to determine the top causal factors for homicides in Denver last year were an argument or confrontation.

Now that tracks, we've seen that for the last couple years, and what that tip, what that essentially means is um uh we could have an ongoing conflict that just has been boiling or simmering for a while and then something escalates, or we could have a chance encounter, um, some interaction that goes south immediately, a road rage situation, um, something where there was no prior issue, but because of some circumstance, environmental personality otherwise uh cause that conflict.

Domestic violence continues to be a primary causal factor in Denver and one we focus our a lot of our efforts on.

Um we're seeing an increase in mental health related issues, and sometimes that's like random violence where we really have no other reason to explain why an incident occurred.

Um, but we do uh when an offender is identified, determine mental health was a component in that.

Um and uh we still have a very low uh number of gang motivated homicides.

So we certainly have issues where gang members are involved in violence, but when we look at gang-motivated incidents, that's in furtherance of gang activity.

Uh, we'll classify it within that category there.

So just to put those numbers into context, if we're looking at 38 homicides last year, 21 of them were argument or confrontation.

So it's a big component, a big number.

We had four domestic violence um homicides last year, and to put that into context, we had a significant reduction because the year prior we experienced 12 domestic violence homicides.

Um those are a difficult um subset of crimes to impact a lot of times.

We're talking about intimate partner violence occurring within the privacy of a residence.

Um, and and we know domestic violence is underreported.

Um, so there's significant efforts to increase that working with Roseandom.

We co-locate our domestic violence unit at the Roseandem Center.

We do significant community outreach to really try and intervene.

Um, and so we're we're proud of the reduction from 12 to 4.

That's a big huge step, I think.

Uh, but there's still certainly work to do uh as it relates to that.

Looking at what's happening with these cases, um, the chief talked about a certainty of consequence, and that's that's I think really important as we talk about gun violence, whether it's non-fatal shootings or uh or the homicides, um, impacting swiftly identifying and arresting these offenders so they can't continue to victimize individuals is a key strategy, I think, to reduce gun violence in Denver.

So there's a very talented group of investigators in the homicide unit that's extremely dedicated.

Uh they achieved an 84% clearance rate on our on our cases.

And so what that looks like is 31, excuse me, 32 of the 38 cases have been cleared.

25 of those, um, and actually, I take that back.

26 now have been cleared by arrest.

And six have been exceptionally cleared, and that's an interesting uh category to look at exceptionally cleared and what does that actually mean?

We follow the UCR definition for that.

Some of our domestic violence uh homicides were murder suicides, so the death of offender uh doesn't yield uh a prosecution.

There was other uh homicide uh incidents that occurred in Denver that resulted in a self-defense finding by the district attorney's office.

So the police department did all of the work to uh to investigate the case, but there's no prosecution uh that's appropriate in that case based on a self-defense um scenario there.

Six cases, six families are waiting for resolution currently in Denver, and the investigators are diligently working to um resolve those cases, uh, continuing to communicate with the families.

One of the big things to point out is we're very fortunate to have a victim's assistance unit within the police department uh that continues to um coordinate, connect with these families, help with resources with with counseling um as they move forward.

A couple stats just before I move on that I think are relevant.

Um I'll talk about the weapons used and get some more detail about that, but but while we look at last year's homicides, there's some things to point out that I think are important.

We focus a lot on youthful individuals as offenders and as victims, uh, and and intervening and providing resources and support that steers them away from the violent crime.

So we've seen a reduction.

If I look at last year, I had 11 um youthful victims, and and just for definition, that's 24 and under individuals that are 24 years or younger.

The year prior, we had 17, and the year prior we had 23.

So just like everything, we're seeing this this steady decline.

On the offender side, we're also recognizing a reduction in the youthful offenders, which I think is important, highlighting some of the intervention work that's going on there.

14 youthful offenders, again, 24 and under last year, 19 the year prior, and 22 in 2023.

Uh there's a lot of focus on what the police department's doing, but there's a ton of community support that I think that needs to be highlighted as this as well.

We have strong cooperation in the community when we have violent crimes.

There's no tolerance for the gun violence that is occurring.

And as evidence of that, I just offer some crime stopper statistics to show the steps, the tips that that the community is giving us, whether anonymously or providing information for future contact.

So as it relates to the homicides, we had 119 tips related to our cases.

We also had 78 tips on the fugitive apprehension side.

So that means we have an offender we've identified, we put out a crime stoppers bulletin saying I need this individual for first-degree murder for whatever the charge is, and 78 tips helped uh were provided to the fugitive team to apprehend these individuals again to get them off the streets.

I'll talk a little bit in the end about our non-fatal shootings just to provide and show the reduction there.

And so I'll offer now that 45 uh tips came in related to non-fatal shootings that we had uh in Denver last year.

The last stat that I'll offer uh related to this, and I can get deeper is uh we talk about are the is the offender and victim known.

What's that relationship with that individual?

Certainly we talked about intimate partner violence, uh, but in two-thirds of our cases, our offender and victim are have a known some sort of acquaintanceship, relationship, co-worker, familial connection.

Um there's some type of a known uh relationship there.

Looking across the city, here's the overlay of where the homicides occurred.

Um, and some of it corresponds uh where with where we're directing our patrol efforts.

Again, we use as much data and looking at these cases, why they occurred, when they when and where they occurred to help inform uh patrol responses throughout the city as well.

Just recognizing the context of this council meeting.

I just wanted to offer an overview from each individual council district so you have an idea of over the last five years what we're seeing in terms of the distribution of homicide incidents occurring throughout the city by council district.

I want to focus on the weapon.

There's significant effort within the police department to reduce gun violence in Denver.

And so if we look at what happened and how what the mechanism of of the injury that led to a death was as it relates to homicide, twenty-four of our cases were um the result were some type of firearm was used that caused the death of an individual.

Now there's a reduction that's occurred there because the year prior uh this yields about 63% of our of our homicides.

So the year prior, we had 70 incidents in Denver involving a firearm there.

Similarly, we're seeing success in resolving these cases.

Uh, and these can be difficult cases because we don't have, you know, there's there's different forensics that come into play when we're talking about the distance created by a firearm discharge um versus a personal touch or some sort of physical attack scenario.

Um, so 15 of those cases have been uh resolved by an arrest.

Again, this is going to encompass a bunch of our, or excuse me, the majority of our intimate partner violence, domestic violence cases, and murder suicides, or some of the exceptionally cleared, and we're still working to resolve four cases that were firearm-based last year.

I just briefly want to give an overview of the non-fatal shootings.

Denver uh established a non-fatal shooting investigative team.

It's become a national model.

We started it in February of 2020.

Uh, it's called firearm assault shoot team or FAST.

Uh so it's looking at what they're doing, these are specific investigators that focus all their efforts on resolving non-fatal shootings.

Bullets of skin, intentional weapon discharge by an offender.

Uh and through that, we increased our clearance rate coming into 2019 from about 18% to 69% in 2025.

That is a significant increase in offender accountability.

Um, and pulling these individuals who'd be willing to pull the trigger at and shoot somebody off the street and hold them accountable.

So uh the reduction is uh noted there.

There was about a 28% reduction in the victims from 20 uh excuse me, 2024 into 2025.

We look at the data, I can tell you again, we're seeing argument confrontation, and that tracks it.

It makes sense that those would kind of correlate there.

Uh in this scenario, though, we did see an increase or a primary causal factor of drugs and robbery cases.

These are our road rage cases, too, where somebody's willing to pull out a firearm and discharge it at a passing motorist.

Um, and then there's there's also house parties, and I think I described we reduced the the homicide.

I might have missed this, I apologize.

One of the causal factors that we focused on from prior years in homicides was house parties.

We were seeing these house parties escalate into confrontations which escalated into uh shooting scenarios and uninvited people coming.

The department made significant investments and efforts and focus to uh target these parties and raise the priority of a noise complaint call, which otherwise may seem relatively minor.

We saw an opportunity there to um intervene and diffuse the situation before it did escalate.

So, where over the past three years we had 12 house party-related homicides, we had zero in 2025.

Um, and that effort, that significant investment, and the focus by the patrol division um has is the credit that's given for uh reducing that.

We do still see some house party uh based shootings, and there's efforts to to continue to deal with that challenge there.

But again, just super proud of the of the resolution that we're achieving in those and uh contributing to the the overall decrease in violent crime in Denver.

Uh the last thing I think I have just for you is some stats.

The police department, the investigators are we the right people are conducting the investigations.

They're highly trained, they are uh they're super dedicated.

I can't speak highly enough about these investigative uh teams that are doing this work.

As we look at the technology investments that are being done, I wanted to provide a little bit of context into the touch these um services, these tools are having on our cases.

So the uh license plate reader technology advanced license plate reader technology was found to be valuable in 16 of our 38 homicides this past year.

Halo cameras captured the city camera network, captured some valuable evidence.

It could have been the whole, we've had some capture the entire interaction that led to the homicide.

We've had some that catch the flight of the um offender or the vehicle going away.

They've helped us track or monitor or show victim movements and how they got to that location.

Um, and as it relates to homicides specifically, uh, two cases benefited or were triggered uh recorded by the shot spotter technology.

And then on the right, it just highlights the impact that those have had, those technologies have had on non-fatal shootings there.

Um again, license plate reader has been significant in helping us to identify vehicles, um, to show directions of flight so we can get additional camera, whether it's surveillance camera from businesses, ring camera to help us identify, ultimately, dramatically increasing our efficiency to identify and apprehend individuals, uh, hold them accountable, reducing violence, interrupting violence, and then increasing our safety there in the community.

So our 2026 safe city goal is a 10% citywide reduction in homicides.

We're looking at two new initiatives to deliver that objective.

One, we've created a LODOS specific working group, which will occur after the PI meetings because everyone's in the same room, and we'll just continue to work on Lodo, Lodo is still about 30% of all shootings in the city.

Next, we'll be expanding PI to Colfax and Pearl.

Questions?

Oh, there's one more thing.

Matt totally buried the lead.

So there's a uh our clearance rate is 84%.

For nationwide, it's I mean, similar size cities are are in the 50s, 50% clearance rate.

And and we're close.

We'll get that 25 clearance rate will be up in the 90s before the next couple months.

I'm pretty confident.

So I really think that's one of the contributing factors is not only are the offenders incapacitated, but the families, the friends, see that the government is able to hold people accountable so they don't feel like they have to take it in their own hands to answer that wrong.

Well, thank you both uh so much for the information.

Thank you, Chief, for kicking it off.

I want to um introduce um Councilmember Parity.

Thank you for joining the committee meeting.

Um, information is important, and it's this briefing I think was escalated or or elevated by uh fellow council member asking for this information to be provided.

So I want to thank council members for bringing this board.

We have a queue um that's um uh growing, and so we have councilmember Torres and Councilmember Sawyer to kick it off.

Great, thank you all so much, and thanks for the back and forth.

I one of the things um that I requested last budget uh cycle was when we um share out citywide data.

If we could also see like what is the data that's happening in my district, I think.

Um, and chief, thank you so much for for getting that to me so I could understand how my com my community compares um to the rest of the city.

Um when we talk about homicide, um I've I'm I'm juggling, I think, two different uses of language, and so I want to be clear that I'm understanding what you're tracking for homicide, the mayor's goals are specifically gun-related homicide.

So, how much of homicide is gun related and how much is not gun-related?

So, uh again, last year, so we had 63% of our um homicides uh were gun related, firearm-related homicides, where the year prior we experienced 70%.

So we're seeing a reduction in the number of homicides mechanism being uh a firearm.

And then just to put it in context, Jake just jumped back to show what we're seeing for the other remaining homicides.

Okay, so um, is there a particular reason why we're um why the mayor's specifically tracking gun related just because it's the largest proportion of that homicide rate or it is the largest.

Um I think it's it it is you know, I think other cities have also found that it is the crime type that I think we can impact the most.

I also believe that it is the crime type that you know, violent gun crime, I think is the is the type that shocks the conscience the most, and I think uh impacts perceptions of safety.

Okay, one of the requests, because I've been sharing out our our district data, um, and as I go to talk to each neighborhood, so they can see how do 2024 in their neighborhood compare to 2025, and in general, it's really good numbers.

Like in violent crime, nine out of the 10 neighborhoods saw a reduction in violent crime and in district three.

That's a huge talking point.

When we're asking them, what are you seeing?

How are you feeling?

Um, what they don't, what we're not even able to capture are gun-related anything in those categories.

So everything is kind of a larger pool, and we're not able to see because property crime tends to be a little bit more of a different conversation for us.

How many of those are gun-related?

Like, do you track that internally?

We do.

You do?

Okay, that might be a future thing that I just so love to know a little bit more about, so that I can answer those questions from community.

Um and then finally, I just want to give um some kudos for PNI.

So for my colleagues, the PNI location in district three was Paco Sanchez Park.

Um I don't know that did we have a homicide in that PI.

Do you remember, Commander?

In Paco Sanchez, uh I don't believe we did, ma'am.

Okay.

If I think back, um, no.

I think the impetus for that PNI was gun or I'm sorry, drug related activity, um, and other um maybe robbery, maybe other kind of property property crime issues.

That's dramatically improved, even though we don't have right um any net loss or gain of gun related um uh homicide.

Law Malin Park is different, and I really want to thank you for adding that to uh the PI for DPD district one.

I know it was a huge um lift for them to take on another PI location, but for my colleagues in 2024, we had four homicides in that neighborhood.

Um in 2025, one.

So there are, you know, that's not the only metric that we've seen success in, but um I just have to say like it's been really valuable for us to pull all city departments together and even extract innovative ways that DPD enforces um crime in that neighborhood.

So just want to thank you all and and point to that as a real uh a real win.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Torres.

Councilmember Sawyer.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Thanks, you guys.

Um, I'm gonna echo councilman Torres because the P and I site in District 5 has done a hundred percent drop in crime as a result of the PI, and that is uh a number of different city agencies.

Of course, it is the fantastic work of district three, but it's also DOTI, it's also DDPAG, it's there's so much that goes into PNI that is a lot of different moving parts that all come to the space where we saw a hundred percent reduction.

A hundred percent.

That's extraordinary.

Um so I want to say congratulations, first and foremost, because you guys have done a the entire PNI team has done a fantastic job.

Um, and so thank you for changing the lives of hundreds of residents who live in that complex who feel safer uh and as a result of this.

So um question for first question for you.

What is exceptionally cleared?

So there's um the UCR, the uniform crime reporting has uh that's how we report our data federally, has as really two ways of calling a case cleared.

Okay.

So one is cleared by rest, which means an offender is identified the prosecuting uh attorney, the district attorney, Denver District Attorney in our case, um, files a case against that offender, regardless of the outcome, guilty not guilty, takes a plea, it doesn't matter.

From the police department's standpoint, we've uh identified the offender, produced a case that's prosecutable.

That's cleared by rest.

The other is exceptionally cleared, and there's a sub several ways that uh it can be exceptionally cleared.

And what that looks like is what's the what is the police department's investigation done, regardless of what the prosecutors can do, and there's a number of hurdles that can come to an ultimately a prosecution.

But exceptionally cleared, um, says basically the police department investigators did what they needed to.

They identified an offender, but for some other reason we cannot move forward with a prosecution.

So what we saw this last year was death of offender, which is a reason, so of a murder suicide scenario.

Um, and we saw self-defense.

So we we identified the offender who caused the death of another individual, um, but they had a valid um a claim of self-defense and an affirmative defense that prohibits the prop the prosecutor from moving forward.

So again, clearance rates look at police departments' effectiveness essentially.

It's a it's a gauge of how effective are they in resolving cases, um, and so that's why they're kind of grouped together and we reported out as one total number of clearance um saying, yeah, we had this subset, um, and and in years past, we've we've uh had a higher number of self-defense cases.

Um those can be those make my day type situations where somebody enters another residence.

Um and that some of those are difficult scenarios too.

Uh, you know, we have drug transactions, and if if there's like a gun battle that results in that, there's sometimes a difficult scenario for the prosecutor to navigate to determine can we prosecute, or did I have valid self-defense, even though I was engaging in some illegal activity.

Okay, really appreciate that because I was like, what is exceptionally cleared on this slide.

Um, all the strict definitions by the the federal government reporting.

Okay, really appreciate it.

Um, well, I want to just say congratulations and thank you again.

Um we just got the results back from our annual survey, which we open up in around Labor Day and it closes December 31st of every year.

Um, and specific, we're 95% confidence with a 2.4% margin of error again.

So I can tell you exactly what um respondents to my survey are thinking in district five.

I I will flag for you.

Um you said earlier, Chief Thomas, that gun violence in particular um impacts the perception of crime, and I, as you know, agree with you 100%.

Um the two other things that we found in our survey this year that are really flagging um perceptions of crime.

I just want to flag for you.

The first one is street racing, and the second is porch pirates.

So I know we've looked at that.

There's a lot of hands in both pots when it comes to that, um, and so it can it can be a little bit um more difficult to impact those numbers um directly, but wanted to at least flag for you that I would say that perceptions of crime continue to be very high in district five.

Um, but we know because there are zero homicides in 2025 in district five that it is no longer homicide that is causing that perception, right?

And so what is it based on the data that we've gotten back in our survey?

It's those other two things.

So just want to flag that for you guys.

Um I know you have teams working on it, I know you are super involved in it.

Um, and I know it is much more difficult to impact both of those than um than gun violence, but just wanted to give you that feedback while I've got you guys here for that.

Appreciate that.

Thank you.

Thanks, Mr.

Chair.

Thank you, Councilmember Sawyer, Councilmember Flynn, and Councilmember Gonzalez Gutierrez.

Uh thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Could um could you go a little more deeply into hot streets, and how that works.

I understood the initial explanation, but what I don't understand is how you go about blowing borders around.

Here's a place where we're gonna do hot streets for the next 28 days, and here's where we're not.

And how do you know or how do you suspect that there will be continued gun violence at this location because we saw one or two, yeah.

Um, not at that location where we also might have seen one or two.

Yeah, a great question.

So Jake is gonna pass out a map that uh we kind of preemptively created that just kind of shows uh identifications of sort of hot streets.

And so basically, our uh data analysis team is constantly uh reviewing, compiling, reviewing data to determine where um spikes in crime occur, uh all spikes in crime, but in particular, uh spikes in violent crime, and so um uh they go through and identify locations in each district where um uh where gun crime has spiked, and uh and then they provide that to that district commander who then identifies the strategy which with the which they're gonna employ to sort of um calm that situation down, and so uh that could mean you know, lighted patrols, that could, you know, mean you know, police cars driving through neighborhoods with their overhead lights on, it could mean um uh you know additional patrols during certain periods of of time during a shift um where violent crime seems to be most persistent given uh the significant data that we uh present to that.

Uh so there's a number of strategies that we could uh employ in that street segment that is identified as as a hot street, and typically we um identify that as a uh a location to focus on for 30 days.

Uh and then typically what we see is in that 30-day focus, um, we seem to have turned the temperature down significantly in that location, and then that allows us to move to another location where there's either an additional spike or where there seems to be some uh persistent gun violence.

And she said there's a difference, it should be obvious even to me that there's a difference between a one-off on this map where I see um the Bear Valley Shopping Center where my office is, or see a one other violent gun crime looks like it's near Gust Elementary, versus where there might be a cluster in a short period of time.

Is that basically what you're looking at?

Yes.

Okay.

Thank you.

I appreciate that deeper look at it.

The other thing I would ask is um have your GIS people uh overlay a map of council districts because you have four homicides in my district on your chart, but on the map there are only two crime dashboard.

Uh no, on the on the uh in the presentation with a red homicide citywide on slides, slide six.

Right.

The two the one on uh in Bear Valley and the one at the uh Bear Valley shopping center at Sheridan and Hamden.

Yes, sir.

We'll talk to the analyst, thank you.

Yep.

Councilmember Flynn, uh, Councilmember Gonzalez Guterres and then Councilmember Albidas.

Um thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Um I have a couple one question on the map uh slide six.

There's like a red boundary around the second portion of district three, or it is all of district three.

I don't know.

What does that red boundary mean?

Oh no, it's taking us the inverted L.

No.

Um, oh, I see, okay.

So what what is that, Jack?

That's shot spotter.

Oh, oh yeah, that's that's where our whole district um one of our shot splatter polygons, yeah.

What's that?

That's a shot spotter array.

That's what's covered by shot spotter.

Oh like that and so then that's just district three.

Well, so this map.

Certainly, and I'll have to go back and talk to the analysts.

I apologize for that.

Uh there wasn't in a specific call out intended for shot spotter in there, so I'm not sure why um that was called out of this map that was provided to me, but that's what it is.

It's a big help.

Um, yeah, that would be great to see.

And and maybe I guess if they didn't intend to, but they did do it here.

Is are there other red boundaries that are missing, or is that only where shot spotter exists?

No, so this is the shot spotter um network that covers uh both police district one and police district four.

Um there are other um boundaries that are in police district two as well as in police district five.

That would be great to see too.

Um then the other is on it's like for about the 2025 September, and where we had the briefing on gain, um, and I guess I'm curious, it would be great.

I don't know if you have data on how these different interventions, I know you mentioned them here, but specifically how they addressed um the decline.

Um, and I because I know with gain, there was not a significant um outcomes were not very significant.

And I think that led to kind of taking a step back from that.

Um, but it would I would be curious because of the very significant decline, how you know whether hot streets are PNI, how those have maybe had more success in addressing that issue, um, and whether or not because I know there was discussion about gain kind of 2.0 or coming back to the table or reevaluating if that's something that is even at this point, like if we're seeing these declines happening, is it something that's even needed?

Sure, or is there a different intervention that is sure?

Um so I can talk about that a little bit.

So I think, you know, nationwide, there generally is a three-legged stool as it relates to addressing gun violence, one being sort of a a very localized focus, which is our hot streets, and then kind of a broader, you know, citywide, you know, whole of government focus, which is RP and I.

There's also focused deterrence, and that is, you know, I think goes by many different names for us.

It was gain as we um I think looked at our reductions.

We were able to point to the fact that those reductions were mostly because of the maybe wholly because of our other two strategies and not because of that strategy.

And so uh I I still think that there is value in identifying people that are involved in uh significant numbers of incidents of gun violence and trying to um sort of off-ramp them into into healthier lifestyles and connecting them with um you know community groups and and other partners that can help with that work.

Um understand you know some of the the pushback.

I actually did have uh an occasion, I think at um uh de los muertos uh celebration on um Morrison Row to engage with those uh uh which lean warriors and kind of help them understand that this is you know you don't find yourself um being a focus of gain because you are a gang member or because you wear a certain type of clothes or live in a certain type of neighborhood, you actually have to have had uh clearly identified uh instances where you were a suspect in a violent crime uh in order to in order to be um a subject of intervention.

Um I think their um after that explanation, their largest push pushback, which is understandable is the fact that it wasn't developed with their involvement, and so I think if we do move forward to sort of a gain 2.0, I think that's gonna be an important component is sort of their involvement and what does that uh intervention piece look like.

But again, um because of the fact that much of our success didn't really involve that um focused deterrence model.

Um I think we want to primarily focus on the other two that had much more uh visible success.

Yeah, thank you for that, and I'm glad that you were able to have that conversation with with the young people at that event.

Um I guess on that front, it's great to have their involvement and input.

Um, but I was under the impression based on the briefing that we had that it not only was if you were it's if you were involved in any kind of gun violence, regardless if you were an alleged perpetrator or had some involvement on that end of things, versus even a victim could be um identified based on what we were doing in Denver, not based on the actual evidence-based um program that was we were modeling after we weren't actually modeling it to the fidelity of that program.

I mean, that's the evidence does suggest that intervention is best directed towards both victims and suspects of of gun crime, and so that's why that you potentially could be um identified uh to be a uh a subject for intervention if you were um a victim of of multiple uh gun involved incidents.

Okay, um, yeah, I look forward to learning um more about that, and I think the only other thing that I was gonna ask for was around data where you address the um technology enabled investigations, knowing that you know we haven't always had a technology that we have, and we know how rapidly it's changing.

Um I guess it would be helpful to know because this looks like this is for 2025 this data to see um the previous year's data since you know maybe it's looking at I know we've had Halo longer than ALPRs and like they've all kind of come in at different times, but just maybe seeing how to get it more how they're having an impact on these numbers would be really helpful.

I know for me, and I I'm sure even for the task force that many of us sit on, um, would be helpful to to have that information.

But um, other than that, I think that's all I have.

Um, thank you, Mr.

Shaw.

Thank you, Councilmember, Councilmember Alvidas, and Council Member Parity.

Thank you, committee chair.

Um, thank you for this presentation and giving us all this valuable information.

Um, I'm curious about what role the crime lab plays in resolving in uh these crimes and in this, you know, statistics of homicide dropping.

Absolutely.

I can't um overstate their value in these.

We we're we're very fortunate to have a uh independent crime lab.

We're not tied to the state lab, and we have a world class lab with most of the sciences of forensic sciences completed there.

Beyond that, we have a strong professional staff of um crime scene technicians that's going out and doing the work of documenting the crime scenes, processing and data documenting collecting the evidence.

Um so they are critical to the success of this.

It's all one big system that's working extremely well.

It's the it's the investigators, it's the patrol officers that are trained well, it's the uh the technology based solutions, and then the crime lab partnering with the DAs doing vertical prosecutions.

Like the system is working very well in Denver, and a lot of credit has to go to the crime lab team.

Um we benefit significantly from the DNA.

Again, we don't wait in line at the state lab like other agencies are.

So we're able to really affect a swift identification and apprehension of an individual.

There um we have an accredited lab, continues to be an accredited lab.

They are of high credibility in court.

They testify as experts in all the sciences and help us uh obtain and sustain convictions for the cases that are filed.

I appreciate that.

I know it's something that we were looking at last budget season because they were telling us they weren't having the stop to go out and get to these crimes scenes fast enough, so I look forward to hearing more about that in the future.

Um, and I also wanted to know it says other peer cities, but it doesn't say which cities that we're looking at.

It also doesn't say if they experience the same crime spike that we did.

Can you speak to that or provide that data?

Certainly, so the other pure cities are every US city that has a population from a quarter million to one million.

And whether or not so that the orange line you could tell the Broncos were still in the playoffs when they made this graph, the orange line that's our pure cities, how they their homicide rate.

So this is the number of murders on the vertical access per 100,000 people, and that's generally the way you compare cities because there's a wide variance of population.

So they had a higher overall spike at one point.

We were worse than average, and we've since caught up um and are now better than our pure cities.

That would be helpful, or even if you could just tell me where I could get that information, that would be helpful.

I also wanted to ask about um you had mentioned the number of cases that were resolved, um, with significant role in the LPR cameras.

What is significant role?

And if you could give us more information on, I think it was 16 on those 16 cases.

Sure.

So um, there's a couple ways that the ALPR um has has yielded information that's furthered an investigation.

So that's what we tried to track is is identify that there was information that was useful in bringing a case to resolution.

Um so oftentimes an LPR is capturing a image of a vehicle, a partial license plate, a full license plate of an offender, an offender vehicle, it could be a victim vehicle, um, an associate of an offender.

So it could be a secondary link back to another person potentially that leads to us.

Uh you know, sometimes it will connect us to a witness who leads us back to um an offender there.

Okay.

Um lastly, well, I just want to share that the crime data dashboard keeps changing and it makes it hard for us to track, and so I try to get on there to see more information about my district.

But one of my concerns is that not only um has the there's still homicides in my district, is that um if you look at the neighborhoods, they're consistently happening on the west side, and this map kind of shows that as well.

Um that it is the you know, federal corridor, and then looking at the hot streets map, there isn't, you know, a sorry, I'm feeling a little under the weather today.

Um there isn't a shot spotter on South Federal or Federal and Alameda, where this map shows a lot is happening, and so I'm curious how that's decided and if that has been considered.

Are you referencing shot spotter?

Yes.

So there is the shot spotter um that covers both district one and district four actually covers uh Alameda and Federal.

Uh so we do capture uh gun gunfire that is um that occurs there.

Um, and then why isn't that on the map then?

Well, I mean, because I think I think it was uh mistakenly placed where where that isn't.

I don't think there was an intention to place.

Well, I mean, I guess if you look at at the polygram, you know, area gram that's there, um the the right-hand side of the of the red line is federal, and then Alameda is just above those three dots.

So that aluminum federal um intersection is covered in um in the shot spotter network in that particular part of town, and then as it relates to hot streets, um, one Alameda and federal the um the um the Fari Center I think was probably the most successful P and I location that we've had in history, probably one of the most successful PI.

Um where the Farry Center is.

Um, so that that uh was one of our first PI locations.

Uh we were so successful with that that it has become a national model, and that has moved to sort of a maintenance uh uh location, and we still see significant reductions in violent gun crime there.

I appreciate that.

And you know, back in 2020 when right where you see this huge spike is when I woke up in the middle of the night to a mom screaming because her son was killed right in front of my house.

So this area is where I live, it's where my son lives.

It's an area that's really important to me, and I would love to continue to think about how we can keep improving because even though there has been improvement, um, there's clearly some more work to be done, and so I just want to continue to raise up the west side of my district, and I'm pretty sure if I could see a map of my district, all of these murders are happening in probably two neighborhoods of the 10 in my district.

So, want to continue to lift up that issue.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, committee chair.

Thank you, Councilmember Albiders.

We're a little bit over on this presentation, in very important discussion.

So we're gonna continue.

Now, obviously, I know that the next presentation coming up, uh, we have the ability to abbreviate a little bit.

Council Member Perry.

I'll try maybe so I've been um reading a lot about the nationwide drop, um, and I'm very glad that we're a little bit ahead of the trend.

Um, but also depend the you know, there's different ways you can measure the back different numbers of years, you can look at the cities where that leaves the city's overall homicide rate per 100,000 residents, you can compare it to the number of homicides in past year or to the rate per 100,000 residents across the city.

So there's different, you know, and we're doing we're ahead of other comparable cities, I think, no matter how we slice and dice it.

Um but for example, New York and LA, as I'm sure you know right now, um the homicide rate per 100,000 residents in New York City is like three percent, you know.

So it is actually a lot lower than us.

Um so looking at all of that, um, I've been reading a bunch of the just outtakes on this, and um an example is there's uh I don't know if I can share this up on the screen, but like the council on criminal justice has reported on this everyone always looks at the end of your crime trends, and this is like the big question I'm sure in your PhD program.

Like, why are we seeing this?

Um, and it looks like the academic conclusion is mostly that um the only nationwide driver is both just we're coming off of the COVID high, so that's reversing, and then the ARPA funding, because that's money that went absolutely everywhere in the country, it went to all cities, um, it was basically population-based, and so we all got equal funding.

Um, and you know, it looks like pretty much every criminologist that gets quoted in the national press about this as saying like it's the ARPA money.

So I would point that out just to say that um it still matters like I it's good for Denver to be like even better than the trend, you know, like those additional little margins are really important.

Um, but I just want to make sure that we're not mixing uh prevention with clearing is this the clearance rates being up is great news, and that's strictly you all's work.

Like there's nothing else we attribute that to that is you.

Prevention is a different thing.

Um, and I hate to see us uh what I would be super interested in, and I wish that maybe some academic will do this, would be to look at how different cities invested their ARPA dollars and whether that has any correspondence with cities had higher declines and homicide rates or other violent crime.

Um that's the question that would really be interesting to me.

Is okay, if the ARPA money is the driver, did we do better with our ARPA money than others, especially now that we're facing the end of that money and trying to decide which things we did with that money that we continue?

Um so if you all get wind of anything like that, um, the work that's being done out there, I would be very, very interested to see it.

Um, and then there was one slide that I had a question about, but I may lose it.

Let me see if I can pull it back up.

While you're looking at if I could just talk about, I mean, we you know continue to look at you know national trends and what uh other uh research is is showing.

Um from the prevention standpoint, we recognize that there's significant value in prevention, which is why we have great relationships with a number of community partners that we think are very valuable in you know violence interruption, violence prevention.

I think they um quell a number of things that could turn into gun violence, homicides, retaliations, and things like that, and so we will continue uh that work as well.

Yeah, thank you for saying that.

Um, and I know that that's true.

Um I think my question was just to go back to the um the clearance, the change in clearance rates.

So the change in actually you know figuring out um how this particular homicide occurred, um, as opposed to the change in the homicide rate.

Is that on one of these slides?

So you want to call the factor.

I mean, I have the no, just the change.

Oh, here it is.

This is this slide.

Um, but this is for all for non-fatal shootings.

I'm just looking for the slide that shows the clearance rate for homicides.

Sorry, it's like five.

Yeah, so in 2024, the clearance rate was 78%.

In 2025, that was 84%.

Um, I would love to see that rate coming back in time, like what that percentage has been.

Because I do have the sense that that's improved, not just between those two years, but over time.

Yeah, Denver historically has a high 70s, plus 75% clearance rate.

Um, certainly in you know, coming into a new year, like I said, I I anticipate being able to resolve uh a number of the six remaining uh 2025 homicides.

Uh and there's still work going on in resolving those uh prior years.

We have a cold case unit that's working diligently on some of those as well.

Um but yet Denver historically has a a really strong clearance rate, and it's the investments that that are being made in the investigators doing the work there.

Okay.

So we've had a strong clearance rate.

I remember this also from our ALPR presentation.

And I just want to again point out that I don't I think we need to be honest about the difference that new technologies are making, and I think they are in some cases and marginally.

But if we've had a high 70s clearance rate for a long time, and now we have an 84% clearance rate, we shouldn't be attributing that to Flock.

There's a lot of work that you all do that goes into that, and I don't think that's you know it's had an impact in some cases, but I don't think we should be overstating that.

So the value there is it comes from um the efficiency in the investigation and the ability to quickly identify somebody.

Um these investigators, they'll continue to work and get there, most likely, but this uh much like using DNA or other forensic technologies we have, it makes it much faster to impact and prevent future violence.

And we have seen significant gains um and in activity related to ALPRs through the non-fatal shooting site as well.

Okay, thank you so much.

That's all, Mr.

Chair.

Thank you.

Thank you, Consumer Parity.

Uh, just one quick comment uh to folks in Council President, Council President of Pro Temp study that didn't have any questions.

So, first, um we didn't speak much on the house parties.

Want to thank you all uh very much.

We had a pretty active one in District 9, um, several shootings, um, no one, no fatalities, and working collaboratively, not just with um the District 2 and District six uh officers, but um the whole host of folks within the city were able to uh shut down that house party and mitigate uh any additional house parties that were happening near or there.

And so um I know that has been a great stressor, and I appreciate even outside of the um uh PI and all the other targeted approaches, just your regular work from our your at least in district, my city council district nine for district six and two, um, you have been highly effective on some of the other factors that have caused uh criminal behavior in our neighborhoods.

So thank you all so much.

Thank you for the full presentation to the council members that are online.

The maps will be placed in your uh mailboxes, and we'll transition to the next uh presentation will take about a minute or two.

Thank you so much.

I appreciate that.

Thank you all.

Thank you.

For introductions and for you to go into your reservation.

Perfect.

I think I'm ready whenever it's like, and uh provided uh direction.

You can move the slides from the computer there, and can we provide some additional support?

For the moving of the slides.

Oh, there we go.

Okay, perfect.

There you go.

Yes, I'm ready.

So um, my name is Major Janella Roscoe and I currently oversee employee development for the Denver Sheriff Department.

And today I will be talking about recruitment and retention within our agency.

And the Denver Sheriff Department continues to operate within a highly competitive national labor market while fully committed to staffing and sustaining critical public safety operations.

Recruitment and retention are not isolated efforts.

They're a continuum that brings out their continuum that begins with outreach and extends through training, wellness, leadership development, and long-term employee support.

Our strategy focuses on three core objectives expanding and diversifying the applicant pool, reducing candidate loss during the hiring process, and retaining trained, experienced staff through wellness engagement, and leadership investment.

As far as recruitment, to broaden our outreach beyond Colorado, the department has used paid national recruitment platforms and digital marketing.

We have invested in indeed job postings, which are paid postings allowing DSD to reach candidates nationwide who are actively seeking law enforcement careers and are willing to relocate.

We've also invested in targeted Facebook recruitment campaigns, monthly campaigns leveraging Facebook advanced targeting tools and focused on high yield states such as California, Texas, and Illinois.

This approach maximizes return on investment by placing recruitment messaging directly in front of individuals already interested in a public safety career.

And recently, the digital marketing marketing partnership with Street Source Marketing, which the ad right here shows part of that partnership.

DSD is in the final stages of implementing a six-month multi-platform digital marketing campaign to include new recruitment videos for the Denver Sheriff Department, Google search advertising, pre-roll video, programmatic radio, and linkedIn ads and site retargeting.

This campaign will generate approximately 3.8 million digital impressions, ensuring consistent messaging across devices, and re-engaging potential applicants who previously expressed interest in law enforcement.

We believe that these efforts will have a great impact in our future recruitment and retention in the long in the long term.

As far as community recruitment events, in 2025 alone, DSD participated in approximately 190 recruitment and community events, including job fairs, cultural celebrations, military events, and facility tours.

Our presence at events such as the Lunar New Year, which will be this weekend, March Powell, Cinco de Mayo, Juneteenth, Faith in Blue, and Special Olympics, reinforces trust, transparency, and meaningful community connection.

As far as hiring results and academy growth, the data here reflects the number of candidates hired between 2022 through 2026, as well as the number of academy classes hosted during that period.

The second set of data represents the scheduled academy dates for 2026, and our goal is to seed approximately 30 to 35 recruits per academy class with the projected total of 120 to 140 new hires in 2026, supporting steady workforce growth.

Our current workforce, as of February 6th, when we graduated a class, the Denver Sheriff's Department operational strength is 64.96%.

This slide shows the staffing breakdown by rank.

You'll see a different number here at 68.92%.

That figure reflects total employees on paper, including recruits who are still in training.

Our operational strength is those that we can actually deploy and are able to staff a post today, which is at the 64.96%.

As far as our diversity, nationally, women represent approximately 12 to 14 percent of sworn law enforcement officers.

The Denver Sheriff Department currently exceeds that benchmark with just under 20% female workforce.

DSD strives to achieve the 30% by 2030 initiative, which is a national effort focused on increasing female representation through data-driven recruitment, mentorship, promotions, and retention strategies.

The diversity strengthens organizational culture and enhances trust within our community.

As far as reducing candidate loss, to reduce candidate loss during the hiring process, we've implemented targeted incentives and a pre-hire program to support strategies that keep qualified applicants engaged while they're moving through the process.

As far as a hiring bonus, we have a one-time hiring bonus of up to $3,000.

It is paid in phases at hire, academy completion, and probation completion, supporting both recruitment and retention.

We have the pre-hire program.

Candidates who have completed the hiring process may be brought on prior to the academy start date where they're receiving pay and benefits while performing non-uniform duties.

This reduces candidate attrition and keeps qualified employees engaged.

And we also have our referral and incentive program.

Employees are encouraged to refer qualified candidates.

Successful referrals earn up to 20 hours of administrative leave, reinforcing the concept that every employee is a recruiter.

As far as training, support and career development, our training pipeline, new recruits are paired with seasoned deputies during the academy as part of our mentorship program, strengthening early engagement, connection, and long-term retention.

Our recruits go through an 18-week training, combining classroom instruction, scenario-based learning, practical skill development, focus on safety, ethics, decision making, and wellness.

And then upon completion of the academy, they do go through a five-week field training program where they are paired with a certified uh field training deputy who guides them through real world application, reinforces standards, confidence, and professionalism.

As far as our wellness and employee support, we believe that retention is directly tied to employee wellness.

We have an employee wellness program, which includes physical, mental, and financial wellness resources for our staff, on site health screenings, fitness support, stress management, and retirement education.

We also have two physical therapists on staff, and we believe that early intervention reduces loss, supports recovery, and promotes career longevity.

We have an employee outreach program that provides proactive confidential support during onboarding, critical incidents, injury, and life transitions connecting employees with resources early, and a peer support program where we have trained deputies who provide confidential peer to peer support, strengthening resilience and morale.

As far as leadership development, in 2025, DSD invested in 80 plus employees through national recognized leadership programs, which include FBI LEDA, which stands for the Law Enforcement Executive Development Association, the Rocky Mountain Command College, First Line Supervisor Training, and Women Focused Leadership Development, just to name a few.

And the Colorado Smart Grant funding was instrumental in supporting these initiatives.

And we believe investing in our leadership strengthens culture, accountability, mentorship, and long-term retention.

As far as our retention initiatives and employee engagement, we've revitalized our retention committee, and we are scheduled to meet monthly to discuss employee feedback regarding actionable improvements within our agency.

Employee appreciation and morale efforts.

We once a year we host a law enforcement appreciation week where we provide our staff with food and different um items that are donated from within our communities.

We do food trucks and cookouts for our staff as well.

And then we have implemented some communication improvements.

We do have a Monday mustard, which consolidates updates, reduces email fatigue, and increases transparency by centralizing information on the internet.

And how can city council help us with recruitment?

We ask for City Council members' partnership in amplifying our recruitment efforts by sharing our posts, including information in any newsletters you may have, and helping us connect with community events.

These small actions expand our reach and help us attract qualified candidates from within our communities.

And as far as looking ahead and future investments, through the voter-approved vibrant Denver Bond, DSD will move forward with a state-of-the-art public safety training complex, expanding training capacity, modernizing our facilities, and strengthening recruitment and retention for years to come.

In closing, while certain factors such as salary benefits and retirement are governed at the city level, the Denver Sheriff Department remains committed to improving everything within our control, employee support, leadership development, wellness, communication, and culture.

We understand that recruitment brings people in, but retention keeps experienced professionalism and stability within our facilities.

Together, these efforts protect our workforce, our community, and our future.

I'll stand for any questions.

And thank you to Denver Sheriff to start off just your service and support of Denver City Council.

Um I we so appreciate all that you do, and thank you for your presentation.

Uh, we have a queue, Councilmember Flynn and Councilmember Torres.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Uh thank you for all the information.

I was at your recent uh graduation at DU.

I had never been, I don't know if you've used that before.

Thank you.

I didn't have to drive out to Rosalind.

Uh but uh it was a beautiful venue, and our great event, and what really impressed me was the diversity of the class.

And I was asking Sheriff Diggins, and he was not able to provide this because you don't accumulate this information, but I was curious how many of those uh new deputies are recent immigrants to America making a commitment to the safety of their community or children of immigrants, and uh it I think it's unfortunate that we don't have that, and I understand why why would you collect that?

It's not necessary for your mission, but it just really made an impression on me.

Um I also recently attended the Faith in Blue uh event that was down at Holy Ghost uh church, and it was very inspiring.

But it makes me it puts me in mind of asking what are the obstacles to recruitment.

What are the typical reasons you find that potential recruits, people who would make excellent deputies are nevertheless saying no thank you uh to Denver?

Are there are things that we can change here that would change that story?

I think law enforcement as a whole nationally is very competitive, and it's a matter of um individuals deciding on, you know, the various agencies, we're all vying for the same candidates, and sometimes we run into challenges with um people picking them up before we are able to.

So there's it's not a a single issue.

Um there's multiple issues that impact our ability to bring people in.

That would be right where the pre-hire program would address someone else picking them up before we can start our academy.

Definitely, and the pre-ho pre-hire program has been instrumental in being able to keep people um being able to retain those individuals on the front end.

And just to um address what you talked about within our um coming to our DU graduation and also our faith in blue event, um, I just want to thank you for your partnership and your continued support on all of that as well.

It was it was very inspiring.

I I've been to many of your graduations, but this was the first time it was I was right up front and it was in my face that look at all these people from all over contributing to the vitality of our department here in Denver.

Uh does the fact that uh someone can train here and get the experience and then uh go to Jeff Coe or Arapahoe and be on patrol.

Does that uh is that a disadvantage for us?

I uh division chief Kelly Bruning.

Uh I I would say it is.

We, you know, as an agency we do have certain limitations in what and what my responsibilities are.

Um ultimately if someone if that's their goal um is to uh patrol or um do street activities, um that is something um we we offer in a very limited capacity um for our agency, um, but that is if that is their ultimate goal, something that more likely they will leave our agency to go someplace else.

So we're looking for a combination of an individual who truly wants to work in corrections and change people's lives, correct?

Correct.

Thank you.

Uh that's all I have.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Thank you, Councilmember Flynn.

Councilmember Torres.

Uh thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Um, as it relates to the way that you hire, um, obviously different from police and fire who are through civil service commission.

Your folks folks come in through the OHR system or CSA system.

Um has there been an assessment of if that system is working well for you all?

Because we're looking at a council president Sandoval and I for the civil service side.

Um we haven't taken on like the OHR side of your uh hiring process, and is that um been identified as any barrier for getting folks hired on quickly?

Um I know police often talk about losing people because it takes so long.

Their process, is that the same for you all.

Uh I can I can only speak.

Uh I assume the seat in December, and I have seen there are some challenges as far as I think when we went through the budget crunch and also that limiting positions that are available to do certain things within the city, it does create somewhat of a bottleneck for us.

Um at the moment, we only have two, we have a supervisor and two full-time uh background investigators.

Um we are uh as an agency helping contribute to that on the front end with the initial processes getting individuals in, um, but there is a um what we would consider a bottleneck at this time as far as processing applicants.

Yeah, I imagine that's difficult when you're trying to recruit more, right?

Or you're holding more academies.

Your average per academy is increasing quite a bit, um, nearly doubled between 2022 and 2024.

Um so I imagine that contributes.

Is have you assessed why people leave?

Like if they're if they leave before five years, what the reasons for that were?

We we do have statistics.

We have an exit interview form that they will fill out, and then also we ask them to then speak with the supervisor or an individual of their of their choosing.

Um we do have uh that metric.

Um I can I I don't know how granular I would say that's um being tracked, but we do we do gather those um those reasons and also ask for those interviews to be completed prior to anyone leaving our agency.

Okay, great.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for the info.

Thank you, Councilmember Torres.

Councilmember I'll be there, and Councilmember Perry.

Thank you so much.

Um again, like committee chair said, we're so grateful for the work that you all are doing from in our jails saving lives to overdoses.

I've had the opportunity to go to some of the award ceremonies that you all have for your staff.

To hear the things that um they're doing and the lives that they save on a regular basis is really humbling to even work next to you all on top of the fact that you guys keep us here safe as well late at city council meetings.

So thank you all for everything that you do.

It is important, and I just want to emphasize that.

Um this is all very concerning.

What I like to see is I don't see anything about how many people we're losing, like an actual number.

What is that?

What is our retention rate and how how soon are we losing people?

I don't have those numbers with me right now, but I can I can get those numbers for you so that you can see what those numbers look like.

Let's have that for all of counsel.

Thank you so much, Major.

And is there any surveying of like why are you leaving?

Is it to work for another course or are we doing exit surveys?

Yes, uh, we we do uh there we have an uh exit interview um form, and they will put on why there's a very a varying degree of um individuals leaving for you know, working in law enforcement someplace else or not in law enforcement, and then it also digs a little deeper into some of the um like cultural issues or or some of those what they kind of how they state and some um a lot of it.

I I can go off what I read.

Normally it is it's um our work hours, um, the shifts, the long hours, um, the scheduling that goes around that.

Um, so um I can only I guess uh from my my perspective on uh I read everyone that every everyone that leaves and then some of that um but we do we do and can provide um some metrics behind that for for council.

That would be great, and also if you could provide how much of our our budget is going to overtime paid, that would also be very helpful.

Um the one thing that I have heard um directly from some sheriffs is around the retirement and the 85-75 rule change.

I don't know if that has been something that you all have been in conversations about or that that is something that is regularly discussed.

It's unfortunate that that is a city, it's a city-driven uh career service rule.

Uh we have three tiers of retirement for our agency, those that are in the first, the 75%, 2%, 75%, 1.5%, and now we have the 85%, uh one and a half percent.

So that is that is a city-driven policy.

Um we do constantly try to look at that, um, but from what I have seen, have not had much success in reversing or changing any of those.

I appreciate that.

I just want to uplift that these jobs are extremely difficult dealing with life and death situations, and on top of that, extreme amounts of overtime.

And so I'm sure having some kind of light at the tunnel would be helpful, but thank you all for being here.

I I appreciate especially the recruitment.

The recruitment's great, but it really doesn't mean anything if we're not able to retain those people.

So want to uplift that.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, committee chair.

Thank you, Councilmember Alviders.

Councilmember Parity.

Yeah, thank you so much, Mr.

Chair.

Um, and thank you for being here.

Also, I love that picture of you that's on the flyer that's in the it's a great photo of you that was on the slideshow.

One of our staff members, no, it's not you, it looks like you to me, and I thought that's a good photo.

Um, all right, compliment was drawn.

Tell her.

Um I'm trying to look in the budget book at the training and recruitment line um for you all, and I think it would be easier to just ask the question because things get sliced and diced in such a goofy way in here.

Can you step back and tell me again how many people how many of you all work on that?

Um, and then sort of how the recruitment work is divided.

Like, I don't know if people are doing all recruit how many people are doing all recruiting as their job versus how much that's like a little piece of someone else's job description.

Let's just talk about the stuff.

I have one full-time deputy and one full-time sergeant that oversees recruitment and are um going to these multiple events.

Um we do have individuals that will come and assist in various capacities depending on if we have to divide and conquer and go to multiple events.

Um we do have other staff members that will volunteer and come and work alongside us, but right now we only have two full-time staff members that are focusing on those efforts.

Is there a vacancy there or that's just the that's full of what we're staffed for?

Did that change in recent years?

Um a couple years ago, we used to have two recruiters, um, but the other one was a temporary position that we were filling.

Okay, was it grant funded or something or just um and then what is the I I guess it's a two-part question?

Like, what are the components of the recruiting budget?

What are you spending money on other than the staff that do it?

And then what does that budget look like and how does it compare to past years?

I don't have exactly those budget numbers.

Um, but um it goes into talent acquisition, um, talent acquisition plays a big part in um just the overall budget portion of it, and then also um going to various hiring events because a lot of our events do um come out of fee.

So a portion of that goes into that, and then we do have some budget that goes into different type of swag items to be able to engage with people.

Yeah, has that what has the um ch any change in that budget been over time?

Like is that significantly up from last year, significantly down from last year about the same.

Like so last year, um, we in the past we've worked with the department of safety to utilize some funding to be able to participate in multiple events.

Um they have pulled back some of that funding to really uh focus on indeed campaigns and trying to reach nationally.

Okay, yeah, which you mentioned in the slides.

I think in the budget, but there's a one line for training and recruitment, and so for the sheriff's department, so it's hard to piece out the little recruitment part, but the training and recruitment I noticed was total 17.6 million 2024 down to under 10 million in 2025, and then just a teensy bit, so basically still 10 million in 2026.

Um, and that just made me I'll follow up with probably department of finance or safety finance about that because I'm curious how much of that's training, how much of that's recruitment, I guess.

Um, and I guess the bigger question would be like we are in such a constrained budget environment that we just ask this question all over the place, and we can't necessarily do much with the information that we get because there's not, you know, there's not money.

But what would be in your view, like the most impactful way to spend additional money on recruiting?

Would it be another recruiter?

Would it be like something else?

Like what would um what would that look like if we were living in some magical budget world that we don't live in?

I think there's um a few different things to to definitely look at is um an additional recruiter would be extremely helpful um overall.

With our staffing, it's um somewhat of a challenge to be able to pull somebody into that position right now.

But um, I think that would be helpful.

Um, and just you know, additional funding to be able to attend multiple events throughout the year.

Thank you so much.

Thanks, Mr.

Chair.

Uh thank you.

Uh Councilmember Parity.

Just want to make sure online.

Uh, Council President Pro Tem or Council President, if you have any questions, we have about four more minutes.

Um I want to jump in now.

I was out.

Councilmember Sawyer?

Yeah, thanks.

I was out because Torres got my questions, but now I'm back in.

Um because I'm just curious Councilmember Parity's line of questioning around recruitment um and the ability to have additional recruiters.

Can you just tell me a little bit about um the like is it specialty recruiting in some way?

The reason I'm asking is because you are career service, unlike our other safety agencies, and that means you're under OHR, and OHR has recruiters.

So I'm just curious why they can't help you out with that.

That's a good question.

So I can only speak from what I've seen since um being in the chair, and I and I know I think uh the resource pool has been drastically reduced, so everybody is dedicating uh resources across the city, and so I think for us it it is kind of uh where we are a niche group as far as what we do and how we do things, and so actually physically being able to discuss what and how we do things is best done by our our own staff members.

So it needs to be a specialty.

It's somewhat of that where I think if there was a general recruiter, they could only give them the basics of here's the pay, here's what the benefits are, not so much the the touch points of what the job entails and what what someone may be looking at when they're going to do this position.

And then it it gives us you know that that personal effect because we see them throughout the process, so it kind of also helps in building that uh family tie, I would say, uh amongst um getting them from start to finish throughout our processes.

Okay, really appreciate that.

Um, and then the only other follow-up piece, Councilmember Alvidre has just left.

Um, so she's not gonna get to hear this, but um the rule of 85 change that came in 20, I think, 18.

Um Councilmember Flynn, you were here, but that's a state law, and the city changed the or home rule, right?

So we have our own ordinance on that, but we changed it to match the state law.

Um so there I think it's not as simple as just changing it, right?

Because the purpose of changing it at all, like it needs to change it the state too.

So worth I think considering in the future.

2011.

Was it 2011?

It was that far back.

Earlier than 18, yeah.

Yeah, okay.

It's 2011, but that change is the result of the state law.

Yeah, which gets a little gets a little hairy.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Sawyer.

Uh, one last time for council president.

Um, but seeing no one else on online, want to thank you all.

If you have marketing ready, newsletter, um, media stuff that you can provide to all of the people for recruitment for all of the good information you share.

Please do so.

I think each of us have a newsletter, and we will send that out to our communities.

We bet we have one item on consent.

Thank you both so much for the presentation.

The meetings adjourned.