This joint meeting of the Mayor and Denver City Council was dominated by a detailed presentation and extensive discussion regarding the Denver Police Department's proposed Education-Based Development (EBD) program. The program aims to address low-level policy violations through specific training rather than traditional punitive discipline, with goals of reducing case resolution times, lowering recidivism, and improving community trust. Chief Ron Thomas presented the framework, emphasizing strict eligibility criteria and multiple oversight checks. Several council members expressed significant concerns, particularly regarding transparency, the classification of "low-level" offenses, and the need for stronger alignment with the Office of the Independent Monitor (OIM). The meeting also included brief announcements about city layoffs and an upcoming groundbreaking.
Thanks for joining us for this weekly joint meeting of the mayor and Denver City Council. Follow along as the mayor and city council members hear updates from city agencies and projects. Discuss important city matters and hear about what's happening across the Mile High City. Join the discussion with your elected officials, starting now. Okay. Thank you for Chief Thomas to be here to talk about education-based development. I do want to open with introductions and announcements. So I will start with the distinguished gentleman to my right. Good morning, everybody. Sadena Gonzalez Cuchette is one of your council members at large. Good morning, Kevin Flynn, Southwest Denver's District Two. Jamie Torres, West Denver District Three. Good morning, Manistan, Northwest Denver District One. We will open with announcements if there are any announcements that members want to share with colleagues or the members of the public who are listening at home, Councilman. Yes. Uh, thank you for joining me on Thursday at 10 15 a.m. We will have a groundbreaking for a very important bridge that Destrict seven residents have been excited about for a long time. The Jewel Pedestrian Bridge. That will be 10 a.m. on Thursday. Thank you. Thank you. Others. I mean, I'll be excited. Okay. I think people are excited to hear from the chief. I just do want to say a couple words. We're assembled. Obviously, these two days are hard days in the life of the city. We're in the midst of uh talking to employees about layoffs. That is never an easy conversation. I do want to thank all of the department heads who have worked uh so hard. Uh, one of the things I think you'll notice is that uh due to the really difficult work we've done to try to control growth in the budget over the last year and a half, uh, it means that we were able to do about 80% of the reductions yesterday on vacancies and not on filled positions with employees in them. So our 171 folks that we'll be notifying is a little more than one and a half percent of the city workforce. But importantly, in a city where 70% of our budget is personnel, that would mean that up to 140 million or so of that gap would have had to been solved on uh on the balance of city employees. We're very happy that that is not what we needed to do or chose to do. Uh instead, um, we're able to close about 100 million of that gap where more than 80% of that is from vacant positions. And so I know that will not make everyone's work easier, but it does protect uh as many of those city employees as we can, and so uh in the midst of these hard conversations, just wanted to thank the departments who are working so hard at everything they can to both deliver core city services to focus on citywide priorities and to protect city employees all at the same time. Um so uh with that, I want to turn to a topic that I know is important to many members of the council, to us, to the chief, uh, which is the police department's work on education-based development. So, chief, I will give this to you to walk us through the briefing on uh this uh concept. Well, thank you, Mayor. Thank you, uh Council President, the members of council. I know that I've met with many of you to give you kind of your own individual uh briefing. You may have questions that have arisen since then. Uh hopefully they'll be answered in the presentation, but if not, uh happy to answer any questions at the end. Um, so uh first I'd just like to begin by right setting some misinformation that I think is out there relative to education-based uh development. Um, so the current uh discipline matrix model remains intact. There have been no changes. Uh there's continued full transparency with the officer of the independent monitor. All cases will be entered and tracked in a shared database.