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.

Um, welcome to May Council.

Uh thank you so much for being here.

Uh we will start with introductions.

Uh the distinguished pile fan to my right.

Would you mind opening us up introductions?

Thank you very much, Mr.

Mayor Paul Cash in South Denver District.

Go Pyle.

Oh, wow.

She just came back at you, Mr.

Cashman, with a strong response.

Yeah, Watson, fine, district nine.

Good morning, Manisanville, Northwest Denver District 1.

Wonderful.

Uh good morning.

Great to see you all.

We will open it up with introductions.

I imagine the gentlelady from District 7 might have an announcement she wants to make about this weekend.

Oh, why, thank you.

I do have something on my mind.

Um, I would like to just share and congratulate Denver Summer FC on their home opener this Saturday.

It'll be a lot of fun.

Uh, really looking forward to supporting our women's professional sports here in Denver for the first time, and it will be at Mile High State or I guess and power field at Mile High Stadium uh at noon on Saturday.

Hope to see you there.

Thank you.

There are still some tickets left, though not many.

There are already, I think almost 55,000 tickets sold.

It'll be the largest women's soccer sporting event in American history.

So you should be there for the grand debut.

There's gonna be a whole morning of festivities and events and parties outside of uh Mile High from 8 to noon.

So come by for the party stay for the game.

Councilman Cashman.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh yes, go Swimming FC and Go Pyos.

The pioneers are uh playing cornell.

I think it's Saturday night up in Loveland in the regionals for the uh NCAA national championships, which annually leads to the uh uh final four, which is known in hockey as the frozen four.

So uh looking forward to uh a successful run this year.

Also, uh we'll let people know one more time that uh uh Wednesday, April 1st, 6 to 8 p.m.

at Cook Park Recreation Center.

We're having our Meet the City uh Academy in the community with about 30 city agencies and outside partners uh tabling up to answer your questions live and in person.

So uh be there or or be square.

Will there be any April Fool's Day jokes included in those editions?

No, but you know, uh after I made the announcement in council last night, Councilman Hines leaned over to me and said you'd be foolish not to be there.

I told him like a Flynn Strong dad jokes game from Councilman Owens.

Uh other announcements.

I actually present pro town.

Thank you.

Good morning.

Um the Welshhaw Golf course, yeah.

The Wells Charlotte Golf Course is turning 100 years old, and we've done a national um historic designation.

We are having a large celebration, community celebration, and golf tournament on June 5th.

So if you are interested in playing, the registration opens on April 1st.

Not it's not, it's it's for real.

It's not an April Fool's thing, but um in their spaces are limited.

But on uh June 5th in the morning will be the golf tournament community celebration in the evening.

And so it'll be a lot of fun.

Come celebrate with us.

I would like to add to that that if they're a souvenir hunters, I have left many golf balls in the woods and water hazards at Welsh or golf course.

You might want to hunt for.

It'll be like an Easter egg.

It is.

And I believe you're gonna you're gonna play.

I will be live with can't wait.

Fantastic.

Adding new Easter eggs to the collection all the time.

Yes.

Uh other announcements.

All right, wonderful.

Um, uh, thank you all so much for being here this morning.

We uh have one item on general session this morning, no executive session.

Um, but one of our our general session topic was we had a couple of requests to update both the listening public at home and the council on our one of our public safety strategies called Place Network Investigations, or as Chief Nice and Call it, it's a safe neighborhood strategy uh focused on how we help support neighborhoods that have had historically high levels of crime, and where we know that one of the challenges is just some of the conditions of the ecosystem that we can address in a collect collective collaborative way.

And so we want to give you a bit of an overview on that.

Um, Chief and Commander Herr, if you want to come up to the table, it'll be great.

I'll do a couple of intro slides and give it over to the chief to talk through all the hard stuff.

Um great.

Welcome.

Thank you, gentlemen, for being here.

Uh all right, go ahead to the first slide.

Uh so a little bit of uh overview of what we'll do.

We'll talk some about the overall outcomes we've seen from this program uh and why we're so excited about the progress it's made, a bit about the overview of how it started, what the timeline has looked like.

Uh we'll walk you through some of the locations, uh, share some of the highlights from those locations, talk a bit about lessons learned on these sites and about next steps.

Um, with that, we'll jump in.

Next slide.

Um, for those of you uh that are new to it, obviously council members know, but the uh place network investigations is a name for an evidence-based problem-oriented policing and rescue and resource uh strategy that's focused on addressing violent crime needs by examining all of the surrounding environmental needs of that community.

And that means we're looking at uh not just police activity, but looking at what all of us can do in our part for public safety, and that means we're partnering with residents, we're parting with community-based organizations, and we're taking a whole of government approach to how to support this neighborhood.

So that means often for us, it is about are there businesses that are closed on that block that we can help reopen with our economic development team?

Is there poor lighting or crosswalks that our Dotti team can help improve?

Do we need more after school programming that our children's affairs team can help offer?

And so you'll see uh there are about eight different city agencies that partner on each of these efforts, and they sit on a board with community members who give us feedback on what they want to see happen in those neighborhoods, and then these teams take on implementing those activities.

Go ahead to the next one.

Here's a bit of an overview of the outcomes by the numbers to date.

Let me just walk you through a bit of what this looks like.

Um 2023 uh was when we first started working on this at this point.

There was only one place network investigation site uh in the city.

Um we were seeing some real success on those sites, and so uh we decided uh in 2024 to add five new sites.

So what you see in 2024 is the expansion from one site to a total of six sites.

So that's why when you saw things like the assaults go up from uh 23 to 24, that is because we 6x the total amount of uh neighborhoods we were focusing on.

Um and yet, even with that, we still saw the number of murders go down in 2024.

But the really exciting thing is if you look at the impacts after we added all six of those sites in 2024, through 2025 and 26 year to date, we've seen some really exciting uh declines in the violence at these sites.

Particularly you look at the non-fatal shootings.

All six of those sites together went from 22 shootings in 24 down to two in 2025.

So that's almost a 90% drop in those aggravated assaults coming down uh about 30-40 percent at that time, and the grand total of uh fences down about 40 percent or so over those uh over that year to date.

And so this is why we're excited as we see this community voice, community collaboration, uh, all of government strategy.

We think is making a real impact in these places, and we are excited uh to have uh Chief Thomas and Commander Herrera talking to a little bit about what's working specifically and what we're finding.

So go ahead to the next slide.

This is the last one of mine, and I'll give it over to the experts.

Uh thank you to our great team from safety who made this chart.

What this is is just a date of how frequently we are having shootings and homicides.

Every blue line is a shooting, every red line is a homicide, so you'll see pretty steady drip through January and July and 24 of shootings.

As we get to full rollout on these projects by the end of 24, start of 25.

You see across those sites almost a full year of 2025 with only um one non-fatal shooting, one homicide across those sites.

And most exciting, if you look at these, each of these locations, the total number of days since the last shooting in places like Paco Sanchez, that is 763 days since the last shooting there, you know, 650 at East Colfax and Verbena, uh, 480 at Leedsdale and Oneida, 440 at uh North Peoria.

Uh and so you'll see some really great results of how well these community partners are working with us to help keep those neighborhoods safe.

Uh and this graph is one way to show that.

So just thought that that was one compelling data point for you to see uh on how this have gone.

As we mentioned of the six sites, um, five of them we've had shootings that are down 100% year over year, so the only two that we had last year were at one site.

So uh really excited about the progress.

Uh, all grateful to our team from the police department and to all the citywide departments working on this and the community partner's been such great resources.

I'll give it over to Chief Thomas to talk through some of the overview of what we're doing, what's working, and what our next steps are.

Good morning.

Thank you for having us on uh Denver Police Chief on Thomas.

I'm gonna provide um for more of an overview of of how we have rolled out placement network investigations in Denver.

So on this slide, you'll see that uh the initiative sort of began in 2021.

Actually, began in 2020.

Uh we uh entered into conversations with Dr.

Tamara Harold from University of Nevada Las Vegas, as well as uh Robin Ingall from both uh Ohio State University and the National Institute of Justice.

They really um sort of laid out this program that had been successful in other cities, in particular the uh the city of Cincinnati, where they saw some dramatic decreases in crime and a particularly violent neighborhood.

Um we uh did some our own independent study, uh, decided that we wanted to initiate this here in Denver to address some of our um persistently violent hotspot locations.

Uh we then did uh an effort to identify which neighborhoods to begin with, and so in uh 2021, we began with the locations of Alameda Federal, 47th of Peoria, and then Colfax and Verbena.

Uh we then expanded after seeing some initial success in 2024 to include Mississippi and Rare Town, Papua Sanchez Park, 800 South Oneida, uh, as well as uh Lodo 2025.

We then incorporated Lincoln Law Park because of some challenges that have been identified there.

Uh and then as we head into 2026, we have decided to move Lodo to sort of a different um strategy and ways of addressing the the crime challenges there because we think it lends itself to a different strategy because it's not necessarily the same type of neighborhood as some of the other neighborhoods that uh this uh strategy has been successful in.

And then we're going to be uh incorporating the strategy at Colfax and Pearl.

Uh so the next slide uh just talks about sort of the phases that uh um the place network investigation uh goes through, um sort of the initial phase is really just trying to get a sense of what the uh issues are and what is kind of leading to the challenges there as we move down the line.

Uh we then began to identify some of the challenges, some of the city and community partners that we need to address those challenges.

And as you kind of see, you know, that's where we develop, you know, phase two and three is where we've developed the PI board that is going to be addressing these challenges on a regular cadence and deciding who is going to do what and when.

And as you can see as we progress uh to phase five, that is when the police sort of begin to divest, if you will, from being sort of the lead agency and take sort of a back seat to some of the other uh city and community partners that uh that could kind of continue the work into the to the maintenance phases.

Uh next slide shows um the current locations uh for uh police network uh operations initiative.

So in particular one, we have Lake Along Park, uh police what also has Paco Sanchez Park, Police District 2, Colfax and Verbena, police district three has uh Lee Sdale and Oneida, so basically the 800 South Oneida location.

Police District 4 is Morrison Road and Perry.

Yeah, Police District 5 was the 4300 to 4800 blocks of North Peoria, and then again District 6 initiating probably uh in the next quarter in Colfax and Pearl.

Thank you, Jacob Pereira, Commander of the Chief's Office.

I'm gonna go over some of the highlights at specific locations.

So starting for District One at Lincoln La Alma and Paco Sanchez.

So at Lincoln La Alma Parks and Rec was a phenomenal partner in upgrading the existing lighting within the park and moving the fences almost on a day-to-day basis to try to promote good positive activation.

The thing we're most proud of the work of that team was when that site was designated as a PI, Parks and Rec did not feel like it was safe enough to play T ball.

So the organized sports activity that are great for getting the community out to enjoy that park.

They didn't feel like it was safe enough.

And so this spring it is offered.

We will have T-ball back in that park because of the progress we've made.

We've also worked hard with uh excise and license to uh work on the Circle K there right off Colfax to make some security improvements that are really helped.

Paco Sanchez is really uh over 700 days without a shooting there.

Again, they've drastically increased lighting.

They put in existing license lighting, they also brought in mobile light towers, they did cleanups in the park, they cleared away the um a lot of the excess weeds and brushes.

Uh they sponsored tournaments, they have a great disc golf tournament there.

Uh they put in a dog park, and we sponsored joint park patrols where we paired up one park ranger with one DP officer to go through the park on a regular basis.

At Colfax and Verbena, we worked with Dotti and Excel to improve the lighting.

So the lighting on Colfax is good, it's great.

Colfax is nice and bright.

But if you go one block north, one block south, it is not.

And that's where a lot of the problems have migrated to as Colfax has gotten an increase in police presence.

So on all these sites, the number one thing we do, the first thing that the most popular request by far by the PI teams is increased lighting.

So Dotti has done a great job upgrading lights, going to neighbors, talking to them, asking if they would like to participate in getting brighter lights.

Um increased the frequency of picking up trash around the alleys, and they uh have shut down two corrupting locations within that specific PI that were directly contributing, they're actually corrupting spots, which is where the businesses were not just an attractor of crime but a generator of crime, right?

Participating in the drug dealing, participating in the selling of fraud of um stolen goods.

We also, as part of the ARCA money, had 499,000 that went directly to local businesses within PI.

So at Colfax and Ravenia, two places got upgrades.

They were both Mexican restaurants, as it turns out, with um to help their parking lot and to help their the fence around their community uh around their business.

Uh District 3 site, the next slide, thank you.

At Leedsdale Oneida.

So each P and I see PI site has a different partner agency that's a function of what the problems are there.

So when we're in a park, it's parks and rec, obviously.

At district, at Leedsdale and Oneida, it's been DDPHE because of the amount of public health violations that were occurring within that apartment complex.

We did a big trash cleanup.

We uh gave ARPA money to that uh apartment complex to put in increased lighting, security cameras, gates.

Um a big problem they had was big dumpsters that were in an unsecured parking lot, so just anyone would dump mattresses, couches, a boat, just dumping all kinds of trash in that.

So getting that um secured was a was a big win.

Um I'll talk about this one later about lessons learned, but we really have worked hard to establish trust in government in the city at Leedsdale and Oneida.

So one of our newer sites is in Police District 4, Morrison and Perry.

Commander Qually did a light the night where he and his team went to every single residence within that PI site and gave them better light bulbs.

Forestry was out trimming trees, and there's uh facade improvement program of $35,000 for local businesses.

Last we have Peoria, 4300 block of Peoria.

This was one of our original PI sites, and this location is now safer than 95% of the rest of the city.

So what we've done here is they were a big recipient of the ARPA funds.

Um and what we've done here is establish the first community organizing committee that's really directing the future of PI maintenance.

So what that means is there's almost no gun crime there anymore.

So the police are ready to pull back and have pulled back.

And now we're turning it over to community to direct the activities and guide the priorities of the city, and we're really excited about that.

Um partnering with OSCI, Brian Faruz has been great in leading this effort, and we've had three of the four three meetings so far, and I'll tell you one quick story.

So the District 5 police leadership team thought it would be a good idea to bring everyone into the police station that's across the street from the PI, and they asked the ret the community, what do you want to see?

What are your priorities for this area?

What do you want to see done?

And they put it on big butcher pads that they wrote down, and then those lieutenants took those community suggestions and put them in the roll call room so the officers could see every day what the priorities are for that community.

So I thought that was cool.

Alright, uh next slide.

So we've learned a lot of lessons in doing this full speed uh over the last three years.

The number one overall takeaway is what takes an intermediate reduction in crime to sustaining a long-term investment of community resources, is the collaboration with non-police agencies at a whole of government approach.

It's really what happens when we leave and pull back and go to the next hotspot.

That we have partners from Parks and Rec, DBPHE, Dottie, Dito, that really sustain that momentum.

That's been huge because we the first time we didn't, we didn't always have that follow-through, and that has made all the difference between the different iterations of the site.

Other thing we learned is not every crime hotspot is a PIL PI work.

So what the best example is is Lodo.

It's just PI sites are selected based upon violent gun crime, and Lodo has that, but what you'll hear about the architects of the theory is these places remain are are persistently violent locations over 10-20 years, and that's because there's organized criminal networks that cause the violence.

So think of organized crime, it's not always like Tony Soprano, but you have organized drug dealing, something happening at that location, and so we root that out.

But there's also places where they congregate where they lay low for a period of six to eight months.

Once the police are gone, they come back out.

So what we're doing with District 6 with Lodo is what's called a problem-oriented policing pop, which has been around for a long time, but it's just focusing on what can we do to changes in infrastructure, what can we do, and partnering with the bars and specific cultural elements of that bar out crowd time, which is when the violence occurs.

Where we had made so much progress, and we after the ice raids, we couldn't get any traction there whatsoever with the residents.

We lost all our trust, no matter how we had we use different proxies saying the police department is different from ICE.

We don't communicate, and we're here to you know give backpacks to your kids, and it's been it's been uh very difficult.

Uh we're still working there, but there's not an easy way to rebuild the momentum.

Uh and it's it's there's been a little uptick uh in violence there that uh we think we may or may not have happened if had the ice rates not happened.

Operational, okay.

So we're really good at using uh excise and licensed to build criminal cases to shut down corrupting businesses, but then it just takes a long time for Avondale liquors to not become Avondale liquors for it to be a grocery store or something that would be a positive in the community.

So especially on East Colfax, where we've shut down two very large uh geographically large businesses that were contributing to the violent crime, and they were just fenced up for a prolonged amount of time.

So it's very hard to it's it's easy for us to go from negative to neutral, but it takes a lot more to go from neutral to positive.

And there are still places where we need to build capacity as a city to fill a need.

One of these came out, and this is referenced to Paco Sanchez, where we were trying to think of winter activation, and historically Parks and Rec just doesn't do a lot in winter because normally we have winter and winter.

But you know, this we we we look we reached out, we were trying to replicate what Ruby Hill does in the winter.

Could we do like a sliding thing with the with the when there wasn't any snow, there was there was there just wasn't that so there's still a lot of gaps that the city has to fill to successfully manage this PI sites.

Um we're continuing to build out the PI maintenance playbook that's being led in District 5.

Our next site is gonna be Pearl Fax and Pearl in maybe late April, that P and Ice site is gonna start.

And the Loto Focus Interagency Group is an interagency table where we just round table what's going on once a month in Lodo to reduce crime.

And Chief Thomas has some final points of summary on the strategy.

Uh thank you, Jake.

Um I just wanna uh uh make a couple of points that I think sum up the question of what is PI.

The first, I think a number of you have heard me say that this is more of an investment strategy rather than an enforcement strategy, and what I mean by that is you know, uh our positive results are achieved while reducing uh police contact, and so that is the increase in I mean the increase uh you know the economic confusion as well as increased uh positive activation.

The thing I think is important to point out is while this is reactionary in terms of um you know, we we start to initiate the strategy once we identify a location as a persistently violent hot spot.

We then kind of turn into sort of a proactive phase in terms of addressing sort of the social and infrastructure-related uh determinants of crime.

Thank you so much, Chief and Commander.

Questions for let's see, I have Watson, I have Albedros, Sawyer.

Oh, everybody, it's gonna be around the round and Robin.

Um, but we'll start with we'll start this way with Calce Tourism, come around.

Thank you so much.

And I um I appreciate Commander Herrera.

Um, a number of the things that you talked about in terms of um the real value of PI is really bringing uh non-policing departments together to help solve.

I think what um has been great about seeing Paco Sanchez um evolve.

One, we finally cued up the improvements that parks and recreation were needing to make in that park.

So new lighting is going in, um, a remodeled disc golf course, some some broken things are getting fixed.

So those have been um long awaited.

But we also restricted um uh restricted parking along the park side of Avondale Drive, which I think really helped in some of the overnight stuff that was happening.

So it was this great layering of um tactic, but you're right.

Shutting down the liquor store was one thing.

Um hoping and praying that it doesn't revive itself as a liquor store is uh totally different thing.

So it's a property that's still for sale right now, but they can.

Um and I do feel like there um had been really good momentum.

It wasn't like a big gun shop place to start off with, though.

So that wasn't the driver for the PI.

Um so I'm really interested in um what other crime markers reduced apart from that because I think it was really only one or two that um we were tracking before it became a PI location.

Visibly it was drug trafficking that was the bigger issue, um, and which I've seen like go down incredibly.

Um so just want to make sure that I know that you're tracking gun related activity, but there were other things that were the problem at that location that have since improved, and that should be part of the of the narrative around that success as well.

So thank you so much.

And we do we have tracked the reduction in drug related uh activity, and I think the you know, one of the things that has been helpful there is the increased lighting, but also the increased activation, you know, T ball coming back there, things that the Denver Dream Center does there with you know five football and those kinds of things.

I think the increased activation, I think helps drive away from that uh antisocial behavior.

That I think is a big point to bring up in Mayor.

Um, as we go into um like the budget season again this year, all of these spaces we have community that want to activate them.

Councilwoman Alvidres was mentioning a friend um Ana Marina, you know, um, that there aren't as many markets on Morrison Road.

It's because a lot of those were funded by the city.

Um so community will put on the events, uh, but they need seed funding to do some of the infrastructure things.

But those are really what um have made a difference in getting Westwood out of the pandemic, Aqua Sanchez and community out of the pandemic and bring nonprofits to the table to just organize, do what they do best, but they need a little support just to get that started.

Great idea.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up, Council Watson.

Okay, and I'll stick with the uh thank you, um Mr.

Mayor, and thank you, Commander, thank you, Chief, for the work with P and I.

Um massive fan of that, but I'll stay on the funding side.

I know the uh remaining opera dollars, which obviously fell off the cliff, were instrumental in some of the um the narratives shared uh as far as your ability to help with storefronts, to help with other amenities.

What's your sense on that um layering of dollars no longer being available?

What impact do you foresee and what support do you need from us as we're going into the budget process to ensure that there are dollars to support some of these great initiatives that you're doing at PI?

Um Cosmo, thank you for that question.

I mean, certainly, you know, we can uh use all the help that we can get.

Certainly, funding is a challenge.

Um I think rather than tell you what funding needs we have.

I think the first thing we need to do is understand our own prioritization.

So I think one of the beauties of PI is that allows us to bring things sort of to the top of that prioritization list because of its uh designation as a PI location.

So certainly the funding that the police department and Dotti and other agencies has within their own existing budgets, I think um, you know, the the designation of a PI location allows us to create a sort of a prioritization to where um those things are addressed first.

Thank you so much, sir.

And second question, um, I know in District 9 we do not have the PI side, but I was very curious about the POP process that you're doing in Lodo.

And as we look at 21st um Street, um uh Commander Bowser and uh technician Kannabi doing fantastic work.

Um and as you recall, 24 server, you know, from uh a little bit of gun crime, but was mostly um uh still drug dealing, some human trafficking back in the beginning when we had tons of tents there, um, and now we don't have those anymore.

I'm curious as far as how can I support with whether it's a PI in the next cycle or not, um expanding the modal pop process.

I mean, we don't have the get out of bar craziness that Lodo does, but we have a persistent um drug dealing and um organized crime piece on that avenue that businesses and neighbors want to engage in, and I think commander bouser uh commander bouser may be overwhelmed by the continuity of the crime element that's there.

And I'm just curious from your perspective um if POP would work in 21st.

Have you all spoke to Commander Bowser on that?

Yes, we do actually talk quite regularly about that location, and so there is maybe a possibility to uh kind of include it in some of the the load, although the the challenge is different, and I think the the time that that is a challenge is different.

Um, but I do believe that um that identifying it as a as a as a problem and using problem uh policing strategies there uh will be effective, and um and while I I can understand the challenge of having sort of two sort of large uh problem-oriented areas to address, you know, I I constantly look at um the workload that each police district has and make sure that I make those necessary staffing adjustments to make sure that they have the resources uh available to address our challenges.

Thank you both.

I think it's a great program.

So thank you.

Thank you so much.

Council Willow Vidros.

Thank you.

Um I had a question, and it starts with one of the slides you had, uh, mayor or out on slide six.

And I now I may understand that these are the current PA sites, but uh the site in district seven on Mississippi and Mariton isn't on there, and I'm curious if I could get those numbers on the days and track shooting and that information.

Sure, I'll defer to the chief and commander with that, but great question.

Great.

I think um I'm curious to see overall outcomes there, and we've never got any activations.

We also have an empty uh building from La Hauna, which was shut down as part of that PI, and so I still have a lot of questions on what the outcomes were, even though there are some visible outcomes that safety has improved in the area.

Would love to see the numbers, and when I look at it's right between two neighborhoods, so I can look at Athmar stats or Rubyville stats, but for both areas to see where those improvements have light, and I would love to eventually have some kind of activation there.

Um it's something we wanted since the PI site and just never got to.

I think um I'm curious, and yes, I think it's something we've been thinking about with the budget too is how do we support community to have events, and sometimes it's us being able to get out of the way.

I'm really excited about the office of special events being under arts and venues that that may be able to help.

How are we coordinating the community events?

Because community is desperate, and especially now that we've kind of moved past COVID to activate some of these spaces.

Also, along Mississippi in this area, there's just abandoned right-away that the city owns that continues to gather trash and like invasive trees, and um you can just tell it's a little good neighborhood when you arrive, and it shouldn't be because of the city's lack of effort in the area that you can tell them.

So uh, and then lastly, that was kind of more for future uh responses, but one of my questions that came up last night was just the intersection between the cameras and the PA.

Um, if you could speak to that and why you feel like the need for the axon contract is needed for continuation of the work that you're doing around PNA.

So not every P not every current PNI location is a candidate for an axon ALPR system, and that's uh because district five, for instance, is has almost like a 200% reduction in in gun crime in the city.

Sorry, police district, sorry, district five.

So the 47th and Peoria is now statistically one of the safest neighborhoods in in the city for gun crime.

So it doesn't make sense to put an ALPR system there.

It's not a really really busy intersection.

So that's why Colfax and Pearl is going to is a candidate if we have enough of the 50 cameras again.

I'm not certain because Axon the I won't know until the day the Axon engineers are standing at Colorado and Alameda and saying this is gonna take three cameras, it's gonna take seven cameras.

How many locations there are?

But we did make a deliberate choice in using ALPR designations or the P and I sites that are still having incidents of gun violence.

So East Colfax, although it's it's markedly improved since 2023, uh, has it has one at Colfax and Quebec.

Colfax and Pearl, and then 22nd, and we wanted to try to capture uh what occurs during the outcrowd.

But again, one one thing that we found with the ALPRs was the tremendous benefit in hidden runs.

We're literally we don't have like the ALPR was all we had in terms of this family was run over, and we have a white car, and the detective said, Well, I'm going to spend hours looking at before and after, and he found a white car going through an intersection with no damage.

Here's a white car with heavy front end damage and a crack wind.

So that was also a consideration.

Just to add to that.

So obviously, PI is a strategy that we use for mid-reserved line but identified as persistently violent locations where locations that we have currently chosen to deploy the ALPR cameras, the accident cameras.

There's kind of an overlay, as you talked about last night between violent crime, um serious traffic accidents and also auto theft.

And so the total sum of some of those crimes would take the number of those cameras outside of uh traditional PI location.

Okay, I appreciate that.

And then I'll just end with one more comment just around Powerland Federal, which is the historic first site, and where one of these cameras is proposed, is that I think part of one of the issues that we have is the vacant buildings.

And so one of the things I want to raise to you is that the cold weather shelter, which we used a few days out of the last year, is just an empty building that attracts uh a lot of behavior that the neighborhood doesn't appreciate, and so I think thinking about how we move forward with that, not just being an abandoned building 90% of the year, it would be very helpful.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We have those numbers, so it at Alminan Federal, it's been 958 days since the last shooting as a P9 maintenance site, and Mississippian Raritan has been 505 days.

Great.

Sorry.

Thank you, Commander.

Um Councilman Swart.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Thanks, you guys.

Really appreciate this.

Um not for you, but for more for council members.

Um I because I got to be the first council member that was working on PI, because I had the joy of two sites in my district back in 2021.

Um this has been like such an extraordinary education.

And I just want to say what I have been focusing on as my part of this, is what can we do legislatively to address and help support the work that the police department and our other city agencies are doing.

So you have seen this come through in our vacant and derelict properties ordinance.

So speaking of like the vacant properties over on Federal and Alameda, right?

Um you will see this coming through.

We're partnering with the mayor's office and Councilwoman Gonzalez Gutierrez and I to do a meet and confer piece of legislation that will require that in um a location where in an apartment complex where or rental units where there is um persistent quality of life challenges due to lack of deferred maintenance that they are legally required to meet um landlord and tenants and come to some sort of plan for moving forward, right?

Um, don't know what that's gonna look like yet, but it's coming.

So there are a couple of other different things that we have done, but I just I urge you all as council members to learn more about this and where the gaps are in PI that can be closed with pieces of legislation or that help fill um and buoy the work that they're doing with the stuff that we do as the legislative branch of government because um what we sort of learned in the first part of this process is we can throw all the money at it in the world, um, but we can't impact the private market, private property owners can do what they want with their property, including nothing at this point, right?

And um our city agencies only have the zoning code and the Denver Revised Municipal Code to fall back on in support of the work that they're trying to do.

So if there's nothing in the Denver Rise Municipal Code or the zoning code um for them to fall back on, then there's nothing they can do.

And those are the spaces where we as council members can help fill the gaps and buoy this work.

So I just wanted to flag that for you all and say thanks because um what we have seen at Cedar Run is a hundred percent reduction in crime, great relationships with the Denver Metro Tenants Union that works there, um, but at an absentee out of town investment company landlord that is milking that property for all it's worth and not supporting the residents or ensuring that they're living in quality spaces, and therein lies the challenge, right?

Right?

Because we can't do anything about an absentee investment company landlord.

They're allowed to do what they do.

Is that right?

No, but is that the world we live in?

Yes.

So how do we close that gap better to ensure that our residents are living in safe spaces?

Um, because that is what we saw as the impact truly with TDPH to give them a huge shout-out for this as well as the district three police department.

Um but that is how we saw that 100% reduction in crime in Cedar Run.

Yeah, I love that.

Uh well said, uh, I would just uh add and support you that I think a number of these places, one of the material differences that has been made is the ability to close some of these derelict or vacant properties faster to take more action and or to take more accountability with current partners to make sure they are ensuring quality of life for the folks at lay for work there, and so that's a really important tool in this toolbox, and I think Commander Herrera's right.

What we have to get better at is how do we rapidly turn those properties around into something that's activated, and we're should think about how we can get sort of quicker pop-ups for local community business that could activate those spaces so it goes from being a negative to being a positive.

But yes, that has been a is a really important tool for us, so grateful for all of your work on it.

Um Madam President Pratem, you're up next.

Thank you.

Um thank you for the presentation.

Uh one of the things that you said really struck me is that every site there is violent crime or gun violence is not a PI site, and so um, to your point as well for the legislative side, are there other things that you're seeing that could be preventative in areas where we are seeing an uptick in uh gun violence or crime?

I'm specifically thinking of certain areas in my district.

Are there things that you're seeing for lessons learned?

Yeah, so I mean, one of the other strategies that we employ is the strategy that we've talked about before hot streets, and so we take uh uh a weekly look at crime, crime spikes and things like that, and so we will shift district resources and volcans to locations where we're seeing uh rises in violence, and usually uh through that uh initial application of police presence and some other um things to kind of change the dynamic in that particular area is successful if it's not that we can kind of go back and try something different, and if it persists, then it may well turn itself into uh UI location.

So okay.

I'm just also wondering, I'm I mean, there are some areas I think we all are experiencing in our districts of just like vacant buildings, things that are not um you know, some some maintained fence around them and they're maintained, but they're still there in in the community not occupied, and so um maybe we could talk more about like things that we might be able to do in the district or or be able to activate differently on certain streets.

I don't have the same like a large number of nonprofits um that are actively doing you know work in the in the community.

So I'm just trying to figure out and look for who those partners are on certain streets.

I'm thinking of Gerard specifically.

You know, one of the things that we have done uh in the in the past is like a homicide review, and so bringing community and postpartum together to talk about a homicide and some of the factors that probably led to that homicide.

In particular, where I think it was an abandoned bank uh where the homicide occurred, and I think about bank had not been there, that homicide may not have occurred or certainly would not have occurred there.

And so I think that kind of the realization that that that precipitated the problem, I think probably created some momentum to address that particular uh location.

So I think maybe we don't necessarily have to wait for homicide to occur to get together as a city and recognize that there is a location that if we don't do something about it, some something tragic may result.

And so I think that we can kind of generate our own momentum, not necessarily from UNI standpoint, but just from uh here's a problem we should all put a heads together for how do we address this.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you.

Any other folks with questions before I think the president was in line as closer, if I don't go to her?

Council McCashwell?

Not a question, but Chief, I appreciate your acknowledging that uh murder at the bank that was uh on North Side Adams just deep to Monaco.

And that's that's what got my attention on the abandoned derelict building stuff.

I mean, we we had neighbors screaming about that site before that happened for for years.

And uh, you know, at that point, the uh we didn't have the strong uh effort and and CPD towards taking care of or paying attention to those uh structures.

So appreciate uh your thank you, counselor.

Madam President, closing to you.

So I had a a question about the um downtown the Pearl and wait.

If you go to the last slide, you said you were gonna add one.

Cool parks and pool.

So on the um I think coming up tomorrow.

I serve on the downtown development authority, and for my colleagues, we put in four and a half, I think it was four and a half, is that right, Chief?

Four million downtown, four and a half, I can't remember.

Four and a half, four million for the downtown development authority for extra patrol along within the boundaries of the downtown development authority, and we just got reported back out um last month on that, and the success was phenomenal.

The horses are down there, the um feedback from the residents and the feedback from the um commercial was great.

So we're gonna be asked again to do it one more year, but just wanted to let council know that we're it's hard for us to do it, so it's at the end of March, right?

And we did this last April.

It's hard for a fiscal year to run April to April, so we're actually gonna do a year and six months, so we're gonna actually give more from the downtown development authority.

So it takes a relief off of the other neighborhoods, and that is my hope is that by us giving this money from the downtown development authority and not the general fund, that we can have these other sites activated and that we can make sure that their resources are going to them, and that we're providing, we're doing our part for the downtown development authority in making sure that we're having a safe downtown and a thriving downtown.

If any of you are interested in getting that um feedback out, I'm happy to share it with you because I think it's really important.

It felt similar, it's not a PNI site, but it felt very similar in my experience of being on that board to a PI site.

So we're working with the downtown development um the um DDP and other nonprof and other agencies down there and residents and citizens, and they have um they're wanting to move into one of the facilities that we're having at for the DDA.

So it feels like a PI, but it's not necessarily.

But the crime and the stats in downtown are phenomenal because of that extra effort.

So just want to say thank you because to that to everyone who's working on that, because that's been my experience.

I don't have a PNI site in Northwest Denver, but because I sit on that board and all the lots of people reach out to me, it's been fascinating for me to see.

And one other last thing is years ago after um George Floyd, RTD and DPD did a septe analysis down at Union Station.

And I just want to say that as someone who's focusing on as the DDA, that's really helped.

Some of those changes that you all made from that SEPTED that RTD is invested in has helped.

We also did a septe at um the skate park, which we had the crime app, which is around the corner for my office.

That's really helped.

So if you all uh council members, if you're saying how what could you do to help, and people keep reaching out and saying, I have this crime, I have this crime.

Connect them to your community resource officers so they can get a crime prevention through environmental con environmental change, whatever it's called.

It helps.

When we got elected, I had a folks come out to my house, they gave a whole entire report.

One of the things I will not do, I do not have a ring camera.

It's a constant fight at my house.

Don't ask my husband about it because he thinks I'm winning.

I just don't like it.

I wouldn't have it.

But we had this big bush and we had a couple other things, and we painted a couple other things, and it's just really like even a couple of my neighbors were like, Why did you do that?

And I said, Oh, well, I'm an elected official.

You could have people were hiding behind it, and they were like, Oh, I never thought about that.

Would that be available for me?

And I was like, Yes, do it.

And so we've all just kind of changed what we're doing on my street through my through crime prevention through environmental control, because it really does work, and they give you a whole entire report that you can like systematically work on.

I've done everything except for the camera.

Um, so just want to say thank you because I know that that's a lot of work for you all to go out on, but the skate park, we're literally having parks and rec put new lights at the skate park based on your recommendations.

We're literally putting a new pavilion based on your recommendations.

We're literally going to change the skate park because of the extra work that you all did.

So just want to say thank you because I've seen it twice.

I've seen it at the skate park and at Union Station, where that it's a big investment, but it actually really works.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Madam President.

Um you go back to the first slide, I think, or the second slide that it shows all of our uh next one.

That one.

Um back one more.

Uh so I just mentioned because the to the council, this last bullet will matter a lot, but to the folks watching at home, what's remarkable about this effort is that it really is fundamentally committed to the notion that public safety is all of our jobs.

And you'll see at the bottom there are 11 different city agencies that work together on this project.

That's parks and rec, that's transportation, that's our social equity uh and innovation office, that is our consumer protection and licensing, it's public health, it's economic development.

It's a district attorney, it's planning and it's community planning and development.

The idea every part of what makes the lived experience of a community is what makes a community feel safe or not safe, and that is to many of your comments.

Uh, how do the awnings on the businesses look when you drive into the neighborhood?

Are there patios that folks can sit on?

Are there open parks that are clean and well taken care of?

Uh are there businesses that aren't open or that are bringing bad traffic to the city that are being held accountable or closed?

Uh do all the folks are all the folks living in apartments that are well maintained and taken care of and supporting their public health.

And so uh and all of those ideas are driven by community members informed by a board that has community members on them and then executed by our city teams.

I think it really is a good example of partnership with neighborhoods, partnership across 10 or 11 different city agencies with important legislative priorities set by the council uh and budget commitments made by them and us to get these departments to resources they need to do this work.

But I think when people say, why uh do we see such good results happening around the city on public safety?

It is because it takes all of us to do that, and it's really this council's leadership, uh, multiple agencies and our public partners uh in the community.

So thank you all for the work you're doing on that.

Thanks for the great feedback to the ways we can make it better, which is also always helpful.

Uh and with that, we are adjourned.

Great to see you all.

Happy Tuesday.