Almost exactly a year after George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police sparked historic protests over violence against people of color, a task force formed in Denver to examine policing reform has released 112 recommendations in an anticipated report.

The report’s individual recommendations fall under several broader strategy umbrellas for increasing resources dedicated to socioeconomic needs, reforming systems of re-entry into the community by people who have been incarcerated, reducing interactions between the community and criminal legal system, rebuilding trust in law enforcement and expanding independent oversight of policing.

In addition to its broad strategy categories the report also breaks the recommendations into groups based on which government agency (or community organization) would be positioned to implement them.

The Reimagine Policing and Public Safety task force was established last June after a meeting between Denver Mayor Michael Hancock and and the Greater Metro Denver Ministerial Alliance. It comprises representatives from civil rights organizations, activists, social services providers, faith-based organizations, policy advocacy and youth services. Government bodies such as the Denver City Council, the Denver District Attorney’s Office, the Office of the Independent Monitor and public defender’s offices have also participated in the task force’s work.

The Denver Police Department, Department of Public Safety and DPD labor union all declined to provide specific comment on the report Friday afternoon, saying they are still going through it.

Representatives from Denver law enforcement were notably absent in the later stages of the task force’s work developing the report. Public Safety Director Murphy Robinson withdrew DOS and law enforcement representation from the task force last winter, saying members of his team were asked to not actively participate in meetings and instead only answer questions.

The head of the task force, Dr. Robert Davis, has disputed that characterization. He told The Denver Gazette and Colorado Politics safety officials were only asked to skip one meeting so that ideas from community members about public safety and policing could be freely shared. He said he believes the law enforcement agencies were uncomfortable with not being able to set the task force’s agenda.

One strategy argues that more resources should be used to address socioeconomic needs that drive offending and to help communities look out for their own public safety, such as housing, health care and treatment, rather than incarceration and reactive policing.

The report says these types of programs tend to be underfunded and run into reluctance from city officials about “unproven” initiatives. Recommendations under that umbrella range from investments in programs for housing, employment and mental and substance use treatment to data collection about law enforcement stops.

Investment in treatment, housing and employment resources also factors heavily into the report’s recommendations for helping facilitate re-entry into communities for formerly incarcerated people.

Reducing the role of police has been a goal of policing reform movements, and the report’s call to reduce interactions between people and the criminal legal system contains recommendations that would take police out of specific roles and situations. Among them are suggestions to decriminalize behaviors that don’t pose a public safety threat, such as drug use and possession, public intoxication and fare evasion.

The recommendations also include prohibiting police from conducting searches related to petty offenses and traffic violations, and eliminating all school-based public safety contracts and instead investing in proactive measures in education like socioemotional learning, counseling and behavioral reinforcement.

Police officers in schools contribute to the school-to-prison pipeline, says the report.

Last June, the Denver Public Schools Board of Education voted to end its contract with the Denver Police Department to provide school resource officers. That resolution phases out the officers in schools by June this year.

“Police are trained for extremely specific circumstances (i.e., to respond to dangerous behavior), but as the list of criminal offenses has expanded, so too have the expectations upon them,” says the report. “Even with supplemental training in de-escalation tactics, the presence of armed police officers inherently escalates interactions that can and should be resolved peacefully and without arrest.”

Rebuilding trust between communities and Denver police, a relationship the report says was already strained and further fractured by the DPD’s handling of racial justice protests last summer, is a goal difficult to measure. But among its recommendation to that end, the report suggests measures such as changing the DPD’s process of internal investigations and giving an avenue for accountability to officers who wish to speak out about what they see as injustices by putting the Internal Affairs Bureau under supervision of Denver’s Manager of Safety rather than the police department.

The report also recommends barring the DPD’s Gang Unit and militarized responses from protests and riots, as well as banning mutual aid from other municipalities at Denver-based protests and riots unless they have been cross-trained on Denver police’s policies, procedures and laws.

The recommendation also suggests every officer responding from other departments in mutual aid should have to be specifically identifiable.

In its final overarching strategy, the report discusses the limitations on powers of the Office of the Independent Monitor and the Citizen Oversight Board, bodies in Denver ostensibly established to provide independent oversight of law enforcement. They do not have enough authority, argues the report, pointing out the COB cannot independently advance disciplinary action and can’t compel the DPD to advance any discipline recommendations.

The report also points out the mayor has control over the initiation and scope of the OIM’s investigations through vetoes of investigations into mayorally appointed department leaders and the office has limited ability to force the DPD to cooperate with evidence collection in investigations. The report notes difficulty the OIM ran into getting access to body-worn camera footage during its investigation of the DPD’s response to last summer’s racial justice protests.

To expand the roles of independent oversight, law enforcement training and public safety policies, the report makes recommendations such more transparency on a granular level about the DPD’s budget, including weapons purchased, deeper background checks of law enforcement applicants to identify those with histories of racism and discrimination and community input into emergency response training procedures.

“Meaningful community oversight is not an attack on police; it is a fundamental part of establishing trust and building credibility between law enforcement and the communities they serve,” says the report.