The Denver Police Department wants to allow officers facing disciplinary action or “lower-level” offenses to opt into educational training, rather than face punishments, a major change to its internal discipline process.  

Pushing the shift is Ron Thomas, the police chief, who believes a training regimen would ultimately reduce the chances of officers re-offending and lead to quicker resolutions of disciplinary cases.

Critics, meanwhile, argued that the police department failed to provide enough details about the policy and that it hastily attempted to institute the new program without getting enough feedback from the public.

The department last proposed a significant change to its disciplinary process in 2008, producing a system of categorization that placed different severities of offenses at different levels; the more severe the cases, the harsher the discipline.

The matrix is broken down into categories A through F. The latter deals with the most severe offenses. The punishments for sustained violations operate in a similar manner, with discipline ranging from oral and written penalties for low-level, periodic violations to lengthy suspensions and terminations for repeated, higher level offenses.

Under the proposed new policy, officers with sustained violations that fall under categories A, B and C would be able to opt into education-based discipline for first-time offenses.

Category A includes actions defined as having a minimally negative impact on the operations or image of the department, such as reporting during illness or injury, uniform restrictions while off-duty and providing assistance outside of the city. 

Category B violations — ones that have a more than minimal impact on the operations or image of the department, or those that negatively affect relationships with other agencies or the general public — include soliciting business, loss or damage to a badge and reporting an absence prior to roll call.

Category C violations — cases with a pronounced negative impact on the operations or image of the department or on relationships with other agencies or the general public — include mistreatment of prisoners or suspects, accepting gifts or gratuities, using a police position to gain political office and abuse of fellow officers. A category C violation carries an aggravated penalty resulting in four to six-day suspensions under the current matrix.

During an online meeting on May 9, Denver Executive Director of Safety Armando Saldate said the department would need to clarify which specific violations would and would not be eligible for education-based discipline. The current version, he said, is too vague and could potentially apply to serious infractions.

“The intention is to have serious misconduct still have thorough and complete investigations, where our investigator resources can be focused on those, and the lower level disciplinary matters can be handled by supervisors and through training-based and education-based discipline that can help curb behaviors and have more positive outcomes,” he said. 

Thomas: Changes will resolve disciplinary cases quicker 

The education-based policy borrows from an alternative discipline program implemented by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department in 2009, according to Thomas, the Denver police official.

The California police force saw its recidivism rate drop to under 10% in the four-and-a-half years after the program began, according to one official who helped create it.

Thomas gave The Denver Gazette several reasons for pushing the changes, including the lower recidivism rate in officers who received the education in Los Angeles and examples of effective discipline in the private sector.

Additionally, while speaking during the April 10 webinar, Thomas stressed the need for a quicker resolution to pending cases.

“This is, for me, motivated only by the fact that I think we need to resolve cases faster for the community,” Thomas said in the webinar, noting how the current process takes about nine months, a timeframe that is cumbersome but is necessary to involve all the parties.

“I think that if we can very quickly — in a matter of weeks, rather than a matter of months — let someone know that yes, this is a sustained violation and the officer is going to be trained to correct his behavior and make sure that he understands the expectation of the community and the expectation of the department going forward, I think that’s a resolution,” Thomas said.

Advocates push back

In an interview with The Denver Gazette, Thomas said the private sector is replete with examples, in which “positive forms of discipline are actually more effective at changing behavior than punitive measures.”

Critics decried the pace with which the policy change is being pursued, among other points they raised. 

Julia Richman, chair of the Citizen Oversight Board, a panel appointed by the city to assess law enforcement’s hiring, said the police department first approached groups about the proposal at the end of last year — and then sought to implement the changes during the first weeks of the new year.  

“We got it the last week of the year, when some people were on vacation, and we were told it was going to be implemented the next week,” Richman said. “We were like, ‘Are we being asked to comment on what appears to be quite a rough draft?’ It was a PowerPoint slide, it wasn’t like a policy or procedure document.”

Richman said the last time major changes to the disciplinary matrix were enacted, extensive community engagement that involved dozens of stakeholders preceded that process.  

The core of Richman’s criticism deals with the disciplinary categories that would now fall under the proposed education regime.   

Some of those policy violations are too severe in nature to be adequately resolved with just education and could result in a significant off-ramp from the standard disciplinary process, Richman said. 

“The assumption that we’re going to react to this proposal and just tweak it is a bad assumption,” Richman said. “The board does not agree with this going forward at all.”

Auditor: Denver Police Department staffing woes will remain without better strategies

Thomas disagreed that the department drafted the new policy without properly taking into account input from the community.

“It’s a significant mischaracterization,” Thomas said, adding that he met with his own community advisory board, as well as various faith-based and immigrant organizations about the topic. “I received some feedback and made some adjustments after meeting with them.”