Community task force report calls for the prohibition of the “use of riot gear, weapons and militarized approaches or responses during peaceful protests or demonstrations” along with over 100 other recommendations

Westword, 5/25/21

On May 21, a community-led task force established in the wake of the Denver Police Department‘s heavy-handed response to the George Floyd protests issued a series of recommendations that could transform the City of Denver’s approach to public safety.

“Our goal is to create a community-based public-safety model that protects and heals the community from centuries of violence and systemic oppression,” explains task force coordinator Robert Davis of the Greater Metro Denver Ministerial Alliance. Along with Davis, other members of the task force — which was funded by the Rose Community Foundation and Caring 4 Denver — include Xochitl Gaytan, who serves as co-chair of the Colorado Latino Forum, and Jill Locantore, executive director of WalkDenver. Various nonprofits also assisted the task force in its research, as did groups like the Vera Institute of Justice. Representatives from Denver City Council, the Denver District Attorney’s Office, the Office of the Municipal Public Defender, the Office of the Independent Monitor and the Office of the Colorado State Public Defender also participated in the task force’s work.

The task force had a mandate to “reimagine policing and public safety,” which is exactly what it does in many of the 112 recommendations shared in the report. The recommendations, which were unanimously approved by the group’s members on May 11, include potentially major shifts for City of Denver policy, such as establishing an automatic-termination clause in cases “where life is lost at the hands of law enforcement where the victim was unarmed.” In recent years, the Denver jails have seen several in-custody deaths that resulted from use-of-force incidents involving sheriff deputies and unarmed detainees; deputies kept their jobs after the incidents.

The report also recommends that the Office of the Independent Monitor, the city’s law enforcement watchdog, be made more powerful by receiving subpoena power and “unfettered access to all departmental documents and systems.”

Furthermore, it recommends that Denver City Council and the Citizen Oversight Board gain appointment authority for the Independent Monitor position rather than have that power continue to rest with the mayor.

The report also calls for a different approach to homelessness, including ceasing all city-sanctioned sweeps of encampments set up on public property and investing “all cost-savings into Safe Outdoor Spaces, trash pick up, portable toilets, case management, and other harm reduction strategies.”

It also recommends that Denver decriminalize “quality-of-life offenses, survival crimes, and other petty infractions such as drug use, and public intoxication,” and permit safe-injection sites in the city.

In response to the chaotic law enforcement actions during the George Floyd protests last summer, the report recommends a prohibition on the use of mutual aid from neighboring law enforcement agencies for “Denver-based protests and riots if there has not been documented proof of cross-training of officers on Denver policies, procedures and ordinances.” Eighteen neighboring departments provided assistance to the DPD during the George Floyd protests, even though Denver had no mutual-aid agreements related to crowd control with these agencies. Then-Independent Monitor Nick Mitchell criticized the use-of-force policy mismatches in a December 2020 report about the police response to the protests.

And the task force report also calls for the prohibition of the “use of riot gear, weapons and militarized approaches or responses during peaceful protests or demonstrations.”

The Greater Metro Denver Ministerial Alliance first proposed the idea of setting up a task force in early June 2020 during a meeting with Mayor Michael Hancock. Not long after, Hancock expressed support for its establishment, and Murphy Robinson, the head of the Denver Department of Public Safety, participated in the task force throughout 2020.

But in January, Robinson withdrew all Public Safety personnel from the task force, complaining in an email to Davis that the task force comprised people handpicked by Davis and that the group was “little more than a personal sounding board for political views and rhetoric.” Robinson took particular issue with the fact that the task force leadership asked law enforcement personnel not to participate in a particular meeting in early January.

In an email responding to Robinson’s withdrawal letter, Davis argued that the task force leadership had asked law enforcement not to participate in that meeting so that participants could “speak freely about their thoughts.” Davis also denied that he had handpicked members of the task force.

The work of the task force will be discussed at public gatherings starting with a rally outside of the Denver City & County Building at 4 p.m. on Monday, May 24; find out more here. In the meantime, according to Kelli Christensen, Public Safety spokesperson, “Director Robinson said he’s happy to receive these recommendations and is looking forward to reviewing them.”

Here’s the full report:

What is public safety? This is the fundamental question these 112 recommendations attempt to answer. Our definition: Public safety ensures that all members of the community decide how to organize a social environment that provides the freedom to live and thrive with the protection and support of social, physical, mental and economic well-being.

Safety is not a function of armed paramilitary forces with a proven track record of racism and violence. Public safety prevents, reduces, and heals harm.

The Task Force to Reimagine Policing and Public Safety is a team of over 40 different community organizations along with elected officials, faith leaders and youth coming together, over the course of several months to build relationships, have effective dialog, and create solutions surrounding policing and public safety in our city. This was an inclusive coalition, including African American, Latino, Asian, indigenous American, Jewish, Caucasian, LGBTQ+, individuals with disabilities, and those with lived experiences with the criminal legal system. Members come from a variety of organizational backgrounds, including civil rights organizations, community activists, direct service providers, faith-based organizations, policy advocacy organizations, and youth serving organizations. To date, this is the largest, most diverse community-led public safety initiative in the nation.

The Task Force greatly benefited from the participation of Denver’s youth. Due to the fact that many of us have had negative experiences with public safety, especially youth, this was urgent work. We created an innovative process that not only gave the community a voice in policies that affects us directly, but also enabled a foot in the door for our community when it comes to engaging with city council.

The recommendations before you offer key perspectives from each community member in the coalition including the essential advocacy of black youth who have direct experiences with the systems we are aiming to improve. In an effort to reduce harm, the youth developed a rubric that graded these recommendations on their ability to promote healing. As a result, this recommendation report became our vision on re-imagining policing and public safety as a whole in Denver.

All over the nation, in light of not only recent events but deep-rooted problems within our past, folks are beginning to see the problems that exist within our current policing model. As we grow up we often overlook these issues or are sheltered from the world, but at a certain point, we can no longer choose to ignore them or be complacent. It is for that reason that we all are no longer asking for change, but as youth inheriting this system, we hereby demand it. We demand fundamental change, especially in terms of our policing concepts. It is our goal to have safe, equitable, and truly just public safety policies. As people who have our whole lives ahead of us, the children of Black men and women, grandchildren of immigrants, we recognize that the world is not as they hoped it would be for us. However, these changes will help quell the fears of our ancestors, our parents, our family, our friends, and even our own. For that to happen, however, we have to center the measurements for what defines community healing and community harm, and their fine line.

Simply discussing and debating the need for change is no longer an option, more so our only option. Stop talking and start doing. For this reason, we are informing you that it is time to make these changes. These policies need to be considered and implemented.

Thank you,

The youth of the Community Healing Subgroup

The Task Force To Reimagine Policing and Public Safety

Executive Summary

The Denver Task Force to Reimagine Policing and Public Safety formed in response to the George Floyd protests as a community-led initiative to develop a comprehensive and sustainable community-based approach to policing and public safety. The process of convening the Task Force began in a June 4 meeting between Mayor Hancock and representatives from the Greater Metro Denver Ministerial Alliance and was launched with the full support and cooperation of Mayor Hancock, Denver City Council, and the Denver Department of Public Safety. The Task Force was convened for the purpose of providing to the Denver city government and the Department of Public Safety a series of salutary recommendations and proposals that are informed, actionable, and sustainable.

Over the last eight months, the Task Force has collaborated with experts, activists, and city officials to develop 112 recommendations in the spirit of reimagining a public safety model that fundamentally prevents, reduces, and heals harm. The purpose of this report is to deliver these salutary recommendations to the City of Denver in the hope and expectation that the Task Force continue to advise on implementation and additional recommendations in future. The strategies and recommendations were ratified by a diverse group of individuals from across the city who worked tirelessly over the last several months to guarantee this list be community centered and driven The recommendations serve as a starting point for the active tasks of reimaging public safety in Denver.

The 112 recommendations are organized into five overarching strategies that reflect the public safety priorities of Denver residents, as identified in two virtual town hall meetings, the July 2020 Task Force Questionnaire survey, and collaboration with experts and advocacy groups on the Task Force. This executive summary presents these five strategies for improving public safety

Strategies to Reimagine Policing & Public Safety

Empower the community with resources to adequately address socioeconomic needs and provide for their own public safety.

Minimize unnecessary interaction of law enforcement and the criminal legal system with the community.

Support successful community reentry of formerly incarcerated people and remove systemic barriers to reintegration.

Heal the community from harm created by policing and the criminal legal system.

Expand the role of the community in establishing meaningful independent oversight, improving accountability, training law enforcement, and creating public safety policy.

Strategies and Core Recommendations

The Task Force has endeavored to faithfully represent the interests of the Denver community in developing the 112 recommendations in this report. Below, these recommendations are organized into five overarching strategies that reflect the public safety priorities of Denver residents¹

Community-based solutions offer a more granular approach to public safety that can be tailored to the unique needs of different communities. Whereas law enforcement occupy a highly circumscribed position within a fundamentally reactive criminal legal system, community-based initiatives have room for innovation in approach and implementation Many of the issues and unmet needs that cause suffering and drive offending can be proactively addressed by universal approaches to safe and affordable housing, accessible healthcare (including treatment and education on mental health and substance abuse), and trauma-informed services. Various point-of-contact interventions, like Denver’s STAR and co-responder programs, provide a bridge to needed care and services for individuals in crisis while smaller, more responsive community-based programs offer justice-involved persons a greater chance for success than custodial sentences.

For all their promise, community-based alternatives are universally underfunded in Denver and nationally; programs require buy-in from the City to be successful, but officials are reluctant to invest fully in “unproven” programs. While there is a decided lack of high quality independent impact evaluations for community-based interventions, this is due to paucity of funding rather than scarcity of viable programming.

This was the case with Denver’s pilot implementation of the STAR program, which is based on the CAHOOTS program of Eugene, Oregon and sends trained mental health responders to crisis calls in lieu of dispatching law enforcement. The pilot received funding from the Caring for Denver Foundation sufficient for six months of operation limited to a small geographic area during weekday business hours The program was implemented by DPD and evaluated at six months by an in-house team, a decision framed as a cost-saving measure for the department. The six-month evaluation fails to meet even the most basic standards of prevention science. The program was popular and unquestionably successful at avoiding unnecessary police involvement, but officials cite the overall low call count and superficial impact analysis – both valid but self-imposed considerations – in their reluctance to make major shifts in operations or budget allocations, thereby returning to the start of the underfunding cycle. Recent investments in point-of-contact interventions like STAR represent considerable progress for Denver, but a superficial evaluation and funding volatility create uncertainty in its future.

RECOMMENDATIONS:

Create an autonomous community-led, non-law enforcement institution that will serve as a platform for public funding of community-based public safety programming.

Create permanent mechanisms with institutionally-stable decision-making roles for community, including disproportionately affected communities, and Department of Public Safety to collaborate in defining, understanding and producing public safety policies, procedures, rules and practices.

Create and fund community workshops led by people with lived experience in the criminal enforcement system that will solicit feedback on City systems that one must engage with for support

Decentralize trauma-informed referral sources to enable community to help each other rather than having to call police or wait for business hours of a single entity (e.g. motel vouchers, etc.)

Create online trainings and an education resource bank for families and neighbors to learn how to support people with various mental health and/or behavioral health issues.

Broaden free and accessible community-based harm reduction strategies for mental health and substance abuse.

Include effective faith-based community services in the overall public safety plan.

Ensure funding of community-based public safety through set-asides for reconciliation, not just prospective change.

Increase city funding potential for qualified community-based organizations that prioritize community care by streamlining and removing cumbersome barriers to Request for Proposal and Request for Qualifications contracting/granting processes.
Create, expand and publicly promote crisis mediation and violence prevention and interruption through transformative justice principles and processes.

Prevent and eliminate homelessness through a centralized, city-run coordination system across the spectrum of housing needs that reflects real-time data about unit availability and instant ability to pinpoint tailored solutions

Develop a multi-lingual comprehensive health, wellness, safety, and re-entry map of services and programs that includes eligibility criteria, agency and division contacts and application links.

Ensure that any initial public safety intervention with unhoused people includes a meaningful attempt to house the individual, with verification filed through the city’s coordination system.

Guarantee Department of Safety coordination with housing providers to support long term housing of anyone and everyone involved in the criminal enforcement system

Devote substantial housing funding that targets historically marginalized people and enables them to live in any and all communities and configurations.

Promote and create permanently affordable housing options supplementary to Denver Housing Authority Housing units

Eliminate housing barriers caused by racist zoning laws and under no circumstances allow use of law enforcement to address zoning code violation complaints.

Cease all city-sanctioned sweeps, cleanups, or any other variation of forced removal of homeless encampments from public property and invest all cost-savings into Safe Outdoor Spaces, trash pick up, portable toilets, case management, and other harm reduction strategies.

Build interagency collaboration teams between Criminal Justice, Social Work, Human Services, Education, Housing and for-profit/not-for-profit business sectors to ensure measurably improved delivery of services

Track race, ethnicity, color, gender, economic status, and disability status in police-initiated searches, arrests, incarceration, recidivism, and homelessness to study, share with the public, and correct dispro- portionate impacts

Adopt the Task Force’s definition of “public safety” and “public health & well-being” in relevant source documents including but not limited to charter and legislation

Guarantee language access in an individual’s native language, including American Sign Language, for all individuals interacting with the Department of Safety or any department or division within Adopt procedures requiring police use of official, Americans with Disabilities Act compliant language access services when taking enforcement action.

Develop a grant-making division within the Department of Safety that includes community decision- making via a participatory budgeting model to re-allocate any dollars diverted from police budgets or jail bed reductions. This could mirror the Crime Prevention & Control Commission with more community representation rather than the status quo of heavy City agency representation.

Dedicate Community Engagement budgets in all Department of Safety entities to public awareness campaigns about alternative emergency responses (e.g., STAR, Colorado Crisis System, Suicide Prevention, etc.) and streamline emergency triaging of calls by 911 operators to appropriate first responders

Provide aligned or joint trainings to community-based, City-based and state-based emergency responders and victim’s services responder teams that connect and build cross-entity capacity to minimize and/or eliminate a child’s trauma and family separation; and connect caregivers to community-based support services in child protection and immigration cases.

Increase the number of co-responder and STAR teams citywide based on demand and eligibility of citizen-initiated requests for service as indicated by historical 911 and crime type data.

Strengthen protections for immigrants from any nexus between Denver Police Department and federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)

Determine “authorized strength” and Department of Safety needs by annually conducting Public Safety, Health & Well-being assessment which will include an independent, statistically valid survey of community members and frontline police officers in each police precinct about community needs, community satisfaction and overall safety, health and well-being perceptions. Survey will gauge public perceptions based on newly adopted definition of public safety & well-being.

Decentralize and fund courts embedded in communities that are based in restorative practices, transformative justice, and conflict resolution, with community input into judicial assignments through evaluations of procedural justice.

Ensure sufficient investment in both inpatient and outpatient treatment and services for mental health and substance abuse disorders

Remove limits to long term health, mental health and substance abuse services.

Expand employment opportunities for mental health, substance abuse, and co-occurring clients.

Incubate employment programs for people with disabilities, including programs for those with intellectual and developmental disabilities

Require that behavioral health and primary-care physicians, and mental health clinicians, complete trainings on serving people who identify as BIPOC, LGBTQIA, and TGI.*

Conduct a study that measures demographic disparities in provision of social services over the last 10 years of our City’s peak growth.

Research increasingly suggests that the simplest and swiftest way to minimize unnecessary police contact is to decriminalize certain offenses that pose no threat to the safety of the public⁵. Often called survival crimes or quality of life crimes, these include offenses like fare evasion, drug use and possession, public intoxication, and other low-level victimless crimes. Many such offenses were criminalized only in recent decades, as the ineffective War on Drugs and concomitant “tough on crime” rhetoric led to the rapid criminalization of behaviors that were disruptive – or “undesirable” – rather than dangerous.

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. 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

Developing new alternatives to emergency police response – and expanding those currently in place – will protect the community from harm, reduce the administrative burden on the CLS, and free up law enforcement to tackle truly dangerous situations. It should also be noted that this strategy strictly targets unnecessary interactions and in no way restricts access or availability of emergency services.

Create and adequately support unarmed community-based non-law enforcement response teams to complement LEAD, STAR and co-responders.

Research increasingly suggests that the simplest and swiftest way to minimize unnecessary police contact is to decriminalize certain offenses that pose no threat to the safety of the public5. Often called survival crimes or quality of life crimes, these include offenses like fare evasion, drug use and possession, public intoxication, and other low-level victimless crimes. Many such offenses were criminalized only in recent decades, as the ineffective War on Drugs and concomitant “tough on crime” rhetoric led to the rapid criminalization of behaviors that were disruptive – or “undesirable” – rather than dangerous.

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. 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

Create and adequately support unarmed community-based non-law enforcement response teams to complement LEAD, STAR and co-responders.
Decriminalize sex workers who are victims of human trafficking. Deprioritize enforcement against all sex workers and ensure access to necessary services.
Develop, expand and fully fund pre-arrest and pre-booking diversion programs in coordination with law enforcement and community providers, using decentralized, cross-functional teams to coordinate behavioral health assessments and connections to community-based systems of care as well as offering restorative practices and transformative justice options.
Decriminalize quality-of-life offenses, survival crimes, and other petty infractions such as drug use, and public intoxication.
Decriminalize traffic offenses often used for pretextual stops.
Prohibit Denver Police from conducting searches in relation to petty offenses or traffic violations.
Remove police officers from routine traffic stops and crash reporting and explore non-police alternatives that incentivize behavior change to eliminate traffic fatalities.
Eliminate the need for traffic enforcement by auditing and investing in the built environment to promote safe travel behavior.
End the school to prison pipeline by eliminating all school-based public safety contracts, diverting budget savings to social and emotional learning, behavioral monitoring and reinforcement, counseling, and peace-able schools programs.
Create regular amnesty events to clear warrants for failures to appear or unpaid fines, and expungement clinics for eligible offenses.
Automatically expunge past convictions for actions that are no longer illegal and automatically seal records for certain misdemeanors and low-level felonies.
Use data to prevent gentrification-driven displacement and reduce criminal enforcement against displaced people through cross-agency collaboration.
Create an ordinance making it illegal to contact law enforcement solely to discriminate against a person for any illegitimate purpose, including a person’s race, ethnicity, disability, religious affiliation, gender, sexual orientation or gender identity.
Enable and increase ambulatory contracts with Denver Fire and Denver Health to improve response times and allow dispatch of ambulances to STAR calls without police
Create an app to access alternatives for behavioral health crises
Measure the proficiency of all law enforcement personnel (including relevant civilian personnel) as well as 911
dispatchers in the Denver Metro Area to ensure that Crisis Intervention Team training is effective
Invest in a community-based, community-led violence prevention strategic plan that includes but is not limited to traffic stop violence and government sanctioned violence.
Remove electronic surveillance absent an active investigation, and prohibit future investments in electronic surveillance in overpoliced communities.
Enforce the ban on police preventing civilians from videorecording police activity.
Bar the Denver Police Department from entering into blanket contracts with entities to obtain access to surveillance footage and instead require an individualized request to the person who owns the surveillance device.
Prohibit the use of facial recognition technology by Denver law enforcement
Require body-worn cameras to automatically activate at a time that captures law enforcement interactions in their entirety.
Permit safe injection sites in the City and County of Denver.

End cash bail for all defendants accused of serious crimes unless it is proven by clear and convincing evidence that the defendant is a flight risk or violent threat to the community. Maintain pretrial jail population at lower levels attained during the pandemic.

Improve return-to-court support services and eliminate jail for those who voluntarily make the effort to clear a warrant.

Use text messages to notify individuals of deadlines for court and make court appearances possible via free virtual platform.

Reduce supervision and probation check-ins for nonviolent crimes and eliminate technical violations and bench warrants that result in more jail or prison time.

Create a community-led committee, comprised of those with lived experiences and individuals from most impacted communities, along with the Public Defenders office to review all municipal criminal ordinances to determine which ordinances are antiquated, ambiguous, and unnecessary to public safety, in order to minimize citizens’ interaction with law enforcement and the criminal courts.

Participating groups

ACLU Colorado, Afro Liberation Front

American Friends Service Committee

Atlantis Community Inc

Center for Trauma Resilience

CO Youth Congress

Colorado Coalition for the Homeless

Colorado Freedom Fund

Colorado Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC)

Colorado Latino Forum

Colorado Public Health Association

Democratic Socialist of America

Denver Alliance for Street Health Response (DASHR)

Denver Creative Industries Alliance

Denver Homeless Out Loud

Denver Indian Center

Denver Justice Project

Denver Street Partnership

Four Winds

Greater Metro Denver Ministerial Alliance

Harm Reduction Action Center

Heart and Hand Center

Interfaith Alliance of Colorado

JEWISHcolorado

Mental Health Center of Denver

NAACP

Padres y Jovenes Unidos

Police Union

Presbyterian St. Luke’s Medical Center

Project VOYCE

Reclaiming the Block

Rose Andom Center

Showing Up for Racial Justice

Spirit of the Sun

The Center on Colfax

The Conflict Center

Urban Peak

Young Aspiring Americans for Social and Political Activism (YAASPA)

Facilitators:

Xochitl Gaytan Katherine Leonard Dr. Marjorie Lewis Jude Del Hierro Kim Morse

Research Team:

Dr Jennifer Balliet Dr Jeff Lin

Policy Team:

Jessica Caouette Justin Morgan Xochitl Gaytan Katharine Leonard Jill Loncantore Beth Yohe Melanie Kesner Jason Vitello

Alex Landau Ana Ortega Gianina Horton

Gwen Farmsworth Aaron Stagoff-Belfort Kerri Joy

Ricardo Martinez Greg Verzosa Thomas Allen

Editors:

Dan Bodah Jeff Walker

Dr Lisa Calderon Brent Fahrberger

Participating Government Entities:

Denver City Council Denver District Attorney Municipal Public Defender

Office of Independent Monitor

Office of the Colorado State Public Defender Department of Public Health & Environment

Collaborating Partners:

Center for Policing Equity Vera Institute of Justice

Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition JusticeLA

Dignity & Power Now Fraternal Order of Police

Special Thanks to our Funders:

Rose Community Foundation Caring 4 Denver

Executive Summary

Strategies to Reimagine Policing & Public Safety

Strategies and Core Recommendations

Share this:

Like this: