For four days, Denver police gassed or fired pepper balls and foam munitions at hundreds of protesters, and while some pelted officers with rocks and told them to die, many others struck by the weapons were peaceful in their calls for an end to police violence.
Now, the two sides will have to work together — or face off again — in city council chambers and community town halls to address the mounting calls for systemic and cultural changes at the Denver Police Department.
The first days of anguished, impassioned protest in Denver over the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police have maintained momentum for more than a week. Since the first days where vandalism and looting marred the message, protesters have shifted focus to killings by police in Colorado and have started talking about changes they say need to happen in the Mile High City. The demands vary in breadth and specificity and come from many groups, including longtime activists who say this moment is like none before in the city’s history.
“You can’t just link arms and take a knee and then continue the same abusive conduct that people are complaining about, or not address the trauma that was instilled in people those nights” that police used less-than-lethal weapons on the public, said Lisa Calderón, a longtime Denver community leader and chief of staff for Councilwoman Candi CdeBaca. “And that is what’s different. They didn’t just do it to us, people of color. They did it to a whole lot of white people who now understand our outrage at this kind of conduct.”
Denver’s leaders say they are listening. Police Chief Paul Pazen has promised accountability and change, but he hasn’t offered details on what he’d like to see. His boss, Murphy Robinson, public safety executive director, said if he were to rebuild the idea of policing, he would start by addressing some of its earliest roots in the United States: violently controlling enslaved people and capturing those who escaped.
“I don’t think we have to restart the police department from scratch to do that. I think we can do some drastic changes now,” Robinson, who worked as a police officer for more than six years, said.
“I would refocus a police officers’ job from the ultimate purpose of jailing people to how do we utilize them in a capacity to bring life to someone,” he said.
What’s next
Robinson plans on holding a “demands meeting” in the next few weeks to hear from community members what change they would like to see. He also wants to hear from police officers, he said. But he acknowledged that holding town halls and meetings is not enough to rebuild community trust.
“But investigating complaints is like putting a bandaid on a bigger issue,” he said. “We have to get to a point where we’re implementing policy and standards that are keeping these complaints from happening in the first place.”
The Rev. Quincy Shannon, a pastor at New Hope Baptist Church, has led several days of demonstrations in Denver and has met with Pazen and Robinson to talk about needed changes. Police need more cultural competency training and the public needs better access to police disciplinary records, especially for officers with multiple violations, he said.
“We can only go up from here,” Shannon said.
Democratic state lawmakers, led by Denver’s Rep. Leslie Herod, have introduced a broad police reform bill that would have a drastic impact in Colorado. On a local level, these are some of the other changes suggested by city leaders, protesters, and community activists in interviews, public meetings, community town halls and during protests over the past week:
- The city’s Citizen Oversight Board issued a letter with 15 reform suggestions, including adding more civilian roles to patrol and overhauling the the Civil Service Commission, which hears disciplinary appeals.
- CdeBaca floated the idea of banning police use of tear gas, foam projectiles and other chemical weapons.
- The Denver Creative Industries Alliance issued a list of demands, including that all officers should be evaluated for bias and that police unions should foot the bill for excessive force lawsuits.
- Two Denver Public Schools board members want to end the school district’s contract with Denver police for school resource officers.
- Robinson said he would like the power to quickly fire an officer in extreme circumstances, circumventing the bureaucracy of civil service rules.
Many in the community are advocating drastic reductions to the police department’s $254 million budget as the city eyes where it can make necessary slashes to address the loss of revenue caused by COVID-19. Hundreds of protesters with Black Lives Matter 5280 drove to Mayor Michael Hancock’s house on Thursday to demand that he defund the police, and they were met with officers in riot gear. CdeBaca and Councilwoman Stacie Gilmore also have voiced support for redirecting some of the police department’s budget to other community resources.
For a 30 year old who earns Denver’s median income of about $63,000 and does not own a house, about $183 of the $468 estimated city taxes they pay goes to the Department of Public Safety, or about 40% of their tax money, according to the city’s calculator. About $77 of that goes directly to the police department, the largest amount received by any city department listed on the calculator app.
In comparison, $4.72 goes to affordable housing issues, $3.24 to community and behavioral health services, and 35 cents to homeless services.
“It’s easy to say we’re going to take money and use it somewhere else, but harder to implement,” Robinson said about calls for reductions to the police budget.
Katina Banks, chairwoman of the Citizen Oversight Board, said the group was working prior to the protests to allow more citizen participation in the law enforcement disciplinary process. The board is scheduled to meet June 19, though Banks said the board is discussing meeting sooner in response to the protests. She encouraged people to send their ideas.
“This is a moment that calls for bold action,” Banks said. “It’s an opportunity to really shift our mindset and change the way that law enforcement operate and improve on those issues and areas like independence, participation and transparency.”
Past reforms
Pazen and Hancock have touted the city’s use of force policy as the product of community and police collaboration. But the road to that policy was rocky and the city at first did not include community members in the discussion.
“We had to fight to get at that table. And then we had to fight to get heard,” Calderón, who served on the advisory committee, said.
While the policy may be strong compared to those of other metro-area departments and goes beyond the national legal standards, it means little when it’s not enforced.
“The flaw isn’t necessarily in the policy,” Calderón said. “It was in the implementation.”
Between 2016 and 2019, four Denver police officers were fired for misconduct, according to the 2019 annual report from the Office of the Independent Monitor. The officers were fired for falsely reporting a sexual assault that did not happen, sexually harassing an intern, lying about a use of force incident, and lying about drinking and handling a department-issued gun.
Twenty-six others resigned or retired before they could be disciplined, according to the report.
‘They don’t know my true heart’
Denver police Commander Jeff Martinez had barely slept for five days as he drove his unmarked police car around central Denver on Tuesday, checking on bleary officers blocking traffic for protests that continued that night past 11 p.m.
Almost every officer who has been working on the front lines of the protest has been hit with rocks or other objects lobbed their way, Martinez said. It will be crucial in the months ahead for the department to strengthen community relationships.
“We don’t have to completely rebuild,” Martinez said. “But we also have to work really hard to find the trust again.”
During the protests, he was able to have a conversation about police issues and shake hands with some who had been screaming at him and other officers. “It just shows that we can come to a consensus, and they were basically tell me ‘f- you’ and ‘go die,'” Martinez said.
Pazen has committed to multiple community meetings to hear concerns and ideas for change. Martinez also said the department will have to double down on its community outreach and continue its efforts to hire officers from diverse backgrounds that reflect the city’s demographics, especially people who grew up here.
“We’ll listen to our community,” he said. “We’ll do everything we can to strengthen our bonds with them again.”
The two unions representing line-level Denver police officers — the Police Protective Association and the Fraternal Order of Police Denver Lodge #41 — either did not respond or declined an interview request with The Denver Post for this article.