Health Safety Education and Services - Regular Meeting

Welcome back to this weekly meeting of the Health and Safety Committee with Denver City Council. Coverage of the Health and Safety Committee starts now. Good morning, everyone.

Welcome to the Wednesday, December, December. Good morning.

it's hot out there i'm wishing it were december welcome to the wednesday july 29th meeting of the health and safety committee of denver city council my name is kevin flynn i drew the short straw today because our chair and vice chair are both absent so i'll preside over the meeting today we have a briefing from dpd on staffing in the crime lab and other records bureau it's things like that and fleet maintenance And we have four items on consent for those members here that'll go forward if there's no objection by the end of the meeting. So let me start with introductions and let me start on my left.

Oh, I noticed that today. Hi everybody, Sedona Gonzales-Cuchieta is one of your council members at large.

Good morning, Paul Cashman, South Denver District 6.

Good morning, Diana Romero-Campbell, Southeast Denver, District 4.

Thank you, all that. Chief, I'm going to take it away. I'm sorry, we have someone online. I did not log into Teams, so I apologize. Introductions of members online.

Good morning, Jamie Torres, West Denver, District 3.

Thank you. Is there anyone else? No. Okay. Thank you, Chief. I apologize, Councilwoman. I will log into Teams now.

Chief, take it away. Okay. Certainly. Good morning, Chief Thomas, Denver Police Department. So I believe the original intent of this presentation was to talk about staffing challenges in our crime lab. However, I think it's important for us to talk about the staffing challenges that we also have in some of our other critical assignments. So in today's presentation, in addition to talking about crime lab staffing, we'll also talk about staffing and records ID and fleet maintenance. Each of these assignments are central operational partners. We support officers, investigations, evidence processing, court obligations, and the daily delivery of police services. Adequate staffing and all these behind the scenes units is necessary for us to meet legal requirements, reduce delays and liability, maintain officer availability, and operate as a modern, efficient police department. Next slide. So we'll start with records ID. So the identification section handles background checks, proof of clearance, arrest records, and employee IDs. Our records unit obviously handles accident and crime reports. So low staffing and records ID places DPD at risk of noncompliance with legal requirements. while disrupting critical operations, delaying investigations, and reducing officer availabilities. Some specific examples include PR and bomb releases. Shortages can prevent warrant checks from being completed within the four-hour release deadline, placing DPD out of compliance, and risking the release of individuals wanted for serious crimes. After hours ID verification, officers may have to release someone or stay out of service two or three hours waiting for identity comfort confirmation creating civil liability response time concerns. In the case scanning, this is where they scan all of the paper documents into our system. This unit is approximately two and a half hours, two and a half months behind creating discovery problems and delays in producing court documents and then in missing persons. Missing persons information must be entered into NCIC within six hours and staffing shortages can place DPD out of compliance.

Good morning. My name is David Chamberlain. I'm the HR director for the Department of Safety. I'll be kind of providing some of the deep dive into the numbers of our staffing. We'll see similar charts for all three divisions that we're going to be talking about. So hopefully it'll become more familiar as we go through this presentation. Right now in the records ID, we have a total of 45 positions of which 60% are filled. Staffing, as you can imagine, is very fluid throughout the year. People resign, move somewhere else, we get requisitions opened, we recruit and hire. So these numbers are always in flux throughout the year. Right now, we have three job requisitions, of which I think we have a few that are about to start in the near future. So we are actively recruiting to help stabilize this staffing here in the records ID unit. Just for your review, these are the types of positions that exist within the records ID unit. We have a director, management, as well as supervision, and the majority of our staff are law enforcement records technicians. As the chief described, they are really focused on detail-oriented records work within the law enforcement area. It requires extreme precision and detailed nature, which does make it a little bit more difficult to staff these positions. because of the high scrutiny of making errors within this. You can see that right now our focus is for our three requisitions are all for law enforcement records text. That's where the primary responsibilities are within this work and so we're actually working to hire more to do this critical work. This is our five year staffing overview. As I mentioned, it's very much in flux, so I wanted to provide some detail on kind of our trends over the last five years. So you can see over that time, not only has the count of positions, which is sort of our top line budget amount gone down, but as well as our overall strength within the unit. And this graph is taken from these counts of workers. So you can see since 2021, we had a strength of 61. And now our strength into the beginning of this year is down to 43 within this unit.

Okay, so next is our fleet maintenance team. And so our department has hundreds of vehicles from patrol cars to SUVs, motorcycles, other specialized units that we use to respond to emergencies or conduct enforcement throughout the city. And as you know, DPD has improved our staffing over the last couple of years, but there's always, there's often not enough serviceable vehicles for those additional officers. And those vehicle shortages require officers to sometimes double up. So there's two officers in one vehicle, which kind of defeats the purpose because the way that we dispatch officers to calls, we dispatch per unit. And so we're only able to cover one call with a two officer call car. And so not only just doubling up people impact our response times, you know, having fewer cars, you know, I think impacts our ability to patrol the district and provide that proactive patrol.

These graphs look familiar. This is the same, as I mentioned, the same numbers that will run through for fleet as well. Our total strength is 36 with 26 filled positions, which is a 72% fill or strength ratio. Right now we have two open job requisitions that we're actively looking to fill within the fleet department. This is the type of roles that we have. As the chief mentioned, our fleet technicians are essential to keeping our fleet on the road. We have fleet technicians ones and threes. The ones typically do like the oil changes, the kind of quick things to keep our fleet moving, sort of the maintenance side of things, and our fleet tech threes handle a lot more of the more serious mechanical work, whether it's repairs, getting a car back on the road, or building out new vehicles, putting all the equipment that's necessary into the fleet vehicles. We also have a collision team, which does all the body work for our fleet, whether it's painting or dent repair, that kind of stuff. So that's kind of the scope of work that the fleet team does. They also have a management structure out there. As you can see, we currently have a need for fleet tech threes. That's what one of our requisitions is open for, and fleet collision technicians as well, so the bodywork repair side. Here is our five-year staffing overview of the fleet. As you can see, our strength has gone down over the last few years, as well as our overall headcount of our workers. And here is those numbers that that chart is made out of. You can see we've gone from a strength of around 37-ish down to 29. Finally, we'll come to the crime lab. Crime lab is the Forensics and Evidence Bureau. They are an essential part of the criminal prosecution area of the criminal justice system. They do high quality investigations and they do it from a very scientific method. They have the DNA side of things. They have firearms, latent prints. They're the ones doing all the the fun things you would see on TV, right, in all the true crime type areas. They are performing all that expert examination. They also do a lot of the testifying within the court system. That is all the lab side of it. They also have a crime scene side of work, where they're out at the crime scenes. So kind of two sides. There's the lab work side, and then there's the actual field work side, where the criminalists are out there collecting that information. Here's the current crime lab staffing. We have a total of 86 positions within this division, 70 of which are filled, so we have a strength of 81% of positions within the crime lab. Right now there's 16 open positions and two active job requisitions to fill positions. And I think, yeah, in my notes, we have actually one of those job requisitions is actively, we have somebody selected and they're starting next week, so. These are the type of positions that are within the crime lab. As I mentioned, whenever you see something that says forensic scientist, you can think more of the lab side of things. They're the ones testing things, identifying what type of drug it is, or whether there's DNA that they can analyze, fingerprint analysis, that kind of thing. And when you see the word criminalist, generally those are our employees that are out there in the field doing crime scene work, collecting that evidence. in, making sure it's preserved properly so that we can analyze it in the lab. There's some crossover on our firearms team where there's criminals on it, but generally speaking, those are the kind of sides of that. We also have a quality assurance section within that team to make sure that obviously we are providing quality lab reports and that they're all peer reviewed. Those are the filled positions. These are the open positions currently. As you can see, generally within the crime lab, the hardest to maintain full staffing is within the criminalist side of the house, which is that crime scene unit. I don't say we have no issues, but within the lab side, we don't see as much attrition and turnover on that side. And then here's our staffing line chart over the last five years. As you can see, overall strength has generally stayed the same, although over the last two years there has been a little bit of a downtrend in the amount of staff that we have had. And here's those numbers. As you can see, from 2021 to 2025, we've actually added strength overall to the crime lab. And our numbers have stayed pretty much the same as far as how many workers we have over that same time period, although they've kind of grown and then declined again. And then just as a final chart for you all to kind of compare these three divisions, this is the percent field, their strength, between the ID records, which is in the blue, the fleet, which is in the orange, and our crime lab, which was within the gray bar. Quick presentation, hopefully painless, but what questions do we have?

Thank you. Appreciate that, David. First up in the queue is Councilwoman Gonzalez-Cortez.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you all for this. I guess I have some questions on what you all see as the issue rising to the top of like why you see some of maybe the turnover or why you see not as many, like why on the criminal, criminalist side, what seems to be maybe the reason that folks aren't able to stay or having struggles?

Quite honestly, I think it's a workload issue. And so I think that they work harder in Denver. There's more work to do. And I think pay is probably consistent between jurisdictions. And so I think sometimes we lose criminalists in particular to other jurisdictions because they get paid roughly the same, but there's less work to do.

To expand on the chief's answer there, Denver is definitely more demanding. You can go work in a suburban district or, you know, county and not have to work weekends, not have to work 24-7. You might be on call. There might be, you know, a reduction in crime that, you know, you might only get called out once a month. Here in Denver, our call volume is consistent, it's high, and it is more demanding for our

Are there any supports for the folks in these positions? wellness supports, mental health supports, do they have access to any of that? Yes.

Yes. And so we have a pretty robust wellness team, and they don't just support, as well as peer support, so they don't just support our sworn site, but our professional staff site as well.

Pretty much anything that you've heard the chief talk about in the past about sworn wellness, those are all available to all of our professional staff as well. And highly utilized, I would say, too.

And as far as like the technology and the like access to the equipment that they need, do you think that we have that kind of access to the equipment that they need in order to do their jobs?

Yeah, I don't, I mean, obviously, you know, it's a challenge every year, but I think we have all the critical equipment that they need to do their jobs.

all right um well thank you again i don't think i have any other specific questions right now um but fun fact actually was going to go into forensic science at one point in time in my life actually forensic pathologist which is like a way all the way on the other but no this is um i'm i it's great to get this information thank you mr chair council president thank you thank you mr chair and thank you for the presentation um it kind of

relates to what you just said. I hear about young people like, I'm in forensic science, or I'm going into, I want to work in a crime lab, and you hear about that, but are the positions, like transfer positions, you've been in a different safety position, you move into the crime lab, or are you looking for specific skills and talents, or do people go there and move on? I'm just wondering where this fits in the

Yeah, so it is something that has a lot of interest to the community. And so I know that the lab does do community tours and things, especially with people that are interested in getting into it. There is a, and I'll go back, I don't know if it'll show on here, but If I go back to sort of our structure within the crime lab, we do have what we call forensic laboratory technicians. It's kind of an entry-level role. You don't need a ton of experience. You might just need a bachelor's degree to get that opportunity. And then there's a career sort of succession or you can kind of move up the ranks as we go. So then that would be the forensic scientist staff, which is our junior level scientists. They're handling a lot of casework, but also with some oversight from more senior staff. And then they go to the associate, you do have seniors on your, yeah, forensic scientist seniors towards the bottom there, and then up into management. So there is kind of a career progression that we provide here at our crime lab, and we are pretty unique in this area of the country that we are one of the biggest labs, and we are able to provide such good career progression. I think that's why we don't see as much attrition on the forensic scientist side, because it's a home where people can grow, and they have that opportunity there. It is a very competitive field. And often when we are hiring, we do get applicants from all over the country. So I would say that this is a very HR director thing, but networking is the best way for people to get into this career profession. It is a small, close-knit community. So going to networking events, getting to meet people, introducing yourself at those places, going on the tour that our crime lab provides, I think are all great opportunities for people to get involved with the community and find their next opportunity.

Thank you. So then one of the first slides that you showed was where you were at your lowest staffing. I think it was maybe 60%-ish.

In the records unit?

Yeah, in the records unit. still under the crime lab, different work, maybe not as compelling?

So the records unit is not part of the crime lab. The crime lab is part of the forensics and evidence division. Records is a separate bureau that rolls up into the chief's admin division. I don't know if you want to speak more about structure.

I apologize for the confusion, but really we just, you know, I think that we were asked to talk about our staffing challenges in the crime lab, but we actually have greater staffing challenges in some of these other critical units like records ID. And so I think we just wanted to provide an understanding of how equally critical these positions are and how, you know, there's really this sort of delicate sort of game, if you will, that I have to play as we manage the budget throughout the year. I mean, one thing that I cannot control is overtime. And so as we project overtime throughout the year, and I understand that I might be over in overtime, there are allowances that have to be made. And sometimes those allowances have to be made. And what positions I can hire for. And so David and I have a regular meeting monthly to talk about vacancies and then which vacancies are most critical to fill and what will my budget allow me to do given the massaging that I have to do relative to the overtime increases and things like that that are more difficult to control.

Got it. So does that mean just then for the records, for example, the one that you just gave the example of, not having it fully staffed, what is that impact?

Well, it impacts a lot. It impacts the time officers have to wait for clearances and the time that the court has to wait for documents, the time that the jail has to wait in order to process things. And so I tend to keep a pretty good eye on on when we're at critical mass and and you know when we just absolutely need to fill a position and so you know it's more likely you know as you can see we're at um you know 60 whereas in the crime lab we're at 80 some percent and so the next opportunity that i have to hire is more likely that i'm going to hire there because the needs are critical the workload is heavier there

So it's also just another question to that then. I don't know if I ever would have been like, oh, I know to be a records person in the safety department. Where do you recruit people from? And is that part of it is the pipeline for recruitment? Or is there a line of people waiting to do the job, just not the funds to hire them?

I think that... There are more and there are less glamorous positions. As we've talked about today, forensic science is a little more glamorous. We see it more on the true crime documentaries on Netflix and things. Data entry is not the most glamorous career path for people out there. And I think particularly data entry, where there's such a demanding... Uh, strictness around, I mean, the, the work that the records unit does, if they mess it up, somebody could be pulled out of their car at gunpoint because the, you know, they didn't put in a stolen vehicle properly. And so they, the, the, the police officer out there on the, on the street sees this vehicle, thinks it's stolen and pull somebody out. That's a data entry issue that results in a community. you know, member having something impact their life. So we're not talking about somebody, you know, in a general data entry profession that makes a mistake that has that kind of thing happen. So I think there's also a level of, um, data entry isn't the most glamorous job. And then the amount of expectations that we have to hold them to is really high. And that isn't for everybody out there. Um, We're lucky that we do have a good recruiting team. And I would say that generally we're able to fill these positions relatively quickly, but it's not for everybody. And it takes a, there's a long, I'm gonna look over to Dan, 14 weeks training program about to even get them ready to hit the floor and make these decisions. This isn't something that is taken very lightly or that people can just jump into. And it's not for everybody. So we just do see attrition through that sort of academy training program that then requires us to go back out and fill positions. So it's a challenge for us, but we work very closely to make sure we have a broad recruiting pool. I think people are interested in working in the police department and doing this work, but it's also not for everybody. Not everybody can be that detail-oriented in their work. So those are some of the challenges that we face.

And I would add to that that our recruiting team is out every weekend and mostly recruiting for police officers, but often they'll be contacted by individuals that will say, I'm not interested in being a police officer, but I am interested in forensic work or something like that. And so we'll pass the information along to them so that they can get connected with. David's team, and we actually have had, as we've had people in our professional staff ranks that have decided to join the police academy, we've actually had police officers decide that this is not quite for them and go on to records ID or something like that as well.

Thank you. Thank you. I don't have any other questions. Thank you. Mr. Chair.

Excuse me. I have a few before we do a second round. Just to confirm, all of these positions we're talking about, are they all civilian or are any of them sworn? They are all what we would call professional staff, but they are non-sworn. I remember when some of these 30 years ago might have been filled with sworn positions.

A few of them would have been. And there are some positions that we could backfill with an officer. It would be you know, terribly inefficient. I deal. Yeah, I mean, we're paying somebody as an officer that is doing something, you know, of lesser pay. But there are some very technical roles that, you know, we just don't have the expertise to do it all.

The number of positions in each of the three areas that we looked at has been reduced. It's smaller than it was five years ago. Is that because of greater efficiency, more digitizing, more efficient ways of fewer people doing the same amount of work, doing less with more, the famous? A phrase I always remember when they wanted to downsize people. Or is it because of our budgetary problems? So we're only authorized in the budget to have X number of positions.

So many of these reductions were budget related. However, we have found greater efficiencies and so- Combination maybe? Correct.

Okay, it'd be hard to separate that out, I imagine, because of most of them, the reduction is coming in the last two years where we've had our severe budget problems. But because you are budgeted for these total positions and you have a number of open ones, the number of open requisitions is small. Why aren't we hiring for each of these open positions? Are you being told by DOF? Department of Finance, sorry, that you can only hire these people right now?

Well, I mean, this is a conversation that myself and HR and DOF have regularly, understanding what our annual budget is and that number that we need to come in to at the end of the year. understanding that we're not going to be able to apply for a supplemental this year because of the city's budgetary challenges. And so that may mean that in order to account for overtime, that we're just not able to hire positions. But we want to make sure that we hire those that are absolutely critical, but those that are really just maybe lessening workload for others. That might be a sacrifice that we have to make in order to to meet our budget requirements.

There's a point where overtime costs would compel one to look at an additional position to cover that. Correct. How does that process go? Because I see the number of requisitions that you have open right now is pretty small.

Well, like I said, I mean, David and I and Shanae Cummings, our finance director, we meet probably weekly to talk about where we are, you know, as far as our budget is concerned and what the projections are, you know, where we're predicted to be at the end of the year. And so when we feel as though we are able to make hires, we do. And when we feel like there's some budget sacrifices that we have to make, And we do that.

All right, thank you. Councilwoman Gonzalez Gutierrez.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you for some of the questions you were asking because it's kind of along the same line of things. So you have the 16 vacant positions. This is for the crime lab, right? 16 vacant positions, but you're seeking to fill two of them. So the rest are kind of being held. And I just want to make sure I heard correctly that... Part of this is the concern or being able to hold those positions because of anticipated overtime that may be needed for the uniformed officers. Is that accurate?

It's not even anticipated overtime. It's overtime that has already been spent. And if we project forward, that tells us where we would likely end if we continued on the same path, which causes us to have to make some decisions throughout the year.

Okay, and the reason I'm asking that, because last year we had a contingency request for 11Million dollars rate for for that overtime pay. And so I guess part of it is, is that then is this an attempt to not have to then come back to the contingency for that over time?

Well, certainly. I mean, I will say that we're 40% down in overtime period, but I mean, again, overtime, you know, when people work extra hours or when there is a call out or something like that, I mean, that's overtime I'm obligated to pay. And so, you know, we track that and we create projections to determine where we would end up at the end of the year, you know, on that same pace. And so that is how, that's what informs the staffing decisions that we have to make.

Okay. Thank you for that. The question about implications for turnaround time on, like, investigatory needs, so, like, processing the evidence that's being collected by the criminalists and then it getting processed in the lab. Are you all seeing an impact on that turnaround time in getting things processed?

Generally, no. And so I think if you went back to the slide that broke down the positions, the positions, I mean, most of our lab tech positions are filled. Those are the people that are doing the testing. The position that is the shortest are those crime scene investigators. And that's another area where we can, and efficient certainly, but we could use officers to do evidence collection and things like that.

So you're using, so uniformed officers are doing that?

In some cases, yes. Or there's just a delay in sending out, you know, text to recover evidence.

And I guess the last thing is just an ask. Would you be able to provide us, if you don't have it today, how much has already been paid out in overtime for the department and kind of across the board? How much has already been paid out since you said that's already happening? Sure. That would be great. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

You're welcome. Any other members with questions? No? I guess we're anxious to get these folks back. Chief, you might have a car repair out of the field or something. I mean, do you pitch in on... Seeing no other questions, I guess we can give you back almost an hour of your time. I really appreciate this, Chief and David. We have those four items on consent that are going forward, and with that, we're adjourned. Thank you.