Safety, Housing, Education & Homelessness Committee - Regular Meeting

Welcome to the safety, housing, education, and homelessness committee of Denver City Council. The safety, housing, education, and homelessness committee begins now.

And homelessness committee. Today is Wednesday, April 30. I wanna thank everyone for joining us just a little bit early this morning. My name is Serena Gonzalez Gutierrez. I am your chair, and I also represent on Denver City Council at large. So I'm going to go have other council members introduce themselves as well, go around the room, and then we'll get started on the agenda starting to my left.

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

Good morning, Darrell Watson. Honored to represent all of the fine District 9.

Good morning, Paul Cashman, South Denver, District 6.

Good morning, Stacy Gilmore, District 11.

Devin Flynn, Southwest Denver's District 2.

Jamie Corres, West Denver District 3.

Alright. So today, we have a couple of items on the agenda. We have, one action item with, joining us from Denver, Department of Public Health and Environment regarding a contract with Colorado Coalition for the Homeless. And then after that, have some briefings on from the Independent Monitor's Office and the Citizen Oversight Board. They will be presenting their annual reports.

So with that said, I'm going to turn this over to Tristan, who is joining us from DDPHE. If you can introduce yourself and if there's anybody else here that may be joining for answering questions, and then go ahead and proceed with the presentation, and we'll save some time for questions at the end. And members, we will need a motion on this when we get to the end. Thank you so much.

Before I begin, how many minutes do you have, Mr. Fifteen?

We have 10:15 to ten forty

Thanks.

For the entirety of everything.

Got it. Yeah. I'll be quick. Councilman Hines, you want to introduce yourself before I jump in?

Oh, yeah, go right ahead.

Good morning, members of the council. My name is Tristan Sanders. I'm the director of Community Behavioral Health Division at the Department of Public Health and Environment. I'm here today to present on the work that we are overseeing around health services at All In Myel High Sites. We do have some folks here in the audience that are available for answering questions. I'll just start from right to left here. Alex Nadal is our legislative liaison. He's happy to follow-up on anything that I forget. Cassie Williams is our behavioral health manager in my division. And then we've got April Kroll and Cathy Alderman from Colorado Coalition for the Homeless that can answer any real specific questions that I cannot.

Great. Thank you.

We'll jump in. So the action item before you is a vote on Council Bill 20 five-five 45. This is a contract with Colorado Coalition for the Homeless to continue health services at All In Mile High sites. It's just north of 1100000.0, and it's for the balance of 2025. The high level scope is to provide physical, mental, and behavioral health services to clients on congregate shelter locations across the city in the Ellen Mile High network.

It's important to note and I want to give a bit of an overview here just around the history. So CCH has been providing these services at Ellen Mile High sites basically since their inception. They were the first services provider there and continue to today. And the original contract for CCH came through Host in 2024. And we came to this party in about October to work with Colorado College of the Homeless and in partnership with Host to oversee these services going forward.

So we're we're assuming this contract anew in DDPHE even though it's existing services. And there's a couple of important points there. So when we contract for health services, there's a number of things that we like to look at. We like to look at performance measures. We like to look at patient outcomes. We like to look at how services are being delivered, what the service delivery mix is. These are things that were not necessarily in place when we started talking with CCH. And so through the negotiations around this contract and what we want to start building is doing that mid course. So they're still providing health services. We couldn't stop and get all that information to start a new contract.

So we're wanting to continue the services that they're doing while building all of those things in in 2025. So there's a a number of things that I might reference where, you know, we're wanting to get a better understanding of that during the course of this year that we may not have all the data on currently, but we're we're working on it. CCH was identified as the vendor for these services through a competitive process by Host when it first started. That's why this is a an amendment or continuation. And I'll just say, you know, as a blanket statement, the service type and staffing from CCH has really evolved over the last eighteen months.

And even in our conversations with CCH when we started in October, a number of things have changed. And so I'm happy to highlight those as a representative in this contract. Again, we started in 2024. There's a number of things that we're talking with CCH around. We'll call them process improvements.

It's really just a different way of doing things in GDPHE and a different way of contracting these types of services that I think we're all figuring out and adjusting to. We did assume the contract management in January even though we didn't have a contract. So this contract does cover January 1 through 12/31/2025. We are interested in the extension of this current service contract. We are, as I mentioned, putting a number of things in place to possibly amend this contract as needed in 2025 if we have to, you know, change staffing mix or look at patient outcomes as they are available to us and maybe, you know, enhance some things or modest modify some things.

I mean, I think we're we're putting our best foot forward here to keep services as they are and as they've been enhanced, but there may be more that needs to come. We are also interested in understanding the service needs across All Mile High through a referral mechanism. We've worked with CCH and with some city partners to develop an virtual referral mechanism whereby anybody working with any All In Mile High client, whether that's a TSA provider, a host staff, or anybody could complete this virtual form, and it would serve as a referral directly to CCH. It covers a number of different questions around needs for that client that we would also be able to see so that we can understand, you know, really what the service needs are and whether we're meeting those needs with the services that we're procuring. So I already talked about the virtual intake form.

Once that intake form is completed, CCH will do their outreach. There's a deeper assessment that has to be done for any client, really a clinical assessment. That intake form really is just an intake. That assessment that CCH might complete through a nurse care coordinator or another CCH staff would be to assess levels of acuity and really triage appropriately the care that that person needs. I'll just say that the options across that spectrum are pretty far and wide.

So we also have city staff from the Roadster recovery team that are supporting on mile high for some of the really high acuity folks that CCH might be seeing. We can partner to deliver services to those folks that we have outside of this contract. There's also just the myriad of CCH services that they have across their whole system that they might be referring somebody to or providing on-site. That's really an individual by individual assessment that'll take place once that intake, form has been received. I this next bullet I use a little bit interchangeably.

So CCH is really providing a lot of the core services across the sites. If there are specialty services that are needed or that CCH doesn't provide or that a client might want from somebody else, that referral can always happen. If there is a significant need around specialty services, we might talk to CCH about whether they can provide that. And if not, we may we may need to procure that from other providers. And so we're we're really looking at the whole system and what the needs of the whole systems are and how CCH fits into that from a core service perspective and then what those specialty needs are that we might have to procure elsewhere.

One of the enhancements I would just say in this contract relative to last year is additional on-site staff and a modified rotation of services. So the budget allows for up to five nurse care coordinators, and that's really intended to make sure that we have an adequate amount of personnel on the ground so people can actually go see and can navigate into whatever services they need. There's also and I have a slide later that shows you just what it is. It's not meant to be able to actually dig into. But there's a rotation of services that CCH provides from their clinical providers at every site.

And based on those service needs and those intake forms, we may be modifying or talking about what that rotation of services of their clinical providers actually looks like. So it might be, you know, Matt at the Doubletree twice a week or Matt at the Doubletree once a week depending on service needs. It might be behavioral health in every location once a week or psych at a couple of locations twice a week. Pharma needs as as dictated could come on-site. They also provide a lot of these services through their HOT mechanism, which is their mobile clinical mechanism, and that travels on the same schedule or modified schedule to all of these sites.

The services include primary care, behavioral health, MAT or substance use treatment, psychiatry, and dental services for sort of anybody. And then as I mentioned, there's specialty services that could be referred out. One thing to note here is that in the actual budget, you don't see all the clinical providers for these services because they're billable services. So if they're providing these services from a provider like a behavioral health provider or a psychiatrist, generally they're able to bill Medicaid for those services. So we're not actually paying for the clinical time.

It's getting billed to another payer. What we're really paying for is the coordination of the system and getting people to services. And that's why it's heavy on the nursing side. And then you don't see a whole lot of the actual clinical providers. But those are being provided by, you know, licensed clinical providers through CCH or referred to other specialty providers.

I'll also mention that, you know, the contract covers services generally during the day, so, you know, eight to four ish, eight to five. There are, you know, the same emergency services available to anybody during the overnight hours, but CCH, and I actually just learned this today, this is great, also has a partnership with the Denver Health Nurse Line so that if anybody does call CCH after hours, they do get connected directly to the Denver Health Nurse Line and there is care available through that mechanism. As I mentioned, at the bottom here, is intensive case management and access to other treatment services for the high acuity folks. So we're really trying to push CCH to deliver services across the whole system and leave some of the high acuity folks to our Roadster Recovery team to provide that daily touch of case management and navigation into other services. We're working out what that specific referral mechanism looks like, but it'll be, you know, a warm handoff from CCH after an intake is completed to our resident recovery case managers, then they will sort of follow on with care from there.

This isn't meant to be read, so I just want to acknowledge that. It's a terrible slide. But this is the service mix that's delivered in the rotation of services across all of the sites. So this really outlines what is the site, you know, what is the frequency with which these services are delivered there, and, you know, what are the times that it's available. And this is something that, you know, gets widely advertised across the Ellen Myle High site so that if somebody is asking for that or somebody is asking to see a psychiatrist or a behavioral health provider, you know, everybody that has this can say, they'll be here on this day.

We can get you there. We can make sure you get connected to those services. You can also go to the nurse care coordinators from CCH anytime to, you know, schedule that separately if you need to through their other providers across their system. Performance to date. So the performance measures that were in this contract last year were really around the number of people served, the services provided, and the number of contacts.

And I just want to be clear that we saw an uptick in the number of these contacts, specifically when we had nurse care coordinators put on-site. And that was in quarter four of last year. Across all of last year, they served seven zero five people and over 2,200 contacts. So the the quote, unquote performance measures that are in the contract for 2025 look very similar to last year because we don't yet have the a data sharing agreement in place, the ability to look at individual client outcomes, and to actually look at performance measures for individuals on the Citi side. But what I can say is that CCH looks at that for their purposes because they have to do that for Medicaid reimbursements.

They have to do that for all of their, you know, stars ratings and everything else that they're already be holding to for that payer mechanism. But you can see the the so the blue bar is the number of unique individuals served, and the red bar is the total number of encounters. And that is what the things look like in 2024. In 2025, in the first quarter, they saw an additional 216 clients with another 410 encounters. And so what I would say here is that the the performance measures around clients and encounters in the contract are really thresholds.

If client needs additional services or needs additional time with a different provider, it's provided. It's not that that's you know, it's not a limit to the number of encounters they might have or the number of services they might receive. That's really just something to track in contracting mechanism until we're able to get a data sharing agreement to look at performance measures for client outcomes. I just kind of put that it's worth noting here primary care is the number one service provided, followed by mental health and non psych behavioral health. So the back end numbers that go into these aggregated numbers are broken down by services delivered.

So you can see exactly the number of people that receive primary care, that receive behavioral health, that receive dental, etcetera, by quarter, by site, by it's all available. It's just a big back end spreadsheet at this time that sort of yields these aggregated numbers. So I'm gonna stop there for now and just, remind you that the action item before you is this contract for CCH to provide these services in 2025, and I look forward to any of your questions.

Thank you so much, Tristan. I wanna welcome councilwoman Alvidrez and council president Sandoval. Thank you for joining us. I have three members in the queue, and I just wanna remind members that we do have some briefings that we're trying to get started at 10:40. So I just wanna remind you all about that. So starting with councilman Flynn followed by councilman Cashman.

Thank you, madam chair. Tristan, to make sure I understand the current status, CCH is the current provider of medical services since the inception. What is the value of that contract and what's the term of it?

So that contract was only for 2024. This contract is to cover all of 2025. In 2024, I

believe Well, this is May.

Yeah. I'm aware. So they've been providing services since January without accounting. Not being paid? Not currently. Not until we have

So we ran out of capacity and and we ran out of term on the On

the previous contract. On that. Did it not start in 2023? It might have been the 2023,

but the term went through said December.

So the previous contract through hosts, I don't know exactly when it started, but it went through the 2024. And it ended on 12/31/2024.

And and now this so this is not an amendment to that contract. This is a new procurement. Who are

the other proposers? So this is a I might need clarification on that, but this is a new contract in DDPHE. Yes. But because they were procured through a procurement process originally through hosts From Host. We didn't do a new procurement.

Okay. The, the presentation says that this is a this was done by a procurement.

So Host did a procurement at the initiation of services in All In Mile High Sites

Right.

In which CCH was selected as the vendor. We are bringing this contract to continue those services in 2025.

Oh, so in the in the presentation on the third slide third slide, CCH was identified as a vendor through a competitive procurement process managed by host. That's the old contract?

That's that's yes. It's for the sir I don't it's for the services that CCH provided originally, and we are continuing those services. I believe that rules allow for this to be a new contract even though that procurement was run by those. Right.

So did did DDPHE do a a competitive procurement? We did

not do a new procurement for this contract.

Okay. And so why not?

So CCH was providing these services for the first twelve months. We started working with CCH towards the 2024 to run a procurement process for services in 2025 would take six months or more. And there were a number of things that we felt we could work with CCH to modify in those services that they were providing to make this better in some ways. Not that it was bad, to be clear. When we first started talking to CCH, you know, there were a number of providers that were brought on-site that actually they reduced the number of providers on-site because they weren't seeing enough clients, for those providers.

And that tells me that there's actually a systems problem getting people to CCH. And so that's why in this contract, you see additional nurse care coordinators, and you there's an addition of host and DDPHE staff on-site in all of MyEye sites to get folks to CCH for those services.

Okay. The reason I'm sounding confused is that the resolution request says Yeah. This contractor was selected by competitive process.

So it was selected in a competitive process to at the beginning by host. But this is

a new contract. That's that's why I'm Yeah. I don't think the resolution request is accurate here.

Tristan, maybe is it one of those situations where it's a contract over the course of so many years where you would not go through a new procurement process? And so was it was is that

So my understanding is that because these services were done through a procurement process initially, like, we didn't have to go through another procurement process. It's

just It's just interrupt. I know we're short on time. Yeah. But that would be true if this were an amendment to that first contract. Sure. But you're you're telling us that it's not. You're it's a brand new contract, and you're telling us it was done competitively and turns out it was not. I understand that this makes sense to do it this way, but I just wish it were more clear on on the documentation.

I will follow-up to mid Thank you. So that I know whether it was an amendment or a new contract. Madam chair. Yeah.

Thank you, councilman.

And just for, you purchasing I know it makes sense to do it this way.

Totally. Yeah.

But let's be clear on the on the paper trail.

You bet.

Thank you.

I think that's

a good flag. Thank you, Councilman. Councilman Cashman followed by Councilman Watson.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Tristan, I'm looking at impossible to reach slide number eight on service delivery. And I'm wondering if that delivery schedule is based on it meets clients' needs or it meets our budget or it meets the capacity of CCH to deliver. The question is

Yeah.

Are we finally meeting the needs of our clients?

So I think that's a great question. I'm going to do my best in an answer that Thank you. You need to follow-up satisfactory. I think the only way I would answer that now is that it meets clients' needs that we know of. And so that's really the reason for the addition of this intake form and the addition of additional staff on-site because I don't know that we have the complete picture of all client needs across Holland Mile High that we know of.

This meets those needs. I think we're gonna learn about a lot more needs, and that's why we're gonna have the flexibility to work with CCH to deliver those services. I'll just address the other two parts of your question. You know, is it CCH capacity? I think CCH, at least in our conversations with them, they've had more capacity for this than they've needed. They've taken providers away because they aren't seeing clients. It doesn't make sense to have a doctor sitting there if they're not seeing people. We're enhancing the system to get people to those doctors, which is why I say I think we're gonna learn about additional needs, and I think CCH is ready to meet that capacity. As far as our budget, it it actually is not as much a question about our budget because many of those services that are being provided are billable. And so we're not even necessarily paying for those.

We may be paying for the time billable through Medicaid through other payers. We may be paying for the time of the people in the system to get clients to providers. But once providers provide a service, it's billable to Medicaid.

Is is there any way for us to find out how many hours were Medicaid is being billed for services through the all in mile high?

I don't know. I think we could we could follow-up with CCH to understand more about that. But I don't know that it break breaks down quite that way.

Thank you. That that's all

I'm gonna try.

Thank you so much, councilman. Councilman Watson followed by councilman Hines.

Thank you, madam chair. I I think, Tristan, we began having discussions about this contract back in, I would say, October, November many months ago, and I have been very skeptical about this contract for specific reasons. The first part of it was the initial discussions from council member Hines. I know that we

my

my initial concerns was Conservative. Why was this not as a new contract, not an amendment to an existing contract

Got it.

Done as Because the actual competitive we know the services that All In Mile High residents have been asking for. We've been hearing from them that they want more direct medical care and support. Yet this contract from our discussion October was not done by a committed event. So that was the first part of my skepticism. I have a few questions that I really would like some clarification on so that I have a sense before this comes to the floor.

Yes. You there is a target of the amount of the scope of work for encounters. I think based on your scope of work, the project stated about 1,200 encounters for 1.5 visits per person per year with an all in mile high. Where did that calculation? And is that based on a client needs perspective or is that based on capacity? So that's within the scope of work, 1.5 visits per person per year. Yeah. So what

I would say is that's an average. So that was looking at like, if you took 1,200 encounters and it was 800 people or whatever, it's about 1.5 visits. That's just an average. If a client needs additional visits, that's provided. If they need additional services, that's provided. There might be some clients that have 20 and some that have none. I think part of the assumption going into this is that everybody at All In Mile High needs something or wants something. That may not be the case. They also may not want it through CCH. And so, again, I think what I'd said in the presentation is I would think of that as thresholds. Like, this is really just to say, like, our encounter's happening, our visits happening, is the system working to get people to CCH? Whatever needs to be provided, we need to get a data sharing agreement in place to really be able to see on a patient basis what

that would I get that, Tristan. Yeah. But what I'm saying is you have a year of CCH delivering.

Yeah.

When we have a scope of work within a contract, it's usually based on the sticky data, based on community or client, not community, client input and impact. Yeah. You're giving an approximation as far as service tied to dollars that we're approving. That's the other step of my concern. There should be by now clarity as to what services are needed, what is the per client touches that have occurred, and what's the level of acuity.

That information should be clear from a year's worth of information or a minimum from about six months of me asking for clarity on that. So why do we not have in this contract the clarity from the outcomes of how CCH has performed over one year if we are extending for another year?

Yeah. Again, the prior contract was held by host, and it had specific performance measures that did not include a lot of that information. And, again, I'm not saying that's right, wrong, or otherwise. But when we contract with service providers, that is what we look for. That is what we would ask for.

We do not have a mechanism in place currently to get that, to share that. We also have not paid for any analytic time or anything on this contract or this work to assess that. And so I think with this contract in place, with an intake form in place, with the data sharing agreement in place, we have all the capacity in the world in DDPHG and and working with CCH to assess that and understand that. And that's why I tried to allude to, like, some room for possible amendment, some room for, you know, modification of services, and potentially even procurement of additional services as needed.

Thank you, madam chair. One more comment and one more question. Sure. This is kind of the root of where my concern is with this contract. You've

had a

year of information. You're asking us to review and approve another contract, and still you are now searching for the data for the scope of work for that contract that we're already going to approve. That is concerning to me because within this contract, the scope of work should be based on existing conditions and what client needs or medical needs that need to be met. None of that is in this contract. You are having a narrative as to your dialogue as far as referrals to meet that medical need, but this is a contract to meet the medical needs of folks who need medical needs to be met that we hear up every Monday night at city council.

I'm concerned with that. My final question I've got, like, 15 questions, but I'll stop. My final question is on the current process and delivery between this contract and Denver Health. I prefaced this with a point. I would assume, because there is no data provided, that a majority of these clients for acute care, overnight care, weekend care are going to Denver Health.

We know that Denver Health has about a $120,000,000 gap in funding, most likely 60,000,000 now with their their approval from voters to increase their dedicated funding, subtracting all the Medicare stuff that's coming year round. They still have a gap. They have capacity to lead many of the steps, the referrals, the the dental, the the psych the psychological support that these clients are receiving outside of this contract. What was the thinking of not having Denver Health as a partner within this contract? And is there an opportunity for this contract to be amended for Denver Health to provide the overnight, which will be clear in the contract, not they will receive support like everyone else.

And we can support that is absolutely necessary for this this this group of residents.

So CCH does have a, I understand, I believe, contractual relationship with Denver Health for their nurse line services that is overnight and on the weekend. And so if a client at All in Mile High calls CCH for services, they can get connected to Denver Health nurse line, that is relationship that CCH

has. The Nurseline, but not the actual care.

Well, the Nurseline is the conduit to care. And I would also say that many of the services that you're referencing again, if somebody doesn't want services from CCH or CCH has to refer to Denver Health, those services are billable. So Denver Health can provide those services and bill Medicaid and get paid for it. It doesn't necessarily have to be a part of this contract for them to still receive clients from All in Mile High and get paid for it.

And so track within HMIS, that bridge relationship?

So services that CCH is providing or that services are connected to CCH is documented in HMIS. So anybody that is accessing that can see that.

Referrals to Denver Health how do we track the referrals your cycle of care for residents? So I don't believe I

Yeah. I don't believe the referrals are tracked in HMIS. And, again, this is where we, on the DDPHE side, we have lots of contracts with Denver Health. We have relationships with Denver Health and are paying them for acute care for clients. And so where we can see what comes in through CCH in this contract with our data agreement with them, we would actually have the ability to track that in a better way.

Thank you so much, Tristan. Thank you, madam chair, for indulging. My concerns are clear. This contract is being built while we're approving it. I have deep concerns about really how we manage these types of contracts. Thank you, madam chair.

Thank you, councilman. I'm going to go real quick to councilwoman I mean, sorry, council president Sandoval. She wanted to add something real quick in response to some of this conversation.

Yes. I I I think, Tristan, what you're hearing from our colleagues is, a, it's it's just not it's not your fault. But No. Like, this is this thing that happened.

I understand.

If we actually wanna get different service providers, we cannot continue to keep doing this pain in after. Like, it just like, who has the business model to be able to actually do this type of care that we are not that we're five months, like, January, February, March, April, four months not paid. Right? That just doesn't even allow us so, like, if we're if we're if you're doing business with us, that's not a good business partner. And so it doesn't feel good on my end to be approving a contract for four months in arrears payment.

It should be net 30. These contracts really should be net 30. And if not, then that does not what that what that does is this us continuing we have this practice doesn't allow other service providers in this space, smaller service providers. We're always going to have to be keep going with Salvation Army and Colorado Coalition for the Homeless because they can actually have not be billed for four four months. And even if we approve this now, by the time they get paid, we'll probably be June, just the way the the system works.

Right? Now they're gonna have to go back and invoice maybe May, maybe if we're lucky in a couple weeks by the time it comes to first and second reading. Madam chair, I hear just a lot of unanswered questions from my colleagues, so I wouldn't feel comfortable voting on the right now. I don't know how the sense of the committee, the voting members of the committee are, but I hear concerns from you. I hear concerns from council member Flynn.

I hear just and I think that our role at committee is is this ready for the floor? Mhmm. And in my personal opinion, I would just say I don't think it's ready for the floor. But I'm open. That's what I really wanted to say to I wanted to go on record, first of all, saying I don't like this practice, that we keep doing this practice of paying people.

We're not I feel like we're not good business partners. Second, to see if my what the feel of the committee is and how are my other committee members are feeling. I know we're running a little bit over time, but this is at the core of what I think all of us on city council are talking about and thinking about going into budget next week with or on the sixteenth. This is what all of our values are. This is what our budget policies are all created on. So just wanna get the sense of the committee members.

Yeah. Thank you for that, council president. And I know I had in the queue Hines and then Torres. Hines, was there something you wanted to say related to this?

Yeah. My comment actually was very much related to what council president said, very slightly different comment that I made the last time this went through the process in that you are the messenger, just as Michael Sapp was the messenger when he was representing safety. You're saying it again. I don't feel great. I think this is skipping the council budget oversight by approving a contract that has is already, by the time it goes through the process, will be halfway over. So that was the comment I wanted to make.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Of course. Councilwoman Torres.

Thank you. I wanna make sure I'm understanding what would we need to see if brought back because it doesn't sound like host gathered the data that DDPHE would be gathering under this contract. The question that I have is more for your legal department and whether this is more characterized as a sole source contract as opposed to a procured contract.

The

other piece is really about, for me, all in Mile High's plan because so much of it was started under host. They can't just kick around contracts and evade process in a way that forces our hand to approve it because we're five months into services being provided. So that's, I think, an all in mile high conversation. The other piece is why the heck wasn't Host gathering this data? I don't understand, particularly because it's such a multi department effort, this initiative, why we're not fully gathering what we need because we know DDPHE is going to be at the table at some point.

It isn't just about housing and shelter and those numbers. So those are questions that I need. But I don't know that I need those to pass the contract. Maybe I just need more clarity that we know what we're passing. And if it's a sole source contract, then let's call it that and get it through. But at some level, we're gonna have to correct that we're in arrears and paying this vendor that's been doing this work and get a better sense for me of of the path forward. What other contracts from All In Mile High are gonna be transferred to the DDPHE? What does that look like? If this is only going towards the end of this year, when does it open up again? What is your plan? So those are some of the things that just remain really foggy for me.

And I think that there might be and I know CCH is here, so thank you for being here. And I think if this is going to be held, perhaps in that time period, I don't know. And Kathy, I think you could probably speak to us. Do you have data that can be provided regarding this data from the last year of services? And if you don't mind even coming to the microphone and just answering that question, I think that would be helpful to just know if that data is built if if there is data available at all. And please introduce yourself. Kathy Alderman.

I'm the chief communications and public policy officer for the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless. I'm actually joined here today by our director of nursing, April Paul, who can talk more about our data. But yes, we do have number of visits, of encounters. That information is not necessarily something we can share with host at the level that we will be able to share it with DDPHE under our data use agreement.

So we need the contract in order to be able to share that information is what you're saying?

We can do aggregate data, but we can't get to the kind of deep services needs that you're talking about without a data use agreement because we can't we we can't do individualized client need. We can only do it in aggregate data.

So would you be able to provide that data for 2024 for the previous year once that agreement is in place?

And I think some of that data is is or was already provided just in terms of aggregate data. So what we're what we're trying to move towards is a relationship where we can do identify deeper client needs and whether or not we're being responsive to it, which is why I think DDPG is also asking for that flexibility so that we can shift our delivery of services based on the needs that we learn are happening at different sites that will also shift as people come in and out of those sites.

Tristan, it looks like you want say something.

To be clear, I mean, once we have a data sharing agreement in place with CCH, we should be able to get data going all the way back to the beginning of services provided at all in Mile High. We have an interest in analyzing that data in its entirety and really correlating that data to other data about where clients have received services, either at Denver Health or any other provider.

I have Councilwoman Gilmore up next. Thank you so much, Cathy, unless you have questions for Cathy.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I guess I'm so we need to be able to see the data so that we can get an accurate gauge of how to best serve the clients who are right now in sheltered homeless situations. And I like, a nonprofit who's providing services through Caring for Denver would not get refunded or would not get their payment if they couldn't show how many hours were provided to each person that we gave a room key in one of the shelters that we set up. That seems very simplistic and logical. And I would hope that CCH would have that information, especially when you're working with reimbursement and with federal funds, etcetera.

And so I'm maybe we could give a little bit of extra time for folks to get us some more information because I think it's important as we go into the budget process because the media is also looking at this with the two differing reports. And we wanna make sure that we have sustainability in this program and not building the plane as we're flying it because these are people's lives. And they're probably gonna need services after we get them into more secure housing. It's not like all of a sudden when they get a key to an apartment, they're going to be like, great, ding, fixed, and on to the next. These are human beings, and we've made a commitment them.

And so I would hope that we can maybe give a little bit better information. So I would be supportive of holding it over to do that. Thank you.

Thank you, councilwoman. I think what I'm hearing from my colleagues and especially those that are actually voting members of the safety committee, I'm hearing a request to hold this for a little bit. And so I guess the question then is for how long? I feel like a couple of weeks, like two weeks, might be necessary in order to perhaps have some also one on one briefings with council members to make sure questions are answered and to do any other necessary follow-up. My next question is whether or not this would be an item we would want on consent or we would want to bring back for continued discussion. Discussion. More discussion.

Discussion. Because I'm sorry to interrupt, but I guess I'm confused by CCH's comment that we have to have a contract with you to get data. We had a contract with you. So why can't we get the data when we had a contract? I understand that we're out of compliance right now. Actors. We're bad business partners. I just wanna say sorry for that. That's not okay. Really, it's not. To not pay someone for four months, you would go to collections in the real world. Like, that's not okay. But we did have a a contract with you, so why can't we have the previous data when we did have a contract with you? I'm not hearing that from you. Mhmm.

Yeah. Sorry.

So our contract with Host was to provide services at these individual sites, medical services. This contract is more for the care coordination services. It's not we that we would not report to the city the kind of billable services that we bill Medicaid or Medicare for. We would that these care coordination services are like what happens on-site to get us to that point And so the contract with host was very different contract because it was about and I also want to make sure that we're talking about clinical services, care coordination services, and not necessarily case management services which are very different and being provided differently at these sites. So our contract with Host was to go to these sites and provide services as they were needed and this is moving more into a care coordination where we're going to have people on-site oftentimes referring out.

We can with the data use agreement share more of our billable services to Medicaid but we couldn't necessarily do that with our contract with host just by virtue of the types of entities that they are like we can share health data with another health care entity. We cannot share health data with just a city department.

Council president, it's also about the type it's not the contract. It's the data sharing agreement. So, like, we need a data sharing agreement to be able to see any patient identifiable or

Until all of these all of these years since we've had a huge contract with CCH, we don't have a data sharing agreement. Like, they I I think if we add up how much we're in contract with them, it's millions and millions and millions of dollars off

of our most I'm I'm sorry. I'm gonna I'm gonna cut us off right now because I wanna give the time that we had Sorry. Had allotted for our presenters. And I'm going to ask for someone to make a motion to postpone until date certain of May 14.

I'd like to move postpone to a date certain of May 14.

Okay. Thank you. And I have a motion by Councilman Hines and second by Councilwoman Torres. And do we need to do a

roll call vote on that?

Do we need to do a roll call vote? No? Okay. All right. Thank you so much. We will see you back on May 14. And in the meantime, please, council members, take your briefings, talk to DDPHE, talk to CCH so that we can hopefully come back and have more conversation. Thank you so much, Tristan. Thanks. Great. We'll give just a minute for some transition here. And thank you so much for your patience. We have our friends from the Office of Independent Monitor coming up first. We'll have to transition over to the oversight board when we get to that point just because I don't know if there's enough how many people are there presenting? Just two. Oh, they come on up. In October. Where

should I sit?

See, if you if you wanna do the slide deck, somebody will need to sit there and run this presentation.

So if

you want just to smooth your slides.

But you can have somebody else

to join us.

Thank you. Amazing. I'll buy my lonesome.

Amazing. You again for your patience. And I apologize for us running over a bit there. We will start with some introductions from both of you. And if I see people in the audience that I think are here to support you as well and may be able to answer questions as they may come. But if you could both just introduce yourselves, and then you can proceed with the presentation. We will take questions at the end. And so I'll be keeping a queue.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. I'm Elizabeth Bennis Castle. I'm the independent monitor for City

and County of Denver. I'm Julie Richmond. I'm chair of the Citizen Oversight Board. And I'm joined by three board members and our board administrator. JULIE RICHMOND: You want them to introduce themselves, sir?

Oh, there we go.

JULIE It's Okay. We can go. JULIE I

think I will slide over here

JULIE That works.

So I can see what I'm talking about. Okay. Let's get going. Just preliminary introductions. The Office of the Independent Monitor opened its doors in 2005.

I believe it was August. So we are celebrating our twentieth year as an oversight agency. This is a tremendous accomplishment in the community of police and sheriff oversight. The Office of the Independent Monitor in Denver is not just recognized within the city, but nationally as best model for oversight. And we came to be due to an outcry from the community based upon the killing of a a young man by the name of Paul Childs.

But there were some other problems and police shootings that the community reached a point to say, we need to be a part of this process. And it is community driven, and then it is community stakeholders, city and county, and COB that continue to support us and, excuse me, and help help the work of the OIM. I need to acknowledge a few people, including our very first independent monitor, Richard Rosenthal, who established kind of the basics and the bones of the office. The office then continued to develop and grow again with the assistance of community and city council through Nick Mitchell, Greg Crittenden, who has stepped in time and time again to be our interim monitor, and most recently, may I stand on huge shoulders. And we appreciate that the work that they have done to make sure that the office of the independent monitor is that.

It is independent, which is what the demand was, from the city and county and from our community, and that we have the power, to oversee investigations, be independent, and we have been blessed through the twenty years to have very, very dedicated individuals doing the work of of oversight. Throughout the twenty years, we the Office of the Independent Monitor has listened to the community and taken on duty to address systemic failures in policing. The OEM provided community with a review of policies and made recommendations for change. Some of those failures were addressed in comprehensive critical reports such as addressing the death of Michael Marshall and the DPD response to George Floyd protests. The work of the OIM is summarized in our semiannual reports, but the reports do not fully illustrate the day in and day out hard work, of the members of the office.

Again, we, look forward to another twenty years, the continued support of this council and future councils, communities, stakeholders, and and the departments. We look forward to continuing to present our reports and provide as much transparency as possible. Moving on to our slides. So the key OEM responsibilities are to monitor and make recommendations on complaint investigations and disciplinary findings. Can you hear me if I'm speaking that way?

I'm using my New York voice. Monitor office involved shooting and in custody death investigations, make recommendations for improving policies, practices, and training, conduct outreach to community and law enforcement, and cultivate community member and officer dialogue through mediation. Next slide, please. In 2024, administrative complaint investigations reviewed. There were 448 DPD complaint investigations and 546 DSD complaint investigations.

With regards to critical incident investigations monitored, there were four DPD officer involved shootings, six deaths during interactions with DPD officers, and four deaths while in DSD custody or during interactions with DSD deputies outside the jails. Next slide. Deaths in custody aren't necessarily always in handcuffs or or confined, but related to an incident involving either department. OIM policy analysis of so in addition to our monitoring staff, we have policy staff. We have three PhDs, who work on collecting data, reviewing data, looking for trends, looking at policy.

They look at DPD complaints, DPD uses of force, DSD complaints, and DSD grievances. Research they conduct research into law enforcement, corrections, and oversight best practices, make recommendations about DPD and DSD policies, and produce, our twenty twenty four semiannual and annual report. Our semiannual report is usually published in around October, which includes information, abbreviated information. It is not as thorough as the annual report for January through June. Next slide.

OIM, outreach. So, our outreach is conducted with community and law enforcement. The OIM attended 244 meetings with community members and 71 outreach events with members of law enforcement. The 71 outreach events with members of law enforcement is much higher last year because I felt it was important to reach out to every police department. So I went to every roll call, every district, every shift.

And that was a I think an incredibly positive experience, both for for the officers and and for our office. Youth Outreach Project held seven youth officer forums reaching a 135 youth, also trained 127 officers in adolescent development and de escalation with youth, Something that has changed somewhat is that we are now doing youth training with academy recruits as they come into the academy. So once those recruits and hopefully future officers are trained in our youth development program, they can participate in the bridging the gap program. So we are increasing the body of officers that can that can be a part of that. Complaint mediation program.

There were 16 mediations completed in 2024. The satisfaction rate with mediation, it was 100% for community members and 100% for officers and deputies. Complaints against DPD officers. In 2024, 307 community complaints were recorded, which is a 7% decrease from 2023. Still, if you look at the at the chart, it's kind of an an average basis.

It's slightly less than 2022. So we went from three twenty nine in 2023 to three zero seven in 2024. There were 111 internal complaints recorded in 2024, which is an 8% increase from 2023. So from 103 to 111. DPD discipline and commendations.

With regards to discipline, three officers were terminated. 15 officers retired or resigned prior to the completion of the disciplinary process, and 16 officers received, suspension. There were 179 DPT awarded commendations to officers. With regards to DSD, there were 219 community inmate complaints recorded in 2024, 22% decrease from 2023. There were 372 internal complaints recorded in 2024, which is a 6% increase from 2023.

Next slide. DSD discipline and commendations. Two deputies were terminated, 12 deputies either retired or resigned prior to the completion of the disciplinary process, and 27 deputies were suspended. There were 83 DSD commendations awarded to deputies. And that is kind of a quick synopsis of our 2024 report. And I hope we can hang up for questions.

Thank you so much. I do wanna just do a quick check. Julia, do you would you prefer to do your presentation and then we take up questions on the entirety?

Up to you.

Is that okay with you both? Okay. So we'll just keep going with the presentations, and then

we can do the questions.

SPEAKER I'm available afterwards if need be.

SPEAKER Fantastic. How do I get to our presentation?

While they're doing that, real quick, I'll just let our colleagues know that myself and Councilwoman Parity as the large members are going to be hosting a joint community meeting with the Office of Independent Monitor and the Community Oversight Board to talk about the annual report with the community because we have these presentations in here. We don't have an opportunity for public comment. We don't have opportunity for back and forth engagement. That will be that opportunity, and it will be I believe we're looking at mid May. So we'll make sure to communicate that information out to everyone as far as location, time, and date. So I just wanted to give everybody a quick heads

up on that. I know we're holding that on our calendar. We've done community engagement on our annual report in the past, and I think a 40 page report with really dry metrics is only so engaging to the community. So having some interest from council members on that, I think, will help with the engagement. So I'll just give you a quick overview of what we'll talk about. I'll remind you of our mission. I'll review 2024 in terms of our activities and then kind of highlight our recommendations. So in terms of our charter responsibilities, it's threefold. Oversee the Office of the Independent Monitor. So we are now the official boss of the Independent Monitor.

And as of a couple of years ago, the monitor's office actually reports to the board rather than the mayor. We make recommendations as to best practices in public safety.

Oh, not

helpful. I wasn't even thank you. You're Thank you.

No, it's Okay. It's actually How do we make it There

we go.

There we go. You don't have to do anything.

Okay. It just does it on its own. So we are able to make recommendations to public safety both on a policy level and case specific level. And then the broadest responsibility that we have is around addressing other matters of community concern. So all of our meetings are public, and the public is always welcome to come and give comment or express concerns.

This past year, we had community members expressing concern about safety of their neighborhoods and break ins in their businesses. We also had community members who were having difficulty with Department of Safety in terms of getting information on their own cases or cases of family members, etcetera. So what we did in 2024 was manage matters of ongoing concern from the community. We had a number of board member transitions. We also had a couple of vacancies that were held open for quite some time.

I very much appreciate the work of counsel in terms of filling the vacancies that come to you very quickly. We made some improvements to that process a few years ago. And that has very much sped up the process of getting new board members. We haven't had that same luck with the mayor's office. And we've had a couple of vacancies that have been left open for months and months. We are only a nine member board. And so vacancies are pretty impactful in terms of our ability to scale our work. We've also done a good amount of work. And thank you to counsel for the partnership on improvements to the non monetary terms of settlements. That was a gap that we identified a couple of years ago.

And I know that you all are working on making formal the approach to that. But we also had good engagement from Department of Safety in terms of the reporting and connecting with the monitor's office on those settlements and some practices that had been employed. I'll talk a little bit about some formal policies that need to be adopted there. We completed strategic planning, which I'll share with you the outcomes of. And we've done a lot to improve the onboarding and training for new members.

It's a lot, as you all know, in this committee. The diversity and expanse of topics you can cover that relate to public safety. And so getting our board members up to speed quickly improves the capacity of the board in general. And then we're always engaged in identifying best practices in the oversight space. It's worth mentioning that a number of jurisdictions and states are working on legislation that prohibit the oversight of police departments or remove oversight of police departments.

So there is some work nationally to inhibit the things that we do. And so I'll just thank this community for engaging in oversight. It matters and it's important. I'm going to skip that. So as part of our annual report, which we released March 15, we do a number of things and are required to.

And one of those is to review the OIM's effectiveness. So a couple of things for the committee to know. OIM's complaint driven workload and outreach activities increased significantly, as Liz identified, in 2024. While a vacancy was held open, obviously, city is going to go through more tightening of the belt around the budget, certainly in these economic times and uncertainty with the federal government. But it does have a meaningful impact on the monitor's ability to do its work.

And that is with regard to speed and the expansiveness of their responsibilities. We do feel that the OIM continues to fulfill its core responsibilities, which is great news for us and for you. And we do see room for improvement around staffing, as I mentioned, with the vacancy vacancy held open. We continue to push for more aggregate data that's made public. There is obviously a lot of deliberative privilege that regards the work of the monitor's office.

But we think there's a lot more to do in terms of engaging the public in aggregate information. Continuing to work on community engagement and the mediation program, while the success measures look positive, we think there's probably more work to do with the mediator company itself and also increasing interest in that program. So a few things that are matters of concern that we highlighted in our report. And if you've been following the news, we continue to beat the drum on the challenges, the disagreement that the board has with the proposal that the police department has around education based discipline. We think there are problems both in terms of process, the supposition that it is a best practice, and the possible implication it has on the discipline process overall, basically creating an entire off ramp for what we have defined as the core discipline process for about 60% or 70% of the disciplinary actions that the department takes.

That's not a small change. That's a massive change. And it has not been community engaged. It's not been well articulated to either the monitor's office or the COB. And we think there are problems in every direction with that proposal.

I'll also highlight that there are some things so one of the challenges we have with discipline process in general is that it's quite cumbersome and long. And that's a complaint of folks who are in the process itself. It's sometimes cited as a reason for disciplinary actions to be not imposed. And one of the reasons that the process takes a long time is that the DUS and DPD don't conduct concurrent criminal and administrative investigations into discipline. Some jurisdictions do.

So if you have a civil case, that has to play out. And then you go through the administrative actions. That's not the only way that that could be done. And it could speed up things significantly for folks in that process. A couple of things that the board is continuing to be concerned about.

There were some disciplinary outcomes last year that the board disagreed with heavily, both in terms of their process and in terms of the discipline applied. That was in relation to some officer involved shootings and just discharge of weapons. The upcoming case of the Lodo shooting, I think, is an example of how previous decisions with regard to discipline then fall forward into future actions of the department. And the rest of this relates to that. So a couple of other concerns.

I talked about the settlement compliance and oversight. DOS did improve the transparency, as I mentioned. But there is no formal policy from the Department of Safety that says this is the way you should behave. So that really relates to the staff that are in the roles now. And so if those folks change in the future, we don't have a guarantee that that process will continue and that transparency will continue. The Office of Neighborhood Safety, we feel like there is an opportunity for real impact from that office. There's also potential for conflict between our mission and theirs. And so how we sort of go about deconflicting and clarifying is helpful. We are meeting with the Department of the Office of Neighborhood Safety with some frequency. So there's no animosity there.

But it's just really about as that stands up, how does that interact with the work that we do? And of course, a previous matter that we highlighted significantly was around the health care provided in DSD's facilities. There has been a true lack of transparency into the outcomes and problems with that health care. We advocated for DSD to get an employee to help aggregate and improve data reporting there. And that has gotten significantly better.

Where we think there is more work to do is the grievances or the incidents in DSD that Liz highlighted really relates to the care of sheriff's department employees on folks who are in their custody. But it does not relate to the incidents provided by Denver Health. That is a separate grievance process. And the grievances towards Denver Health are a huge measure more significant in number than what the sheriff's deputies see in terms of grievances. So it is a meaningful amount of incidents.

And then, of course, DSD understaffing continues to be a challenge. So a couple of things. I've already highlighted some of our recommendations. The monitor's office is still fighting the battle in terms of its unfettered access to information. And though the charter language makes it very clear what the monitor's office should have access to, there is still some reticence and process that inhibits that full sharing.

And that continues to be a meaningful concern for us. The police department is using drones now, and they consider them to be first responders. While the board doesn't have a significant concern about the use of drones, there is an opportunity to have a little bit more rigor around why, how, and what happens when we deploy them. And then lastly, the use of force review board is problematic both from a community engagement standpoint but also from an outcome standpoint. There are very few cases where the use of force review board determines that the use of force is inappropriate.

I don't think in my time on the board we've ever seen an example where that's true. And part of that is that the community members who are on that board have been there for twenty years and always side with the police department. So we would like more change, more membership, and new faces on that board. The police department has committed to that. But the recruitment has been lackluster, I'll say.

So I mentioned the Denver Health after action reports and investigations for Denver Sheriff's Department. We continue to push on that and would be interested in making sure that there's real analysis of what is good and bad about the care provided there. Overdoses in the jail is obviously something you're well aware of. And we continue to be focused on that in terms of investing in prevention efforts. We understand that there's new technology that's deployed in the jail.

We've also heard that folks haven't been appropriately trained on that technology or that it's not always on. And so it's certainly not going to work in terms of prevention. A couple of other things that I'll highlight here, focusing on policy and process related to non monetary settlements, giving the monitor's office opportunity to review and comment on post appeal settlements. So the process ends. There's some appeal and then action related to that.

The monitor's office isn't always brought into that process. And I think that's probably good there. Obviously, Career Service Commission has had a lot of change this year, and that impacts the discipline process as well. The engagement with the monitor's office on their process is not well articulated. And in some cases, that monitor's office is not given the opportunity to comment on appeals.

And so we'd like that to be improved. Lastly, the thing I'll highlight here is that as the public safety budgets continue to grow and we add staffing, the monitor's office should be anchored to growth in the public safety departments. How that's calculated, I'll leave up to the budget whizzes in the room. But it cannot go unsaid that the monitor's office is capacity limited while there's increasing investments in officers and deputies. And so as investigations need to go up, the speed with which they do that can only be so much if they don't have new resources.

So lastly, I'll just cover our strategic plan. We embarked on our second strategic plan recently. And that's really three buckets of things public reporting and transparency, which is part of our core mission, really improving the community outreach and engagement, and continuing to build capacity in the board, both from a succession standpoint, but also really making sure that we've got strategic relationships both in the community and with the Monitor's Office. So I'll stop there.

Thank you so much. And thank you both for your presentations. I have some members who have joined the queue, and we'll go ahead and start there. First starting with Councilwoman Torres, followed by Pro Tem Romero Campbell.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you both

so much. I kind of got shocked, Liz, when you said it's been twenty years since the monitor's office was created. I was in the Public Safety Review Commission from 2001 to 2004 during that period of time and can't believe it's been that long.

So I really want to thank

you for holding up, a really important body of work for this city, in, safety oversight. I wanna talk just, really quickly about case capacity for you and your deputies. How many, like, investigative personnel do you have on staff, and how many cases do they

We currently have four well, we were down to three. We have four monitors who participate in review of investigations, and then we have one monitor that reviews discipline That one of our monitor positions was vacant since, I believe, around December. We do have a new monitor replaced that position in May. We did receive an FTE. We filed an FTE for an FTE position sometime back, but due to budget constraints, have been unable to fill that position.

And Greg is deputy director, but he also is involved in review of of cases and monitoring.

Okay. So you you don't have any vacant positions other than that FTE that you've never been able to fill? That's correct. Okay. One of the things I'll say around that is we went through a lot of effort to make sure that the Office of the Independent Monitor was independent and should be treated like an independent agency.

So if you're saying a position is vital, it needs to be filled. And we don't say that to the auditor. We don't say that to the clerk. And so that is really concerning to me if you need that deputy to be able to do the casework that you need. The discipline and commendation data that you presented, Liz, is that as a result of OIM work, or is that overall for the department results? Like, maybe it came through IAB or some other path. Or were those

Those are all for the year of 2024.

That you that your office was monitoring?

Right. So the the the number of complaints may be different than the number of cases handled. And I think that that's a distinction. Sometimes in the report, it's not quite as clear. So the number there is a chart with which identifies the numbers of complaints, and then there's another chart from the numb the number of cases handled.

Okay. So the cases handled is what's directly being covered by your team? Yes. Okay. The anchoring OIM to safety growth, this was a conversation when we took the charter change to voters as well.

I think it does require some input from you all and not left to budget because it's going to be tied so heavily to what does growth on one hand look like and how does it affect the monitors team and COB work. So is that a tie of, like, 10% of growth, 50% of growth? You know what I mean? What does that mean in terms of your caseload and obligation as opposed to it just being kind of a, here's what we can afford? Because that's what the budget team will largely look at. That would be, I think, an integral conversation with you all if you start to take that up. So I appreciate you mentioning it, though.

That's great.

Thank you. Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thank you so much. Next is Pro Tem Romero Campbell followed by Councilwoman Alvivres. Thank you. And thank you for the presentation. When you talk about

all the community events, there have been numerous events that the Office of the Independent Monitor that you have attended personally as well in District 4. So I appreciate that. I wanted to go back real quick to slide three in your presentation. I know we don't have it. It's probably not queued up.

But this was the one when you were giving numbers of the trainings that the officers had. I think it was 127 were trained specifically for young people in dealing or working with young people. I was just wondering, one, which officers were you targeted into the officers that were were they targeted into the officers that were working directly with young people, or was it just a general broad overall training?

So before we moved into the academy, it was officers who had interest. Mhmm. So we had a pool of officers who expressed interest in working with youth and learning about youth development, and they would volunteer for the program. They would go through five hours of training. And then once they received that training, we're able to interact with youth.

What has changed now is that we we're we're still available to provide it to officers of higher rank who either haven't gone through the training or would like a refresher, but we are actually moving into into the academy. So whoever is training to be a police officer, and it's at the I believe it's before the blue. It's either before the

blue or beyond the badge. Before.

Yeah. Right. Right. So they have that as they become as they become officers. And then COVID took a really hard hit on the program.

So the program began in 2015 based on a grant requested by the OIM based on a community need. We were approached about finding a way to engage youth and officers' interaction and have better interactions. Our office, we're educated in a model of doing that, of bridging the gap. I forget where it might have been out of Boston. And began the program with a grant.

And then later on, it was incorporated into our budget. That's how it came to be under under the OIM. And then COVID happened. They tried to do stuff virtually. It was really difficult. And so really, 2023 is kind of when we started picking it back up again.

Thank you. I mean, I think it's so important that there is awareness and understanding of working with young people. My curiosity is, are there other trainings, or is there other data around interactions with people with intellectual disabilities or language. And I think that those are other barriers or miscommunication points that I've seen. And I did a ride along with DPD and was just those were the kind of questions that were in my mind of what additional training do they have and expertise for those areas.

Those are great topics. I will double check with our director Taylor to make sure that those topics are covered. When you have a Bridging the Gap forum, there is portion of the forum in which youth learn their constitutional rights. So they get to talk about, do I have to give my real name? Yeah, you do. Do I have to let them search my backpack? Depends. Do do I have the right to have some an adult present with me? Yes. You do.

Those are that's really important for youth to know, knowledge is power. Correct? So when while the youth are going through that training program, our officers are getting additional training. We can maybe cover everything from, yes, juvenile development, drug addiction, mental health. A lot of times, the programs are put on by the educators who are associated with the school so that that is not a set curriculum.

That kind of changes with, you know, what kind of topic can we cover. So language is a great one because it's not just English, Spanish. It's also how what if you have someone who's youth who's deaf and you don't know that they're deaf? Or they can't communicate on on their age level. So their language is limited, and that goes hand in hand with disability.

Thank you. Have can I do one

Okay? More

Good. I wanted to ask around the Citizen Oversight Board. There were a few times in the presentation you had talked about bringing the independent monitor into the process. Who makes that decision? So it's a recommendation you're making, but where does that sit and who owns that?

Yeah, it should be already happening because it's defined as part of our charter language and the establishment of the monitor's office. At times, within the Department of Safety are not doing that at the right time or at the right level, and we're hearing about things later than we should. Or in the case of post appeal processes, it's just not a business process they have. So we're not given the opportunity to opine. So some of that is really just following the process outlined already. Okay.

Thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you, madam chair. Thank you so much. Councilwoman Alvidrez followed by councilman Heinz.

Thank you so much. I really appreciate your recommendations and all the work that both of you do. This is really good information. I think your, suggestions are very important. One of my questions is as far as your your report talking about the deliberative process privilege and preventing you from disclosing investigations that are complete or when discipline recommendations are ignored. How do you think this affects the trust with the public and the OIM? And how can we close that gap?

So it's kind of the charter requires us to do two things. It requires us to report to the community on disciplined cases. But due to deliberative privilege, we cannot give details about the particular cases or particular recommendations regarding policy or cases or interchange between the departments. What I am looking forward to doing this year is identifying those areas where we can but at the same time, the community and the charter want us to identify those cases and identify where potentially we have a disagreement. And that's really difficult to do under the banner of deliberative privilege process.

And it's not our deliberative privilege process. It's the city's. And that is we're all covered under that because it's a city's it's a city's right. But however, going forward, is there a method for us to address those issues that are important to the community in terms of aggregate information that we can't publish? So we're not publishing something specific, but we are publishing something more in the aggregate. And that is something that I am committed to working on this year.

I'll chime in just on that matter as well. Over time, the city attorney's office has changed its mind with regard to how much is covered under deliberative privilege and what is not. I think the board's current thinking is that more is covered under deliberative privilege than is necessary. And the whole point of the oversight mechanism is to provide accountability and transparency to the community. And so if we take this very under the cover of privilege approach, we're not really meeting the intention of oversight.

And so I think there will be more discussions in the future about how we do that. I think there are increasing questions, at least in my mind. It's not a deep conversation we've had with the board yet. But the monitor's office reports to the board. And so how much does it actually need to follow the guidance of the city attorney's office, I think, is a big question in my mind.

And of course, we want to be protective of city information. We have to be careful with employee outcomes. If you're in the middle of a process as an employee, that's not something that we need to broadcast to the public, especially if the outcome is that you're not found accountable for that. However, I think we're in an interesting moment with regard to deliberative privilege and oversight. And I think at least I feel uncomfortable with the level of cover that the city attorney's office is asking for at this time.

I appreciate that. And so like with the city attorney's office, for example, we have a city attorney that defends and helps city council. Do you all does the Citizen Oversight Board also

We have don't, but the monitor's office does.

Okay, interesting. I appreciate that. And one of the things that I noticed in the report was that you reviewed over 1,000 investigations. And yet, we can't see how often your recommendations are further investigation is over. And I'm guessing that has to do with that deliberative process. Right? Okay. Great. One of the other things that I noticed in the report in my district, we do have a lot of shot spotter. And I saw that community raised concerns about shot spotter, but I don't understand what was the concern. Are you not allowed to look into that unless there's a formal complaint? I'm confused about the vagueness there of just a concern about it.

No. We can, pursuant to ordinance in charter identify issues that the Office of the Independent Monitor feels should be addressed. It doesn't have to be based upon a complaint. It can be based upon cases that we have reviewed that bring it to our attention. It can be based upon communication from communities saying, hey, this is an issue that we are running into.

It could be coming from complaints, where we're seeing a pattern in a complaint. With specifically with regards to ShotSpotter, there are a couple of issues. One is its accuracy and, how, how the department should respond based upon knowing, what the level of accuracy is. And the other thing is the amount of funding that is being received and what is the benefit worth the bucks. Right. Exactly.

That's interesting. I mean, I would say my area has a lot of gun violence. So I'd be curious to learn more about that. Last question is the report shows that half of the community complaints against DPD were declined after intake and only 18% led to sustained findings. What do you believe is causing that drop off? And do you feel like your office has any authority to challenge that?

Declines are interesting. There's a variety of reasons for which cases are declined. So when you look at declines for a community as opposed to declines for internal complaints, you see a pretty vast difference. A lot of complaints that come from community either fail to identify a policy violation or it's certainly something that the community member feels strongly about because they went through the process of filing a complaint, but it does not always turn into an actual violation. The other thing is is that, you know, they they look to see sometimes complaints can be addressed through review of body worn camera.

So if there's an a particular allegation and a review of body worn camera identifies that that that did not occur, that can lead to a a finding of a decline. Certainly, it is worth the review to determine generally kind of where where these declines are coming from and something that we wanna look into. But just because the case is declined

Mhmm.

Doesn't mean that we're not reviewing it. We review every decline, and we can make a recommendation to the department that says, please open this into an investigation. It is up to them to decide whether or not they're going to open it up into an investigation. When we do those things, again, that's covered by deliberative privilege process. But we do review, but it's not like we don't review it.

And then going forward, it'd be interesting to can we discuss with the community a process of letting them know that if you have additional evidence or if the evidence has changed or you have a new fact, they can request that the investigation open again. And we will be keeping track on on those numbers. They have tended to stay kind of pretty much the same over the years. In fact, actually, the declines have gone down over the last five years. But that doesn't that's not satisfying.

And it's not satisfying to a community member that their complaint is being declined. They want to know why. And if we can give that information in the aggregate, we hope to do so.

What I'll say, too, is that the Citizen Oversight Board has long advocated for the Department of Safety to have a public dashboard on the complaints that come in. There is a module that's available. We've been told for years that they will get the module. It costs $40,000 It's not exactly a huge expense compared to the city's budget. And so that's sort of been like checks in the mail for us and sort of an unfulfilled promise. Promise.

I really appreciate you sharing that. Thank you so much for your work. Thank you. Committee chair.

Of course, Councilman Hines followed by Councilwoman Gilmore.

Thank you, committee chair. Thank you for your presentation. Also, thank you for your transparency and depth of the presentation and of your work. As we've already heard, I've seen you in the community in monthly meetings created by the police department. You've been in the community, that's what we want.

And I think that's part of why hear several comments supporting your research, your analysis, your presence, and frankly, some findings as well. I hear you say that other areas of the country are reducing oversight or eliminating it. We care about your presence and your perspective. So let's see. Could you describe a couple examples of you had internal and external complaints.

Could you maybe give a couple examples? And are there areas where internal complaint is mandatory? Were those all optional complaints?

That part of the question is a good question. First part of the question is so community complaints are just that. They come from typically a community member. And I should say that community, a complaint does not necessarily need to be filed by the person who suffered the injury or the perceived injury. It can be filed by a loved one, an attorney.

It can be filed anonymously. And although you may not if you file it anonymously, you may not get the satisfaction of a full investigation depending on the facts of the case. But again, we review every complaint to see to look for patterns and to look to see if there have been if there's a continuing issue. Internal complaints are complaints that usually come from within department. So it could be a sergeant filing a complaint against a supervisee officer.

It could be an officer filing a complaint against another officer or a supervisor. It can be filed by the Internal Affairs Bureau, IAB, if they see a violation of policy. Or it's not necessarily that it is a violation of policy, but it is something that needs to be investigated. So those are the those are the internal complaints. And typically, the reason you see those numbers being sustained at a higher rate is, obviously, they are familiar with the policies.

They are familiar with the procedures. And so they can more accurately describe a potential violation. And so that's, I think, part of the reason that those numbers are higher and sustained higher.

And then are there times when it's required that an internal complaint be filed?

I think that I'm not as clear on that. I think that obviously the discipline manual identifies what the rules are and what a violation is. And there is a duty by officers or supervisors that if there is a violation, to address it. Now, how is it addressed? Is it addressed through a complaint? Is it notification to a supervisor? Sometimes it is addressed internally if it's a very minor or maybe misunderstanding through an informal process.

Use of force and officer involved shooting automatically open a case or no?

Shootings, yes. Use of force, the department will review the force, and that is given a u case number. So your p case numbers are for police investigations. IC numbers are internal complaints. Use of force are u numbers. We don't necessarily review all of those. There is a determination. The the department looks at them, looks at the force, and then determines whether or not to open up an investigation.

So the the reason I asked is it seems like an interesting push pull where we have internal individuals opening complaints. So that seems to me like people want to do the right thing. But then there are also, at the administrative level, there's a lack of transparency. So that was kind of the nature of my question. And then someone else mentioned the disability community. I'd be curious. I know there was a big protest in Senator Gardner's office that led to arrest of several people with disabilities who went to the jail and the jail could not care for them. This was seven or eight years ago. I represent.

Oh. You know,

to hear what has happened since then and what still needs to be done.

And I'm

not asking you to do that now. And then the last thing is a bit of a request. And how can we help you with some of these recommendations in addition to visibility? I think probably most of them would be safety questions. STAR is in DDPHE now. But if there are organizations outside of safety that we could ask on your behalf to say, what say you? We'd be interested in doing that. Thank you.

Thank you. Did you care to respond to that last part?

I think I'd love to follow-up with you. Yeah.

Okay, great. Thank you. Councilwoman Gilmore.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for being here and all your work. It's always good to hear your perspective. It's so important. And so I will go ahead and say the request that I think is super important because of that because of the presentation we received about the holding of vacancy positions open, and then after three years, they just phase out of the city system.

We're working with limited capacity right now. And so I think that that FTE should be filled for the 2026 budget for the Office of Independent Monitor. And then I also think that there should be a budget ask. And I'm just saying this because they haven't presented to us yet. So the dashboard module to let the community know where their complaints go is so important.

And I think questions that I would like to get information back from you on is, one, I'd like Anshul, our city attorney, to let us know what the pushback is from the city attorney's office in not getting that partnership that we know needs to exist. And so just wanting to get more information on that. But then if the city attorney is changing its mind, we can't allow that because we know what's happening societally right now. And so how we shore that up, and that's by more supports for the work that you're doing. And so I'd like if you could share the process mapping for us to know your suggestions on how the Office of Independent Monitor could address issues sooner.

Because if we wait and everything is covered up by deliberative process, we are able to react quick enough to take care of an issue where an officer might be under undue stress and we're not helping that person, and then that person hurts a member of the public. And so I think that that's very, very pressing to get that process mapping on what you think those improvements should be. And then my question is with the DPD education based discipline that they're talking about, I guess, is the Citizen Oversight Board attending the community meetings that like pastor Davis's group are pulling together as well because bless you the information has been very not existent from the Department of Safety. And so that's a huge concern. And I guess what is the process of adopting that new discipline process?

Can Department of Safety just do that?

So the language requires engagement of the monitor's office and the public. Neither of those things were done at the end of the year before they said, we're going live with this. And everybody said, what? So that on its face is problematic. And we've said, let's start again, which I think the department has agreed to. Now I will let Liz speak for the monitor's office. But the COB does not believe this is a good idea to start with. And so the idea of iterating on what we think is a bad idea is sort of a bad premise. Where we'd like to start is to say, what are the problems with the disciplinary process? Why is it so long?

Why is it so cumbersome? And solve those problems and put our energy towards fixing that rather than creating the secondary process for the majority of disciplinary cases. Another issue here is that they say it will cover areas A through C. A through C includes assaulting the public. Use of force incidents are sometimes covered under there. It's really problematic behavior. So it's not like, oh, you were rude to a colleague. It's really serious conduct. And there has not been a very good definition of what's included. Not appropriate documentation.

We don't have a good process. There have been iterations that say one thing and another. So our suggestion as a board is, let's have a conversation about what exists today and what needs to take place in the future rather than saying education based discipline is going to go forward, and we'll just provide feedback on it. Now, the departments don't necessarily need to accept the feedback of the monitor's office. And again, if we're in this realm of deliberative privilege, that may never come to light in detail.

The other thing is the community will say the engagement process is sort of a check the box or you're not actually incorporating our feedback. So there are some problems with just sort of having community meetings while not actually finding importance in what the community says. So I think the whole thing is problematic. But I think where we'd like to start is let's fix the process we have. Education could certainly be an outcome of discipline.

But the way this is designed, records aren't created because it's not technically flowing through the dis like 1,000 problems exist here. And so we are engaging with the community. It's how they got activated in the first place. We have a key role in educating the community. Again, with regard to this is under deliberative privilege, we got a draft document. And so how do I alert the community to this problematic thing that's coming? And so that on its face, again, is an issue that comes about with too much privilege being applied. But yeah, now we're in cahoots with them. Right,

Definitely. And I know that time is short. And I want to point out for my colleagues who have more time to serve than I do, it is very, very problematic for the public safety to allow the Office of Neighborhood Safety to try to absorb some of the roles or a conflict or a made up conflict with the citizen oversight board. There is no way that that can ever, ever happen because we will lose any sort of protections that we have. And quite frankly, there are perhaps people who are now on our force that this is not the right career path for them.

And I don't believe that we can educate our way out of that. We need to hold people accountable like doctors and nurses. And if you hurt somebody, you should not be paid by the city and county of Denver. You should be let go. And so I'll just leave it at that. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Councilwoman Gilmore. Just one quick thing I just wanted to echo or I guess ask again was around the recommendations that you all have laid out. I just wanted to I'm interested in how do we actually explore those. And what I'm hearing is that it is really around engaging with Department of Safety, with the departments that are charged with these things, and maybe even having more regular communication to try to kind of foster that collaboration is is kind of what I'm hearing. And so I'm very interested in that as well.

Would love to continue that conversation around how do we take what is being recommended from these annual reports and look at exploring ways to apply them going forward. So I would love to be a partner in that work. I know that Councilman Torres, I think, had one more thing you wanted to bring up.

Just one quick thing about the mediation data that was presented. 700 and some mediations that were done, only four surveys came back on satisfaction results. Is there something in there that tells us more about whether this is, like, a worthwhile path? Or how do you define success of mediation?

We provide so the mediation is done by a private company hired hired by the city. The OIM is not involved, neither is the department. We simply come together and agree on what cases are appropriate for mediation. But we do provide a questionnaire for the officers and for the community members to fill out and to give us a sense of what their level of satisfaction. It's hard to determine when we had few mediations this past year to to really gather a sense of of what is working and what is not working.

But it's something that we're looking into. Is this an issue post George Floyd that less people are interested in mediating? Is it an issue of the company that is being used and reaching out to the community? Is it we're not identifying sufficient numbers of cases for mediation? It's something that we're looking at and we're working on.

What are tangibles that can come through mediation? Or is it just an opportunity to be face to face? I think the tangible is the community member and the officer both step away, even if they disagree, feeling heard.

And that community member is not keep that to themselves. I think they're gonna go out in community and say, you know what? I met officer Smith, and I let him know how his behavior affected me. And he explained what was going on at the time. And and we agreed to disagree, but he came or she came. And we have the conversation. And that is something that is going to ripple out into the community. And I think it's a win win for both law enforcement and for the community. It's a

ripple effect. I know that that contract is out for RFP at some point soon. I think it'd be really interesting to understand the the value add if we don't know for the people who participate in it whether maybe they're not satisfied with the the result. Maybe those aren't the right questions that we're asking, that it really is about their feedback. Otherwise, we're spending a lot of city dollars on hours in mediation.

If it's inconsequential to how they walk away from that interaction, then maybe that's a chance to turn it into something else. But that number, in terms of people giving their feedback on their mediation and the amount of cases that took it, is really, really low. So I just wanted to give that point of feedback. HRCP, I think, is in charge of that RFP if you want to reach out to them.

Thank you. Thank you, councilwoman. With that said, we are at our time and really appreciate that. And and council members, public, stay tuned for, the upcoming community meeting that we'll be hosting. With that said, we have two items on consent. Seeing that nobody has called those off, those will go move on to the floor. And we are adjourned.

Thank you.