Morale is so bad at the Denver Police Department that cops are often afraid to do their jobs, officers on Thursday told a task force investigating a 30 percent decline in arrests and ticketing.
“A big part of it is we’re afraid,” said officer Aaron Brill. “We’re afraid we won’t be supported. You can make no mistakes or you will be actively punished.”
A complicated brew of problems, including understaffing, has caused arrests and ticketing to plummet, officials said. But poor morale was the issue that dominated discussion at the first hearing of the task force, led by Councilwoman Jeanne Faatz.
City Auditor Dennis Gallagher announced his intention on Thursday to perform a thorough audit of the Police Department.
“My assessment indicates that the decline in numbers is in and of itself not the problem; it is a symptom,” Gallagher said. “We need to get at the root of what is underlying the decline, and assess how that is impacting the overall performance of the department and formulate recommendations to improve that performance.”
But officers at the task-force meeting kept circling back to the morale issue.
The line patrol officer is afraid his bosses won’t back him up when a vindictive crook with a long rap sheet accuses him of stealing cocaine or just being rude, said officer Robert Shiller.
Because of protocols instituted in 2002, even a ridiculous allegation has to be taken seriously, several officers said. Once the complaint is made, a demoralizing and sometimes career- threatening series of interviews and hearings will follow. Once the complaint is made, it is a part of their record.
“Every contact I make, there is a chance that someone will make a false complaint,” Brill said.
Officers won’t shirk their duty when they are called for help, he said, but they are less likely to initiate their own investigations.
Safety Manager Al LaCabe and Police Chief Gerry Whitman, both members of the task force, acknowledged the morale problems.
“It is an issue we need to deal with,” LaCabe said.
LaCabe said he and a committee have been working for months to overhaul the department’s disciplinary protocols.
“Not everything deserves a suspension; not everything deserves a punitive type of discipline,” LaCabe said.
Prosecutors, city officials and police officers at the task- force meeting added a long list of other problems contributing to dropping arrest figures.
Understaffing means officers spend most of their time answering calls rather than patrolling neighborhoods; scores of officers are assigned tasks that civilian workers could do; police spend an increasing portion of their day writing reports; and new protocols like videotaping all domestic-violence cases slows police work.
“We don’t have the people, and the people we have are in the wrong positions,” Shiller said.
Staff writer Kirk Mitchell can be reached at 303-820-1206 or kmitchell@denverpost.com.
