A major push is underway to overhaul Denver’s controversial police discipline system, which uses past cases to decide punishment for officers.
The city’s “comparative discipline” rule has survived at least six other reform attempts, and former Mayor Wellington Webb counted his inability to change the rule as one of his top regrets.
But key city and police union officials say they believe the city is well on the way to adopting a new discipline system that will set up specific punishment guidelines for specific department violations.
Emotions over comparative discipline have heightened since two controversial fatal shootings by Denver police since July 2003.
Councilwoman Elbra Wedgeworth, who had favored firing one of the officers involved in one of those shootings, welcomed the new push to overhaul the system.
“I’ve never been able to understand the discipline system within the department,” Wedgeworth said.
“Whenever we tried to approach it, it was like, ‘Oh, no,”‘ she said. “What we’re talking about is accountability. That’s what everybody wants.”
A 30-member committee of city officials, neighborhood leaders and police is developing the system, which would be based on a four- or five-level matrix of punishments, participants said. The first matrix would be for low-level offenses such as tardiness and result in written reprimands. Higher-level offenses would fall in a matrix category that could result in termination.
Currently, only a handful of guidelines exist. They address such issues as an officer’s failure to comply with annual training requirements while saying nothing about what should occur if an officer lies on a police report or uses excessive force.
The result is an arbitrary process that binds disciplinary decisions to past rulings made by managers who may have been operating in a more lenient environment, said Al LaCabe, Denver’s manager of safety, who oversees police and firefighters.
“It is a system which over the years we’ve struggled with,” LaCabe said. “There have been discussions in previous years of putting a matrix together of some kind, but that never came to fruition. But what we did was sat down and got this done.”
The new system should be up and running by this fall, LaCabe said. He will give an overview of the changes to City Council members during a meeting next week, although no council action is needed for LaCabe to implement the rules. A similar system already is in place in Tucson, he said.
Police Captain Brian Gallagher, a board member of the Denver Police Protective Association and a member of the committee, said he’s seen at least six past reform efforts fail. He said he’s more optimistic this time around because union officials are involved in the process.
“This one has the most potential for a positive outcome because so many stakeholders have been brought to the table,” Gallagher said.
The disciplinary overhaul gained renewed attention after the police shootings of Paul Childs and Frank Lobato.
Last year, a hearing officer reduced LaCabe’s 10-month suspension of officer James Turney to five days and a one-day fine. LaCabe had disciplined Turney for fatally shooting Childs, a 15-year-old developmentally disabled boy. Wedgeworth had wanted to fire Turney.
On Monday, the city settled an appeal by officer Ranjan Ford Jr. and accepted a 50-day suspension. LaCabe originally had recommended a 90-day suspension of Ford in the July 11, 2004, shooting of Lobato as he lay in his bed unarmed. In his 90-day suspension report for Ford, LaCabe wrote that he could find no similar circumstances to consider.
“This legislative provision requiring me to impose discipline that is consistent with the disciplinary actions taken under similar circumstances by previous managers of safety … is quite problematic in my opinion and difficult to apply,” he wrote.
Staff writer Christopher N. Osher can be reached at 303-820-1747 or cosher@denverpost.com.
