William Lovingier learned a lesson early on in his 28-year tenure at the Denver Sheriff’s Department.
Frustrated one day by a slow partner who couldn’t type, he leaned back at a desk with a cup of coffee and let everyone know he was just going to cool his heels until his partner caught up.
A sergeant looked up at the two and told Lovingier: “You know what the difference between you and that other officer is? He’s giving me 100 percent. What are you going to give me?”
Lovingier, now 53, says he’s been giving 100 percent ever since. His hard work recently paid off with his appointment to the top post in the sheriff’s office. As Denver’s undersheriff and director of corrections, Lovingier will need to continue giving 100 percent – maybe even more.
He will manage two jails, run security operations of the Denver district and county court system and oversee more than 800 staff members.
He also will be a critical player as the city brings online its $378 million justice center, scheduled for completion in 2009. Over the past year, the city’s two jail populations have skyrocketed, passing even the initial capacity for the new justice center.
Lovingier said he’s confident he will find solutions to manage the inmate influx.
“The last two directors gave me a lot of opportunity to do innovative things and gave me greater responsibility,” he said. “I’m just eager to tackle this.”
Lovingier will be paid $126,084 annually. He was picked from hundreds of applicants who submitted résumés. A panel of city officials, citizens and police and sheriff’s employees ended up seriously considering 34 candidates.
“He really had a steeper hill to climb than the other candidates,” said Mayor John Hickenlooper, who made the final selection from three finalists. “Politically, there’s always a certain safety in bringing in a new expert from outside.”
Hickenlooper said every time he and panelists were dazzled by an outsider’s suggestion, it would turn out that Lovingier was already implementing such a program.
“Lovingier had already exceeded what had caught our attention,” Hickenlooper said. “Without fail, he had already worked out a plan or detailed an operations system or started preventative work.”
Lovingier said he’s already trying to find ways to trim the bulging inmate population. He recently convened a task force of sheriff’s employees to study repeat violators over the past four years. He hopes to find out which inmates repeatedly cycle through the jail and tailor programs aimed at keeping them out. Lovingier said the study shows that those who go to jail repeatedly tend to have drug and alcohol problems.
Working in conjunction with the Crime Prevention and Control Commission, Lovingier plans to hire case coordinators who will zero in on the needs of repeat violators. For instance, a case coordinator might make sure a veteran who is an inmate is able to tap the medical benefits his military status provides.
Such analysis was unheard of when Lovingier started at the sheriff’s office in March 1978. Then, the county jail had 600 inmates. Now it holds about 2,200. The city jail had 158 inmates when Lovingier started, and now as many as 300 can be jammed in there daily.
Lovingier is a native of Gilpin County. He moved to Naperville, Ill., a suburb of Chicago, when he was 5 but returned to Colorado with his mother after his mother divorced his father, an accountant. Lovingier married his high school sweetheart, Dixie.
“I used up all my luck when I met her,” he said.
They have three children.
Lovingier went on to become Black Hawk’s marshal, water commissioner and street commissioner but jumped in 1978 to the sheriff’s office at the suggestion of his wife’s father, Dick, then a division chief for the department. He relaxes by lifting weights and riding his bike and still lives in Black Hawk.
Staff writer Christopher N. Osher can be reached at 303-820-1747 or cosher@denverpost.com.
