As a 15-year veteran of the Denver Sheriff Department, I have found myself defending and explaining various allegations and deliberate bending of the truth about our department. Does anyone remember the flap over deputies wearing blue pants? Well guess what, we have been wearing them for some time and the city has not fallen into chaos.
Now this is the latest flare up, if you believe the editorial, “Sheriffs seek greater powers,” which appeared last Sunday. It leads the public to believe sheriffs want to become street officers and investigators. That is absolutely not true, and the Mayor and members of City Council knows this.
Sheriffs have always operated in a gray area about duties and powers, but as the article did truthfully say we were given certain arrest powers by the Manager of Safety.
Every deputy was trained on these powers and understand our limits. These powers involve actions carried out in the jails, hospital, courthouse, and our civil division.
And as for off duty jobs, deputies have been working armed in off duty jobs for years; again we understand the rules and abide by them.
Can anyone name one situation where a deputy has killed or took illegal action against anyone while working in that capacity? Can you say the same about off cops working off duty?
The thing we are asking for in the charter is not new powers, we are asking for the acknowledgment of them in writing. Never in the history of the Sheriff Department has there been mass firings and forced days off.
People hired as deputies were terminated and told they could possibly be hired as a “Security Specialist,” a newly created position in the city.
Well pardon me if deputies start to feel a little uneasy with these events. We are gun shy, (pardon the pun) when dealing with contracts and the city. We have given up much in past years, and promised compensations never materialized. Instead the city made us out to be money grubbing selfish workers not willing to take one for the team.
In the past we have done our jobs and done them well, we were always at the ready when our services were needed outside of our usual duties,(sport wins, Columbus Day protests, DNC etc.) We were well aware of the gray area, but gave it our all because we are dedicated professionals.
Every deputy working these events put their life on the line just like the cops but with one exception. Because of the “gray area” if we are killed or injured, will the city take care of us and our families, or say “to bad that’s not what we pay you to” Does anyone remember the deputy that raced into a burning house to save a family only to be told he wasn’t covered by the city?
We can no longer operate this way, with the city already having created a “Security Specialist position, many of us feel it might be a back door way to bust many more deputies to a lower paying status.
This is the reason, and the only reason, we want our position in the city charter to plainly state we are Law-Enforcement officers.
We want to validate who we are and always have been, so that there would have to be a vote before the city could take our title and change our job description. We only want to secure what we already have. Nothing more and certainly nothing less.
Finally I have a message to members of the Denver Police Department. Are there deputies who aspire to join your ranks, of course there is.
I don’t begrudge these deputies for that, the pay is certainly better. But the majority of sheriffs are proud of the service we provide. We don’t want to pull people over, investigate a homicide, solve a rape, etc.
Our badge is every bit a source of pride to us, as yours is to you. I have always believed individual differences should not matter when you are working for a common goal, and if you wear a badge, no matter the shape, you have a common goal.
Do not allow the brotherhood we share, to be undermined by those with ulterior motives. Stand together as one, or one day they may come for you.
Billie Louden (loudenview@aol.com) of Denver is a deputy sheriff and an Army veteran. EDITOR’S NOTE: This is an online-only column and has not been edited.
