The is shifting some deputy disciplinary matters away from independent investigation and instead will handle them in-house, a move that narrows the scope of reforms city officials made more than six years ago.
Executive Director Al Gardner issued a four-page directive Wednesday exempting at least 14 types of policy violations from default investigation by the department’s Public Integrity Division, a civilian unit created in 2019 to investigate internal affairs complaints and policy violations for the sheriff’s department.
The directive also empowers a team within the sheriff’s department to screen complaints from inmates and others to determine whether the complaints should be .
That team will also screen some sexual assault allegations against deputies, and will handle investigations into body-worn camera policy violations unless it finds a deputy intentionally turned off their camera or it is at least a deputy’s third violation of the policy, according to the directive.
The thrust of the change is to empower first-line supervisors to handle minor disciplinary issues to try to “unburden” staff from onerous and “unnecessary” internal affairs investigations, Sheriff Elias Diggins said Thursday.
He said he hopes the move will improve morale, retention and hiring at the chronically understaffed agency, where he said the outside scrutiny leaves deputies feeling like they are walking on eggshells.
“We have created, with the system we put in place, an eggshell culture,” he said. “We want to put deputies on solid ground, make sure they are doing their jobs, give the support they need — and if there is an issue that needs to go to internal affairs, that process still exists.”
The unilateral shift raised alarm among the . Julia Richman, a member of Denver’s Citizen Oversight Board, called the directive “disheartening.”
“The board is never in favor of reduced accountability, reduced transparency and a lack of engagement in the community about big changes. This is just that,” she said.
Lisabeth Pérez Castle, the city’s independent monitor, said in a statement that the vague new approach to discipline does not clearly explain how safety officials will comply with city laws regarding the monitor’s oversight. The directive reduces transparency and exposes the city to potential liability, she said.
The new process will also make it difficult to know whether the sheriff department is “addressing all allegations of misconduct or if it is selectively enforcing rules against some staff members, but not others,” she said.
It was complaints about unfair and incomplete internal investigations by the sheriff’s department that prompted city officials to create the Public Integrity Division — which is housed within the Department of Public Safety, rather than the sheriff’s office — after a pair of outside reviews found significant problems with the sheriff department’s internal affairs process.
The division took over internal affairs investigations for the sheriff’s department, which runs Denver’s jails and provides security in the city’s courts.
Diggins noted he was interim sheriff during the push for the Public Integrity Division and was part of implementing the reforms.
“What I would call them is perhaps changes that may have been thought to be good at the time, but what we have today is a system that does not work well,” he said. “We have 50%-plus of our staff under investigation because of the measures that were put into place back then. That is unheard of in any law enforcement agency.”
Under the new approach, first-line supervisors will be responsible for investigating some categories of infractions and determining whether the policy violation warrants an internal affairs investigation, he said. If a deputy violates the same type of policy three times in three years, the fourth violation must be sent over to the Public Integrity Division, Diggins said.
Supervisors will be empowered to offer coaching and verbal counseling, and to recommend that deputies go through additional training, he said, adding that he personally taught an hour-long training on the new approach to supervisors on Wednesday. The supervisors will document the counseling in the sheriff department’s human resources software.
Richman, the Citizen Oversight Board member, does not believe first-line supervisors are equipped to thoroughly review misconduct allegations and make informed decisions on what warrants further review.
“If that was a process that had worked in the past, we would not have had to develop independent oversight, because supervisors could be trusted to do complete, thorough and sufficient reviews,” she said. “But they don’t. They don’t have time. They don’t have expertise. They can’t be bothered with it because it is a huge pain.”
Diggins said he has the “utmost faith” that supervisors will “hold people accountable when necessary.”
Gardner wrote in the directive that the changes are designed to ensure the Public Integrity Division “functions as originally envisioned.” He did not return a request for comment Thursday.
“These changes are also necessary to reaffirm the Denver Sheriff Departmentap (DSD) authority over personnel matters that should rightfully be addressed and resolved by DSD,” the directive reads. “As a result of previous adjustments to the process, DSD has been left with limited decision-making authority regarding employee conduct, and the PID has been inundated with administrative matters better suited for DSD review.”
The Public Integrity Division is used primarily for the sheriff’s department; Denver’s police and fire departments rely on their own internal affairs bureaus. The division also handles complaints about high-ranking leaders within the Department of Public Safety.
For policy violations that are shifted back to the sheriff’s purview — which the directive calls “performance issues” — the sheriff will still refer some of the matters to the Public Integrity Division if they reach a certain threshold of severity or are repeated, according to the directive.
For a number of the exempted violations, the threshold for an internal affairs investigation is “only if an incident or actual harm occurs,” according to Gardner’s directive.
That is the standard set for bringing weapons and cellphones into a secure area, safeguarding department property, monitoring the radio, misusing department letterhead, badges or insignia, secondary employment violations, and recommending bondsmen or attorneys to inmates.
“If you leave your weapon unsecured in the facility but no one gets hurt, it’s OK?” Richman said. “How could that possibly be a policy in a correctional facility?”
Richman said the approach may incentivize deputies to overlook policy violations if such violations rarely rise to serious discipline.
“The culture in public safety departments and in Denver is to take care of your own,” she said. “This approach takes (that stance) and possibly has an impact that says, ‘Don’t report, it is not considered a big deal, you won’t have to be disciplined for it.'”
