The deputy, Justin Parchem, will serve a 30-day suspension from the Denver Sheriff Department after he failed to notice the inmate’s distress for several minutes during the May 31, 2024, incident at Denver’s Downtown Detention Center, even as other inmates tried to revive the man by throwing water on him.

Inmate Michael Blume, 36, died from the toxic effects of fentanyl, according to an autopsy report from Denver’s Office of Medical Examiner.

The incident unfolded shortly after midnight, according to a Jan. 2 disciplinary letter released to The Denver Post on Wednesday. From about 12:13 a.m. until about 12:22 a.m., inmates in the jail pod appeared to be aware that Blume was in trouble and tried to revive him by splashing water on him, the internal investigation found.

“Individuals are seen accessing the supply closet, gathering buckets and a mop, making multiple trips to the sink to fill a bucket with water, dousing (Blume) with water, and attempting to mop up the puddle,” a disciplinary letter reads.

Parchem did not immediately notice the inmates’ unusual activities and later admitted he was watching TV on his computer, according to the disciplinary letter, which also found he failed to check the pod’s showers during his rounds between 9:50 p.m. and 12:20 a.m. that night.

Parchem walked to Blume’s bunk area at about 12:22 a.m., dragged Blume out of the area and called for a medical emergency. The deputy and inmates started CPR and Parchem gave Blume a dose of the overdose-reversal drug Narcan, according to the letter.

Other deputies and jail medical staff responded immediately. EMTs arrived at about 12:31 a.m., according to the disciplinary letter, and firefighters a few minutes later. Blume was wheeled out of the pod at 12:44 a.m. and was pronounced dead at 1 a.m., about 10 minutes after he arrived at a hospital, according to the autopsy report.

“Deputy Parchem’s inattention may have delayed the time it took for him to recognize the situation, and ultimately delayed the time that elapsed before a medical emergency was called,” the disciplinary letter reads.

Parchem, who was hired in 2020, could not be reached for comment Thursday.

He previously served a 10-day suspension for pepper-spraying an inmate locked in a cell after the man threw food at the deputy.

Denver police officers responded to the stabbing at Gate B14 inside the bus terminal at 1700 Wewatta St. just before 10 p.m. Sunday, according to an arrest affidavit.

Witnesses told officers that the suspect, 37-year-old Nakila Green, was pacing around the station before she sat down next to a random woman on a bench and stabbed her, police wrote in the arrest affidavit.

Green allegedly stabbed the woman several times in the leg and chest. The victim screamed for help, and Regional Transportation District officers rushed over to hold Green at gunpoint and subdue her, according to the affidavit.

The victim, who is expected to survive, told investigators that Green didn’t say anything to her during the incident and that she had never met her before, police said in the affidavit.

Green spat on police officers while being arrested, and continuously spat inside a patrol car while in custody, according to the document.

As of Monday afternoon, Green was being held on suspicion of first-degree assault causing serious bodily injury with a deadly weapon, according to .

indicated officers were investigating additional charges of second-degree assault and second-degree assault to a peace officer in a separate case.

That effectively means the budget process is complete, pending a final vote from the council on Monday. Even without the elected body’s vote, the city budget will go into effect that day.

“The 2026 budget process has been one of the most challenging our city has faced,” Johnston wrote.

That sentiment echoes comments from City Council members earlier this week, who spent nearly seven hours considering 27 amendments to the budget on Monday. They ultimately approved 10 of them.

Most of those individual amendments made changes of $1 million or less. The council voted to give an additional $2.7 million to restore the Office of the Clerk and Recorder’s budget, $3 million to increase spending for youth violence prevention and $1.6 million for the Safe Routes to School program.

Other changes will create a crisis response team at the Denver jail, reinstate funding for the Out of School Time program, fund a grant program for youth violence prevention, fund the Denver Day Works program and aid the WorkReady program. They also unanimously voted to restore the budget for the Office of the Auditor.

The council rejected two amendments that would have moved $9 million from the police department to the Department of Housing Stability.

“This budget is stronger for the work of City Council,” Council President Amanda Sandoval said in a written statement. “This process has required countless hours, sleepless nights and the dedication of public servants who care deeply about Denver and its residents.”

The mayor’s office incorporated 25 of the council’s 29 budget priorities from June and added 11 more proposals the members suggested in October, Johnston said.

If Johnston had vetoed any of the amendments, the council would have had an opportunity Monday to consider overriding any of those vetoes, but would have needed a supermajority to do so.

The completion of the spending plan marks the end of an especially tense budget year after Johnston announced in May that the city would have to make $250 million in cuts to general fund spending over the next two years amid slowing sales tax revenue. As part of those efforts, city officials laid off 169 people in August.

In his letter, Johnston hinted that Denver’s financial woes are far from over.

“I am concerned that some of the passed amendments dip further into the city’s reserve and contingency funds before we even start 2026,” he wrote. “Because these changes require funding beyond the coming year, which contingency cannot provide, we will have to find different funding sources to sustain them in 2027.”

The city’s rainy day fund, also known as its reserves, has slipped below the recommended level of 15% of expenditures in recent years. As of June, it sat at about 11%.

Now the ball is in Denver Mayor Mike Johnston’s court, with a Friday deadline to agree to the small changes or veto them. The council’s decisions came as its members on Monday — the highest number of budget amendments that have been proposed in any budget cycle in recent memory, according to the city’s .

Councilwoman Sarah Parady sponsored the most amendments, with 15. Councilwoman Shontel Lewis sponsored 10.

The council approved 10 of the amendments, with most making changes of less than $1 million in the $1.66 billion general fund budget proposed for 2026 by the mayor, which is down from $1.76 billion this year. The council unanimously approved budget changes that would restore proposed cuts in the budgets of the Office of the Clerk and Recorder and the Denver Auditor’s Office.

Councilwomen Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez and Parady sponsored the most costly amendments, both of which would have transferred about $9 million from the Denver Police Department to the Department of Housing Stability. They asked that the department use those dollars to help families experiencing homelessness.

But those amendments failed on 8-5 votes.

“We know that we have families who are living on the street right now,” said Gonzales-Gutierrez. “That is a public safety issue.”

Johnston proposed his budget for next year, which calls for a tight spending plan, in September. One month earlier, the city laid off 169 employees amid flattening revenues and growing expenses. The council suggested changes to the budget in October, and the mayor agreed to some of them. The meeting Monday marked the end of the period when the council could ask for changes and the beginning of its members’ opportunity to force amendments to the city’s budget.

Johnston will have until Friday at noon to either accept or veto the amendments that passed. Then the council will have one final chance to override his vetoes — an action that requires a 9-vote supermajority of the council — this coming Monday. The budget will be finalized that day.

That will wrap up a process that Council President Amanda Sandoval called “one of the hardest budgets” she’s ever worked on.

The relationship between the mayor’s office and the council has shown signs of deterioration over the last year. Those tensions continued to boil over during the amendment meeting.

“The strong mayor form of government may be a strong mayor form of government, but it is not a kingdom,” Councilwoman Amanda Sawyer said during the meeting.

Recruiting neighborhood groups

The council members’ frustrations grew as representatives from the city’s 176 reported receiving calls from the mayor’s office, asking them to use their platforms and the council’s public comment period to oppose the two amendments that would have reduced funding for the police department. Some neighborhood groups did just that. Others questioned the tactic.

Jenn Greiving, with the Overland Park neighborhood association, said it¶¶Òőap normal for the mayor’s office to let RNOs know when there is an important vote. But it was unusual, she said, for the administration to urge the organizations to speak against a council amendment.

“It felt like RNOs and their contact lists were being leveraged in a way that positioned RNOs in the middle (of) council and the mayor,” she said.

Councilwoman Flor Alvidrez said during the meeting that she was disappointed that the mayor’s office would try to recruit the groups against an amendment and said administration officials mischaracterized the council amendments.

“This misinformation that they’re emailing our RNOs is not okay,” Alvidrez said.

A spokesman for the mayor’s office said it shared factual information with the organizations and said it wasn’t an abnormal political strategy.

“It¶¶Òőap not any different than what we see in the newsletters from council members,” said Johnston spokesman Jon Ewing.

A look at amendments

During the near-seven-hour discussion, the council also approved amendments to dedicate more dollars for the Safe Routes to School program, to create a crisis response team at the Denver jail, to reinstate funding for the Out of School Time program, to fund a grant program for youth violence prevention, to fund the Denver Day Works program and to aid the WorkReady program.

The council also moved more than $80,000 from its own budget and $500,000 from the Department of Safety and police budgets for , which sends mental health clinicians and paramedics to respond to some calls instead of police officers.

Its members unanimously restored the budgets of the auditor and the clerk. Representatives from both offices argued that the mayor’s proposed cuts to their offices would impede their work. Clerk Paul Lopez said he would have to decrease the number of ballot boxes and polling places for next year’s midterm elections if his budget wasn’t restored.

Those changes would cost about $2.7 million and $380,000 for the clerk and auditor, respectively.

The fight started when a middle-aged man interjected himself into Saturday’s march through downtown Denver, shouting “God Bless Trump,” expletives and a slur before he fell in a street fracas and suffered a serious injury, according to the Denver Police Department.

A circulating on social media showed the older man, wearing a blue New York Giants logo shirt, gesturing at and deriding demonstrators on Saturday afternoon as they rallied near Denver’s Union Station. A younger man with a skateboard appeared to grab the man’s sunglasses off of his face, and the older man chased him and fell against pavement on his face, the video shows.

He got up and ran again, then was tripped and fell onto the street by a curb against his head. Bleeding, he got up again and, with friends, ran and clashed with demonstrators. Some demonstrators tried to help him, pointing to his head suggesting he needed medical care as blood covered the left side of his face.

Denver police arrested Jose Cardenas on suspicion of second-degree assault after tracking him from Wynkoop Street, where the assault occurred at about 2:30 p.m., to North Lincoln Street near the intersection with 14th Avenue.

The victim identified Cardenas as the one who assaulted him, but police on Tuesday said Cardenas is accused of stealing the man’s glasses and did not trip or injure the man.

The person who tripped him has not been identified.

Darrel Killebrew, 33, was arrested on suspicion of felony menacing, assault, child abuse, criminal mischief and criminal tampering after officers were called to his home late Monday.

According to the affidavit, Killebrew began fighting with his wife. He had started divorce proceedings in April after finding out she was cheating on him.

Killebrew took her computer and iPad and refused to return them. He then ordered her to call the other man, saying “Trust me, I got something coming for him” while drawing a gun from his waistband.

The two fought, and Killebrew tossed the gun on the couch and knocked the woman to the floor before taking the devices into the kitchen and repeatedly slamming them onto the corner of the kitchen island, investigators wrote in the arrest report.

When she went to get her purse from her vehicle, Killebrew knocked it out of her hands and later removed the internet router and hid it.

Killebrew was released from the El Paso County jail on a $4,000 bail and is set to appear in court Tuesday. The Denver Sheriff Department put him on investigative leave Wednesday.

Darrel Killebrew, 33, was arrested by Colorado Springs police on Wednesday, court records show.

Denver Sheriff Elias Diggins put Killebrew on investigatory leave Wednesday, the sheriff’s department said in a news release. The agency also opened an internal investigation.

Killebrew was hired as a deputy sheriff in 2023. He was released from the El Paso County jail on $4,000 bail and is set to appear in court Tuesday.

This is a developing story and may be updated.

Ashley Patterson is being held on suspicion of first-degree murder in the shooting, but has not yet been charged, .

Denver officers responded early Monday morning, just after midnight, to the shooting in the , police said. When they arrived, they found an unidentified woman who had been shot.

Paramedics took the woman to the hospital, where she later died from her injuries. The victim will be identified by the Denver Office of the Medical Examiner.

Investigators believe Patterson got into a fight with the victim that escalated into the shooting. Patterson and the victim knew each other and had “prior conflicts,” police said.

Information about how the suspect and victim knew each other and what those prior conflicts were was not available on Wednesday.

Patterson’s next court date had not yet been scheduled Wednesday.

This is a developing story and may be updated.

The requirement, approved by the City Council on Monday, could apply to settlements that include terms where the city agreed to additional training, new policies, community meetings or other requirements. The measure is intended as a way to help track whether the city adheres to those settlements.

“These are intended to be longer-lasting cultural and systemic changes,” said Councilwoman Jamie Torres, who sponsored the legislation, before the council unanimously passed the item as part of a block vote.

Within 30 days after a settlement is reached or it is approved by the council, the city attorney’s office will have to forward the agreement to and . The board appoints the independent monitor, who leads an oversight office for the police and sheriff departments.

The new policy comes two years after the Citizen Oversight Board sent an open letter to Mayor Mike Johnston, saying it found the city hadn’t complied with all the terms in several high-profile settlements that also included large monetary awards.

Three major cases for which the city didn’t complete the requirements were:

• The 2015 death in the Denver jail of Michael Marshall, who was suffering a psychotic episode and died after he aspirated on his vomit while being restrained face-down by deputies for more than 10 minutes by deputies.
• The 2011 jail assault case of Jamal Hunter, who was attacked by other prisoners and choked by a deputy he’d filed a grievance against.
• The 2006 city jail death of Emily Rice, who was ignored and didn’t get necessary medical treatment before she bled to death.

The letter detailed several problems in those cases, including not keeping necessary compliance reports, sending irregular or inconsistent reports, not completing a final investigative report and not publishing investigative findings.

Councilwoman Stacie Gilmore also sponsored the ordinance, and Councilwoman Shontel Lewis spoke in support of the new reporting requirements before the vote.

“I think it may allow for better outcomes because it will force the city to not only adhere to the nonmonetary terms of a settlement 
 but it allows us to track how well we are adhering to those terms,” Lewis said.

Ricky Roybal-Smith, 38, of Aurora, faces first-degree murder charges in each of the three separate homicides, according to and Denver police.

Roybal-Smith was being held in Denver’s Downtown Detention Center for investigation of first-degree murder in the Monday morning strangling death of his cellmate, Vincent Chacon, when Aurora detectives obtained a warrant connecting him to two fatal stabbings in northwest Aurora.

In the Denver case, Roybal-Smith alerted a deputy around 2 a.m. Monday that his cellmate Chacon, 35, was choking on an apple and needed help, according to a statement of probable cause filed with Denver District Court.

The deputy found Chacon lying unresponsive on the lower bunk bed with a blanket up to his neck and began CPR. When paramedics arrived, they couldn’t revive him.

Two Denver police detectives came to the jail to investigate Chacon’s death, and one of them found red marks on his neck and discoloration of his eyes, which the detective considered more aligned with manual strangulation rather than choking on food.

Officers transported Roybal-Smith for an interview at the homicide unit, where he invoked his right to remain silent, according to court records.

In the Aurora case, detectives previously had connected the two stabbings because they were similar and happened close to each other on the same morning. Both victims were homeless at the time of their deaths.

Police discovered the first man in the 1500 block of Moline Street about 1:45 a.m. Sunday and found the other man near a bus stop on Peoria Street south of East Colfax Avenue about 6:30 that morning.

The detectives obtained a warrant to arrest Roybal-Smith on first-degree murder charges, according to a news release, but did not say how they linked him to the stabbings. The warrant for his arrest was not available Thursday evening.

Roybal-Smith was initially being held in the Denver jail on charges of careless driving that injured two pedestrians at Galapago Street and North Ninth Avenue, and then leaving the scene of that crash, and of driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

He is also suspected of being involved in a second crash at westbound Interstate 70 and North Lowell Boulevard.

Roybal-Smith previously pleaded guilty to vehicular assault charges in 2016 related to a high-speed chase with Littleton police in December 2015 that ended in a crash into a parked SUV at South Santa Fe Drive and West Oxford Avenue. Royal-Smith received a 12-year prison sentence for seriously injuring a person and avoiding arrest.

He qualified for an early release under Colorado law and was out on parole in 2022 after serving only half of his prison sentence. While on parole, he was arrested on felony menacing charges after swinging a filet knife at a fellow customer in a Walmart store in Englewood.

Roybal-Smith received a four-year sentence in that menacing case, but was released early on parole in January.

He is expected to be transferred to Adams County and booked on the new first-degree murder charges, according to a , but he was still in Denver’s detention center as of 4:20 p.m. Thursday.

Aurora police are offering a reward of up to $2,000 for information related to the homicide cases via Metro Denver Crime Stoppers at 720-913-7867. Tipsters can remain anonymous.