The Denver City Council approved the settlement Monday afternoon, ending a case stemming from an unusual incident that played out five years ago just south of downtown. Mary Quintana’s son shot and wounded two Denver police officers, and the standoff ended after Joseph Quintana shot himself. He died the next day.

Denver police entered the house at 622 Inca St. on Jan. 27, 2019, to arrest 35-year-old Joseph Quintana on an outstanding warrant after receiving a call reporting shots fired in the area.

When one officer went down to the basement, Quintana shot him, striking him in a Kevlar vest protecting his abdomen, according to the lawsuit first filed by Mary Quintana’s attorneys in January 2020. In an exchange of gunfire that followed, another officer was struck in the leg, according to that suit.

Both officers survived their injuries.

In the ensuing standoff, SWAT officers used chemical grenades to help neutralize Joseph Quintana, a decision they communicated to their command center, according to the suit. Several rounds of chemical agents were tossed into the home inside ammunition boxes meant to contain them.

A short time later, the house burst into flames.

According to the lawsuit, a Denver Fire Department report determined that the cause of the fire was a chemical grenade designed specifically for outdoor use due to its “fire-producing capability.”

Shortly after the fire started, Joseph Quintana shot himself. He was taken to a hospital, where he died the next morning. Officials ruled his death a suicide.

Among the claims in Mary Quintana’s lawsuit was that Denver police — including then-Chief Paul Pazen and three officers — acted negligently during the standoff. It alleged that the department did not properly train officers on the use of chemical grenades. Quintana also sought compensation for being detained by police for six hours during the standoff.

A federal appeals court in March ruled that Denver police officers Justin Dodge and Richard Eberharter were immune from legal liability. The three-judge panel found that their action during the standoff did not amount to a willful or wanton disregard for the harm that could be done by their actions.

When reached by phone Monday, Quintana’s attorney, Joe Salazar, declined to discuss how the two sides arrived at the $95,000 settlement’s amount. In an interview with a Denver Post reporter in 2020, Salazar noted that Quintana’s insurance company had paid a portion of the cost of rebuilding her home, but not all of it.

“This matter is finally resolved,” Salazar said Monday.

Proponents of and two ballot measures put forth by the conservative advocacy group Advance Colorado for the Nov. 5 election, say they’re needed to curb crime in Colorado. Opponents say they would do more harm than good.

The two ballot measures come as Democrats’ control of state government has expanded. Policy debates — including around criminal justice — largely are defined by and unfold among the wings of the Democratic caucuses.

For conservatives, ballot questions increasingly have become their sharpest tool to interrupt that paradigm. Advance Colorado had five initiatives approved for the ballot before it dropped two property tax-related measures late in the summer, following negotiations with legislative leaders and Gov. Jared Polis’ office and an August special session to pass more tax relief.

“We are putting this up to the voters,” Michael Fields, president of Advance Colorado, said of the criminal justice measures. “The voters can look at it, and they can decide.”

Simultaneously, Republicans — starting with former President Donald Trump, the party’s nominee again — have run on claims of runaway crime surges. Overall crime in Colorado spiked during the pandemic, peaking in 2022, but has been dropping since then, state and local crime . Those declines have also been seen nationally, with President Joe Biden trumpeting “record declines in crime” in a White House statement on Sept. 23.

Opponents of the two measures argue that increasing sentences and diverting $350 million to law enforcement from the state’s budget will not decrease crime in Colorado — and will exacerbate the state’s precarious budget situation.

Though Colorado Democrats are far from united on how best to approach criminal justice policy, the legislature has grown more leery of tough-on-crime policies in recent years. Several Democratic lawmakers have questioned recent increases in the Colorado Department of Corrections’ budget.

Those two dynamics would be upended by the ballot measures’ passage.

“Colorado has led the nation for a long time on criminal justice reform,” said Kyle Giddings, the civic engagement coordinator at the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition. “And Prop 128 and 130 would be a major rollback of the efforts over the last 10 years to make sure we are advancing public safety through common-sense solutions, without breaking the bank.”

Pushing for “truth in sentencing”

People sentenced to prison in Colorado typically serve less than half of their total sentences before they are released on parole, .

State law requires prisoners to serve at least 75% of their sentences, but that time can be reduced further if prisoners maintain good behavior while incarcerated — a reduction known as “earned time” or “good time.”

People convicted of Class 2 felonies — the second-most serious felony in Colorado — on average were sentenced to 28 years in prison and served 13 years before they were released, according to Colorado Department of Corrections data for the 2022 fiscal year. That’s about 46% of their sentences.

For certain crimes, Proposition 128 would change state law by increasing the amount of time a person must serve in prison to 85% of their sentence before the person could be eligible for earned-time reductions or parole.

The change would apply only to a handful of convictions beginning Jan. 1: second-degree murder, first- or -second-degree sexual assault, aggravated robbery, first-degree assault, kidnapping, first-degree arson and first-degree burglary.

Additionally, people convicted of a third crime of violence — a wider swath of crimes — would be ineligible for any type of early release and would be required to serve an entire sentence on their third conviction.

Fields said the changes were needed to ensure transparency in the justice system.

“There isn’t truth in sentencing,” he said. “You have a sentence and you get out after half of it. … What we have is a disconnect between what people think is happening and what is actually happening.”

He and other proponents of the ballot measure say the extra prison time would improve public safety by keeping what Fields called the “worst of the worst” offenders in prison longer.

But opponents say that position is , and they say earned time is a powerful incentive for prisoners to participate in rehabilitation while incarcerated.

Prisoners who can’t earn good time will feel more despair and be more likely to participate in violent and dangerous behaviors, said Dana Mueller, a Colorado Department of Corrections release case manager. She spoke on behalf of her union, Colorado Workers for Innovative and New Solutions, which has come out against Proposition 128.

“This would not reduce recidivism or crime, and it wouldn’t fix what is wrong in corrections,” she said. “Instead, it would make things worse, making conditions more dangerous both for workers and the inmate population.”

She added that prisoners who exhibit good behavior in prison are better prepared to reintegrate into society than those who do not.

“The majority of people incarcerated in DOC eventually get out,” she said.

If Proposition 128 passed, it would affect roughly 220 prison sentences annually. The financial impact would come in about 20 years, when the longer time served by some inmates would add to the prison population — increasing state spending on prisons by an estimated $12 million to $28 million, state analysts found.

Rep. Judy Amabile, a Boulder Democrat and member of the House Judiciary Committee, argued that legislators and policymakers should instead take a deeper look at the Department of Corrections’ operations to ensure it’s providing rehabilitative services and the treatment that offenders require to get out on time. Doing so would save money in the long run, she said.

“I think our whole approach has to be about how do we rehabilitate people — how do we set people up to succeed?” she said. “I have never seen any data that says, ‘Just keep them longer and they’ll miraculously do better when they get out.’ ”

But John Kellner, the district attorney for the 18th Judicial District, said Prop 128 would bring a measure of certainty to victims for how long the offender would be locked up.

Right now, he said, no one can be sure.

“In all honesty, nobody in that courtroom knows how long that offender is truly going to serve,” he said. “Not the judge, not the defendant and certainly not the victim.”

Prop 130 raises budget concerns among some

Advance Colorado’s other measure, Proposition 130, aims to create a $350 million state fund for Colorado law enforcement agencies to use to increase officers’ pay, hire new officers and increase police training. It would be up to state lawmakers to decide where to draw that money from when they fill the fund.

The measure would also establish a $1 million death benefit paid to the family of any officer killed in the line of duty, on top of any existing benefits available.

Proponents say Colorado needs more police officers to bring down crime in the state. They point to several years of high crime during the COVID-19 pandemic as driving the need for more police officers. They also say more officers on the street .

Crime has been declining in Colorado since rates peaked in 2022, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Reported violent crime, including allegations of murder, sex offenses, robbery and aggravated assault, dropped 6% in 2023 compared to 2022, . Violent crime remains 21% higher than pre-pandemic levels in 2019, according to the data.

Property crime followed a similar trend. Reported crimes of burglary, larceny, vehicle theft and arson were up 14% compared to 2019, but down 8% from the 2022 peak.

“This thin blue line that keeps us safe has been stretched far too thin,” said former Denver police chief Paul Pazen. “… I believe putting more uniformed officers out on the street to keep our community safe will help deter crime and enhance that sense of security.”

State officials would decide how to issue grants to aid local agencies with hiring and retention, but the use of grant dollars for some ongoing costs, such as new officers’ salaries or for recurring pay bumps, could create challenges for the agencies.

Colorado state Rep. Gabe Evans, a Fort Lupton Republican who’s running for Congress and is a former police officer, said during a September press conference in support of the measure that law enforcement agencies needed more money.

“They don’t have the resources, they don’t have the equipment, they don’t have the training to be able to do a job that is critical to public safety,” he said.

Opponents say allocating $350 million to police alone cuts out many other important services aimed at reducing crime, and that the money could be better spent with more stakeholder and community input in the process.

Giddings, from the justice reform coalition, called it “really bad fiscal policy” to ask the state to invest $350 million into police only — and not into fire departments, emergency medical services or community organizations that often work closely with police.

“It just doesn’t make any sense,” he said.

He noted that the measure is not self-funding — there’s no associated tax or revenue generation — so the $350 million would come out of the state’s general fund.

“That is almost 6,000 teacher salaries … or the entirety of Colorado’s affordable housing budget, or it is state funding for six to eight years of programs like SNAP,” he said, referring to the state program that helps low-income households purchase food.

Legislators also have warned about the impact to the broader state budget — already expected to be tight next year — if they have to move $350 million to fulfill the ballot measure’s mandate.

Given Advance Colorado’s conservative background, Democrats have accused the group of running the ballot measure as a roundabout way of reducing government spending on existing programs.

Rep. Shannon Bird, a Westminster Democrat and the chair of the legislative committee that crafts the state budget each year, said she thought the initiative was “coming from exactly the right place” because the state “needs to do better by our public safety professionals.”

Still, she was concerned about the deeper impact to the state’s budget. Lawmakers already will have to make cuts because of high Medicaid spending, she said, and she noted that law enforcement funding largely comes from local revenues, not state coffers.

“What people need to understand is that (Proposition 130) means $350 million, instead of being spent on K-12 or higher education or health care for the most vulnerable in our state — or to be frank, invested in our prisons to maintain the other side of public safety — now can’t be used for those purposes,” Bird said.

“We present a balanced budget every year, so every dollar is spoken for. So every time you create a new liability, that means something else gets cut.”

She only needed to have a tooth pulled after she was hit in the face with a projectile from a rubber ball grenade flung in her direction by an unidentified Denver police officer in May 2020 during that year’s racial justice protests. She’d been headed back to her car after helping to lead a march, according to a description of the events in the lengthy lawsuit her attorneys filed against the city on her behalf.

“It was just chaotic. There were more bloody, gory injuries,” Minter said of what she saw before she was injured that day.

Minter, 42, settled with the city last year for $50,000, just a small fraction of the millions of dollars the Denver City Council has approved to pay claims resulting from police conduct during the 2020 protests. Those cases are a big factor in soaring payouts to the public by the city of Denver to resolve large legal claims — a total that reached nearly $39.5 million between 2017 and 2023, according to a Denver Post review of data provided by the City Attorney’s Office.

The Post found that roughly nine in 10 of those dollars were paid for claims involving the Denver Police Department or Denver Sheriff Department. That continues at least a decade-long trend in which public safety agencies’ share of the total has ratcheted up as jail- and police-related misconduct claims have mounted.

While the physical impact of Minter’s incident was relatively small, she says it still affected her — as did the treatment of other protesters in the spring and summer of 2020, including some episodes she witnessed.

The city has approved settlements in cases that stemmed from injuries from projectiles, including being blinded or losing eyes, as well as police officers’ targeting of protesters and the use of tear gas. The city has paid seven figures to settle some of the suits, and still unresolved is a pending $14 million jury award to a dozen protesters for violations of their rights. It’s not included in The Post’s seven-year total because the city plans to appeal it.

“The people who got more money definitely deserved that,” Minter said, “because they were violently victimized for standing up for their rights.”

Just in 2023, the city paid $17.3 million to resolve cases and claims involving the Denver police — a chunk that on its own makes up roughly 44% of the seven-year total in large payouts. Just under $10 million of that was attributable to cases stemming from police actions during the protests, according to City Attorney’s Office records.

The department’s response to the massive, recurring racial justice protests in May and June 2020 in downtown Denver spurred several other settlements prior to last year. The protests initially were organized in response to the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police.

Minter, who has a long history of advocacy and activism around police reform in Aurora, where she lives, felt it was necessary to come to downtown Denver not only to call for justice for Floyd and his family but also for Elijah McClain, the 23-year-old Black man who died after a violent arrest in Aurora in 2019. As a Black woman, Minter said the broader issue at the center of the protests was calling out disparities in how people of color are policed in this country.

In the aftermath of the demonstrations  — which brought thousands of people to the heart of the city and at times were accompanied by vandalism and looting along the 16th Street Mall — the city’s then-Independent Monitor Nick Mitchell assessed the police response. In a scathing report in late 2020, Mitchell detailed problems with inadequate training and multiple violations of DPD’s use of force policies, including officers firing less-lethal munitions (such as pepper balls, foam bullets and tear gas) at protesters without warning.

The police chief at the time agreed to nearly all the recommendations, including better training for officers on crowd control and tracking the use of less-lethal weapons.

In the overall picture of the large claim payouts reviewed by The Post, the annual average during those seven years was more than $5.6 million — or enough to pay the salaries of 85 entry-level firefighters. The Post focused in on the years since the newspaper’s last comprehensive report on Denver legal payouts in early 2017.

Most of that time was during the administration of Mayor Michael Hancock, who left office in July after three terms. Mayor Mike Johnston, in his first six months, has renominated Hancock’s public safety director, police chief and sheriff to continue serving.

The Department of Public Safety and the City Attorney’s Office did not grant requested interviews with Armando Saldate, the safety director, and City Attorney Kerry Tipper, also a Hancock holdover, instead responding to questions in writing.

Johnston said in an interview Friday that city officials were seeing the tide of settlements begin to recede.

“To be clear, this is not the police chief or the manager of safety that oversaw the George Floyd responses,” he said. “We’ve made a dramatic set of changes to policies and practices since then that I think are going to provide much better public safety — and also much less risk of that bad behavior.”

But in the wake of the city’s 2023 legal bills, some City Council members and are calling for more transparency around law enforcement settlements and a deeper focus on the training and accountability protocols meant to correct or prevent them.

“People were hurt that shouldn’t have been hurt and people were arrested that shouldn’t have been arrested,” at-large Councilwoman Sarah Parady, also an attorney, said of the police response to the Floyd protests. “What I am trying to move on quickly is how we can create accountability and transparency around terms in settlement agreements so we can focus on structural reforms going forward.”

Nearly 90% of city payouts come from police, sheriff’s cases

The Post examined legal claims approved by the council, a step that’s required for claim payouts and settlements above a certain amount. Small settlements and property damage claims such as vehicle accidents — those under $5,000 and $25,000, respectively — don’t appear on council agendas for votes and aren’t included in The Post’s totals.

The Post’s analysis focused on cases and claims brought by the public, but the city has incurred some substantial bills from complaints filed from within its own workforce. The city paid a combined $3.3 million to resolve seven employment-based legal cases over the last seven years, including $2.1 million in discrimination and other cases. Those weren’t included in The Post’s totals.

For the large claims brought by the public, the police and sheriff’s departments led all city agencies in payouts stemming from cases against them since 2017 — $29.7 million and $5.6 million, respectively. The Department of Transportation and Infrastructure, formerly known as the Department of Public Works, came in third, with $3.5 million.

Denver has a dedicated fund to cover liability claims. That comes with the territory when a large government entity self-insures, as the city does, instead of relying on liability insurance. But the protest payouts have required the city to transfer more money into that fund — at a time when the city has faced extra budget pressures, including from the migrant crisis.

The city’s police and sheriff departments long have generated its most significant legal payouts.

High-profile cases such as the 2010 jail death of Marvin Booker, after a struggle with deputies, and the 2015 police shooting of 17-year-old Jessica Hernandez, while she was behind the wheel of a stolen car, made headlines.

They also resulted in big payments out of that liability claims fund — $6 million to Booker’s family in 2014 and $1 million to Hernandez’s family in 2017 — and helped spur reforms in the downtown jail and in the police department’s policies around when officers can shoot at moving vehicles.

Between 2004 and early 2017, the police and sheriff departments accounted for 82% of all settlements against the city, according to an earlier Post analysis. That proportion has only risen in the years since — and even in the last few years of that period, from 2014 to early 2017, it reached 91%.

From 2017 to 2023, The Post’s analysis found, Denver agreed to pay a combined $35.3 million to resolve large legal claims filed against the police and sheriff’s departments. That’s more than 89% of city government’s $39.5 million total.

Saldate, the city’s safety director for two years, did not agree to be interviewed for this story, with a spokesperson citing scheduling conflicts. In response to emailed questions, Saldate noted that the Department of Public Safety does not play a role in choosing whether to settle cases or for how much. Those decisions are up to city attorneys who weigh the risk of going to trial and other factors.

He said public safety leaders weren’t sitting back waiting for settlements to dictate the type of instruction officers and sheriff’s deputies might need.

“The department is taking proactive steps to identify areas of potential risk and make policy revisions or provide additional training to our law enforcement,” Saldate wrote in an emailed response. “This process includes working with the Office of the Independent Monitor to determine areas in which they may also have concern and keeping (the office) up to date on the proactive steps being taken.”

City faces more steep payments in protest cases

The fallout from the police response to the Floyd protests has not yet settled, with payouts continuing in 2024.

The City Council last month approved a $2.3 million settlement with Jax Feldmann, whose eye was permanently damaged after a Denver officer shot him with a pepper ball during the protests.

Feldmann wasn’t a protester. He was walking to his car after visiting a friend when an officer in a passing truck fired the projectile at him without warning, according to his lawsuit.

“They shouldn’t be used,” Feldmann, then 21, said about the projectiles in an interview with The Post in 2020. “We’re citizens, not criminals.”

His injury was similar to that of Russell Strong, a protester hit in the face during a peaceful demonstration by a “kinetic impact projectile” fired by police, according to a lawsuit. It ruptured his eye, broke the bones in his eye socket and fractured his face. He told The Post in 2021 that losing his eye had a “devastating impact.” In September, the council approved a $550,000 settlement with Strong.

Denver attorney Birk Baumgartner, who represented Feldmann, described three more cases still moving through the legal system that stemmed from what he described as severe injuries caused by law enforcement officers during the protests.

“Those three claims are going to be a heavy burden on the city, as they should be, because the only way to get this city to change its tactics and policies is to make them pay heavy prices,” he said in an interview. “They have shown that.”

The largest potential payout so far is still not finalized. City officials plan to appeal the $14 million jury verdict handed down in 2022 after a jury found the police department failed to properly train officers and prevent them from violating protesters’ civil rights during the demonstrations.

There were 12 plaintiffs in the case, including now-State Rep. Elisabeth Epps.

But the appeal hasn’t been filed yet. The outstanding issue, according to Elizabeth Wang, the plaintiff’s lead attorney, is a second trial that’s still pending in the case and will focus on the actions of Aurora police officers during the protests. Denver can’t file an appeal until final judgment is rendered; a recent motion to separate the Denver portion was denied, Wang said.

“They would like to never pay,” Wang said of the city’s response to the judgment. “… But they will. It will be resolved sooner or later, and that bill is going to come due.”

Settlement agreements can go beyond financial restitution.

When Denver resolved a class-action lawsuit covering the arrests of more than 300 people detained for violating an emergency curfew during the 2020 demonstrations, the city agreed to pay $4.7 million. It also vowed in the agreement that its officers would not enforce future emergency curfews against people engaged in protests or other activities protected by the First Amendment.

Still, the settlement agreement says the city “specifically denies the emergency curfew was targeted for enforcement against anyone engaged in First Amendment or protest activity” in 2020 — reflecting a standard practice in which the city makes clear its decision to settle a case is not an admission of fault.

“The real work of repairing the harm is fixing the problem”

The Denver Citizen Advisory Board raised concerns late last year about what it viewed as a lack of oversight and follow-through on non-monetary terms in settlement agreements. Those terms include items such as commitments to require additional training for officers and deputies as a way of preventing future harm and civil-rights violations.

Saldate, the city’s safety director, pushed back on the board’s concerns in a statement last year. He said the department had lived up to its promises and would continue to “share improvements with the public to enhance trust in public safety.”

Julia Richman, who works as the chief operations officer at the University of Denver, chairs the . She noted that the board’s letter of concern last year focused on just three settlements out of dozens the city has entered into.

Even tracking down the details of what those settlements required was difficult, she said. In Richman’s view, the oversight board and the Office of the Independent Monitor, which reviews internal affairs investigations and provides safety oversight, should have a role in tracking non-monetary conditions in settlements to ensure the city follows through, especially on training requirements.

“Policing is more complicated. The interactions are far more complicated. That’s why training (and) systems need to keep pace,” Richman said of the demands on Denver officers. “Money is not going to repair the harm. The real work of repairing the harm is fixing the problem.”

But the settlements have been costly to Denver — which isn’t the only city to face a legal reckoning for police officers’ conduct during the 2020 protests.

Last year, Philadelphia to settle lawsuits brought by protesters and bystanders injured during that city’s demonstrations. Police reforms were included in that package, according to the Philadelphia Tribune. In early 2022, the city of Austin announced that to two men who were severely injured during May 2020 protests.

The wave of costly police settlements in Denver has overlapped with the new mayor’s efforts to grow the ranks of DPD, which has struggled with recruitment and retention. He included $8.2 million in his 2024 budget to pay for efforts to add another 167 officers to the force.

Johnston chose to keep senior public safety leadership intact at city hall, much such as justice reform activist and former mayoral rival Lisa Calderón. Besides Saldate, he has renominated Ron Thomas as police chief and Elias Diggins as sheriff. Those appointments are still pending council approval.

The mayor’s priority is a renewed focus on “neighborhood policing,” in which officers build relationships with the people and neighborhoods they are tasked with protecting. That model is a building block of efforts to “prevent the need for any future legal settlements,” said Jordan Fuja, a spokeswoman for Johnston’s office, in an email.

On Friday, Johnston told The Post: “There were certainly bad actions (during the protests), and people have taken responsibility for those. We also think there’s a real need for us to continue to support public safety and public services, and I think the city sees that.”

“We all understand the rules of engagement”

Despite Johnston’s optimism, public safety reform advocates and attorneys predict that large settlements will continue to draw down the city’s general fund until officers face harsher internal discipline for excessive force and other actions that drive the legal complaints.

Though outsiders may take issue with the punishments, recent years have brought a spate of disciplinary actions.

Following the Floyd protests, eight DPD personnel were disciplined by the department, including four officers and a former corporal who were given unpaid suspensions ranging from four to 10 days, according to information provided by department spokesman Doug Schepman.

Diego Archuleta, the officer who Baumgartner said fired the pepper ball that seriously injured Feldmann, was suspended for six days for pepper spraying a woman in a parked car who posed no threat to officers. Archuleta resigned from DPD in January 2022, on the same day he pleaded guilty in a separate matter to a felony charge of attempted strangulation.

Denver attorney Qusair Mohamedbhai, who has extensive experience bringing legal cases against law enforcement agencies in Colorado, said the city had a long way to go when it came to adequate training and accountability within its police force.

He represented Strong, the protester who lost an eye, and Hernandez’s family in negotiations with Denver. He also won a record-setting $19 million settlement for the family of Christian Glass after he was shot to death in his SUV by a Clear Creek County Sheriff’s deputy while suffering a mental health crisis in 2022.

In Mohamedbhai’s view, settlements are a sign that municipalities acknowledge the wrongs their law enforcement officers have committed. He is hopeful that the still-new Johnston administration will foster a better approach.

“We haven’t heard about the same sort of cultural reluctance to engage with the Citizen Oversight Board and the independent monitor that we saw with Michael Hancock,” he said.

Richman has credited Thomas — a more-than-30-year DPD veteran appointed in late 2022 to take over for the retiring Paul Pazen — as being much more committed to ensuring officers take part in ordered training than his predecessor.

During a Citizen Oversight Board hearing earlier this month, she asked the police chief for an update on training in the aftermath of the Floyd protests. As evidence of progress, Thomas pointed to a lack of controversy around the handling of protests in recent months by pro-Palestinian demonstrators downtown.

“I think every officer has been retrained in our new policies — (on) our new tactics as it relates to crowd management,” Thomas said. “We all understand the rules of engagement.”

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Attorneys for Roberts filed a lawsuit based on the incident last year. The suit named the city, former Denver police Chief Paul Pazen and three unidentified police officers as plaintiffs.

The core allegation was that an officer targeted Roberts because he was leading a demonstration demanding police accountability amid the recent killings of Black and Brown people by police, including the May 2020 murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis. The demonstration also served as a counter-protest against a rally supporting police and President Donald Trump’s reelection bid.

The Denver City Council approved the settlement agreement on Monday afternoon.

It was the latest in a series of payments the council has approved to resolve legal claims tied to Denver police conduct during the racial justice protests in the summer of 2020. Several other protest-related settlements also were approved by the council Monday.

For Roberts, the lawsuit and settlement were the latest chapter in a long history of police in Denver and Aurora targeting him for his advocacy.

“It’s been a long road for me dealing with local law enforcement agencies trying to destroy my life, literally for fighting for justice for victims of police brutality,” Roberts said. “I’m not a bad person. I’m doing what they swore to do — to serve and protect. I’m just doing it in a different fashion.”

The Denver City Attorney’s Office declined to comment on the case on Monday afternoon.

A former gang member-turned-anti-gang activist, Roberts was acquitted of attempted murder in a highly publicized case in 2015. He went on trial for shooting Bloods gang member Hasan Isaiah Jones two years earlier at a peace rally Roberts had organized in the Holly Square shopping center in his neighborhood of Park Hill. Roberts claimed the shooting was self-defense.

The case was the basis for and documentary film by journalist Julian Rubinstein.

Roberts ran for Denver mayor earlier this year on a progressive platform that focused on racial and economic justice in the city. He came in ninth out of 16 candidates in the first round of the election before endorsing Mike Johnston, the eventual winner in the runoff.

Roberts said he felt his treatment by Denver police during the 2020 protests undermined his reputation and his chances in the race.

During the demonstration, Roberts delivered a speech in front of the Colorado Capitol building and then marched across Civic Center Park with other counter-protesters. Near the Greek Amphitheatre, the protesters passed a group of police officers and Roberts led them in chants.

At that point, the lawsuit said, an unidentified Denver police officer approached Roberts and sprayed him with pepper spray. Two other officers stood by and did nothing to intervene in the unprovoked attack, the suit alleged.

Roberts did not require professional medical treatment, but his eyes continued to burn for days after the incident, according to the suit.

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The police department quietly stopped using no-knock warrants in 2020 amid a nationwide outcry against police brutality and push for criminal justice reform, police records show.

That year, then-Chief Paul Pazen informally changed the Denver Police Department’s policy to disallow no-knock warrants in narcotics cases, an adjustment formalized in 2021. That policy shift essentially ended the department’s use of no-knock warrants, though they are still allowed in exceptional circumstances, Division Chief of Investigations Joe Montoya said.

The decline of the no-knock search warrant — which allows officers to enter a person’s home without first identifying themselves as police — marks the end of an era in Denver law enforcement. But it also coincides with a rise in the number of knock-and-announce warrants handled by the city’s SWAT team. Those warrants can be similar to no-knock warrants, except that police clearly identify themselves before entering a home.

The controversial no-knock technique has been criticized nationwide for decades, from the 1999 Denver police killing of Ismael Mena during a no-knock raid at the wrong house to the 2020 police killing of Breonna Taylor, who was shot to death during a no-knock drug raid in Louisville, Kentucky, that was based on .

Aurora city officials banned no-knock warrants in 2020, and Colorado lawmakers this year passed a law allowing no-knock warrants only in situations where there is a credible threat to someone’s life.

A number of police departments in metro Denver still allow for no-knock warrants, a review of their published policies shows. Boulder, Colorado Springs, Westminster, Wheat Ridge, Englewood, Thornton, Lakewood and Denver all allow no-knock warrants in some circumstances, according to their published policies. At least one agency, the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, is currently revising its policy to align with the new state law.

Police departments across the country are moving away from no-knock warrants, said Paul Taylor, assistant professor at the University of Colorado Denver.

“It’s certainly been a trend nationwide,” he said. “…We have seen quite a few outright bans in jurisdictions, but I’ve also seen agencies take the approach of, ‘We are going to limit this, severely limit the use of no-knock but not absolutely ban them.’ ”

Steady decline of no-knock warrants

The Denver Police Department used no-knock warrants much more frequently two decades ago than in recent years. Before Mena’s killing in 1999, Denver police served no-knock warrants 95 times over a nine-month span. That in the nine months after Mena’s death.

Mena was killed when police burst into his home while serving a no-knock warrant at the wrong house. Police said Mena picked up a gun and fired at them before they shot him to death; an investigator for his family later alleged to make it look like Mena fired when he did not.

His killing led to changes in both Denver police policy and state law, including an added requirement that no-knock warrant applications be reviewed by district attorneys before they are signed by judges and a requirement that police serve the warrants within three days of judicial approval instead of 10.

Twenty years after Mena’s death, Denver police served only 17 no-knock warrants in all of 2019, according to by the police department. That dropped to six in the first six months of 2020, and to zero since then.

“Obviously 2020 was a volatile year,” Montoya said. “We had to take a hard look at how we were doing things… and quickly (came) to the decision that the motivation to secure narcotic evidence wasn’t worth the risk of a no-knock warrant.”

A in 2021 to examine no-knock warrants found that the approach is “undesirable and should be avoided” because it is dangerous to both officers and residents when police burst unannounced into a home.

“One of the issues with no-knock warrants is the person doesn’t know who is breaking down the door,” Taylor said. “Even when police get the house right, when they enter the house without giving warning, there is a real danger both to officers and those inside that the person inside believes that this is not the police, and we end up in a shooting-type incident.”

In 2021, a Jefferson County man sued after he was shot in the abdomen with a projectile that police used to break open his door during a no-knock raid. The man had stepped up to the door to open it when he was struck; the projectile ripped a baseball-sized hole in his abdomen. That lawsuit is pending.

Before Denver police changed their no-knock policy, most no-knock warrants were tied to narcotics investigations, Montoya said. Historically, the argument was that police officers needed to surprise suspects to prevent them from destroying evidence, he said. No-knock warrants were also used in situations where police felt surprise was necessary to keep a suspect from escaping or presenting a threat to officers, Taylor said.

Prohibiting no-knock warrants in drug cases dramatically reduced their use in Denver, Montoya said.

“Taking those out of the mix really is what changed that quite a bit for us,” Montoya said.

Pazen said Breonna Taylor’s killing in Louisville and the racial justice protests during the summer of 2020 impacted his decision to make which he said was part of a larger effort to review the police department’s operations in light of the call for reform. Officers needed to shift the way they investigated narcotics cases so that the cases didn’t rely on finding evidence during a no-knock raid, he said.

“If you have to do more investigatory work, more preliminary work, then that is what you need to do,” he said. “Serving the warrant doesn’t need to be part of the building of the case.”

Narcotics investigations haven’t been adversely impacted since the change, Montoya said.

“I can’t see going back,” he said. “I can’t see any real reason for that to change. It’s working too well and it makes too much sense.”

Similarly, in Aurora, where City Council members banned no-knock warrants in 2020, the ban hasn’t had much impact on police operations because officers so rarely used no-knock warrants before the ban, Aurora police Investigations Division Chief Mark Hildebrand said in a statement.

“No-knock warrants historically represented a tiny fraction of the total number of search and arrest warrants sought by the Aurora Police Department in any given year leading up to the ban in 2020,” he said.

Rising use of SWAT in knock-and-announce

Denver police still use knock-and-announce warrants — in which officers declare themselves and then can force entry into a home if the occupants don’t respond in a reasonable amount of time, or if appears residents are trying to flee, arm themselves or destroy evidence.

Those warrants can be functionally similar to no-knock warrants — with officers forcing entry into a home relatively quickly if no one comes to the door — though police do announce their presence and wait for a response before entering.

“There’s no surprise element,” Montoya said.

Denver police have used the SWAT team to serve a growing number of knock-and-announce warrants in recent years, according to numbers provided by police. The city’s SWAT team served 71 knock-and-announce warrants in 2019, 74 in 2020, 100 in 2021 and 114 in 2022, according to the department. So far this year, the SWAT team has served 49 knock-and-announce warrants, according to police.

In 2022, the SWAT team served a knock-and-announce search warrant at the home of then-77-year-old Ruby Johnson, looking for a stolen phone that had pinged nearby and was believed to be inside a stolen truck along with several guns. Johnson, who was ordered out of her Montbello home by an officer with a bullhorn, later sued, alleging police used excessive force in the raid.

Mark Silverstein, legal director emeritus at the ACLU of Colorado, which is handling Johnson’s lawsuit, said the end of no-knock warrants is “really good” for Denver. But he said Denver police should clarify how long is a ‘reasonable’ amount of time to wait before forcing entry during a knock-and-announce search warrant.

“That����ap a step forward,” he said. “But to the extent they’re using the SWAT team and a very short wait after a knock to make forced entry, that is still a very dangerous situation.”

Denver police were not able to immediately provide the number of knock-and-announce search warrants that involved forced entry; Montoya said dynamic forced entries during knock-and-announce search warrants are rare.

Current Denver police policy still allows for no-knock raids in exceptional circumstances; applications for warrants must be approved by the officer’s chain of command in addition to being reviewed by the district attorney’s office, and then reviewed and signed by a judge.

“It����ap always good to have it for that very rare occasion when you really do need it,” Montoya said, citing a potential hostage situation. “But it is very highly scrutinized and it would have to be a very rare opportunity for us to consider it.”

Under the new state law that took effect in July, police departments can only use no-knock warrants if there’s a credible threat to human life. Additionally, all search warrants of homes must be served between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. unless otherwise authorized by a judge, and law enforcement officers must identify themselves, wear a uniform or badge, and activate their body-worn cameras when entering.

“This fits into a broader conversation around how communities and law enforcement are working to try and rebuild trust that has been deeply broken,” said Sen. Julie Gonzales, D-Denver, one of the sponsors on the bill. “Whether that is through policy change or whether that is through change in practice, those are two meaningful steps. I welcome the shift from Denver, and we’ve also worked to clarify for all law enforcement agencies our concern and our reticence to allow law enforcement agencies to utilize that tactic.”

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The bill’s final implementation deadline passed Saturday, and lawmakers, law enforcement and advocates are now grappling with a changed political ecosystem around police and criminal justice reform and deciding what����ap next.

“We know we haven’t solved all ills with one bill or two bills,” said Rep. Leslie Herod, a Denver Democrat who co-sponsored the bill in 2020. “And we never will, to be honest with you. But we have to keep moving forward on the progress.”

Lawmakers who worked on the bill praised it as instrumental in reforming policing in Colorado while serving as a foundation for subsequent policy changes. Law enforcement leaders, meanwhile, contend the bill has made it more difficult to recruit and retain officers amid an increase in some crimes. But since 2020, broader momentum for criminal justice and police reform has slowed in Colorado, lawmakers and advocates said.

The bill — — was signed 25 days after a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd in May 2020. It tackled body cameras and the use of force in a bipartisan fashion, representing one of the first major policy responses undertaken anywhere in the country after the tragedy and amid mass protests in Denver and elsewhere.

While police reform efforts weren’t new, Floyd’s death provided a critical intersection of a movement meeting a moment. Previous reform efforts had stuttered. Sen. James Coleman, a Denver Democrat who was in the House when the bill passed, said the protests and public awareness opened doors to deeper conversations about alternative policing, accountability and de-escalation. Democrats who sponsored the bill were able to gain Republican support, and major law enforcement groups were either involved in its drafting or offered little resistance.

“217 had to pass in that moment,” Herod said. “We had not been able to make very much progress in the movement, so that needed to happen.”

None of the law enforcement leaders with the Colorado Association of Chiefs of Police, the Colorado Fraternal Order of Police or the County Sheriffs of Colorado agreed to be interviewed for this story. The organizations instead sent a joint statement saying officers remained focused on their jobs “at a time of unprecedented staffing challenges and increasing violent crime.”

Tom Raynes, the executive director of the Colorado District Attorneys Council and a former prosecutor, praised the bill’s requirements around body cameras and use of force. He, like others, said the bill has been a springboard for efforts in subsequent years.

“There were a lot of positives out of 217 that kind of shaped where things have moved forward from that point,” Raynes said. “In the last three years, I would really put Colorado as one of the top five states in terms of ongoing, substantive criminal justice reform legislation.”

Some of the loss of momentum on criminal justice reform is the natural flow of movements, lawmakers and advocates said. Election fears around crime rates and recent reform legislation sparked concern among Democrats last year. But those fears were unfounded, lawmakers said: Colorado Democrats soared to historic wins in November.

But some of the lull, too, is a tension between the broader criminal justice reform movement versus a moment of intense interest spurred by the murder of Floyd, those lawmakers said, and the work required to maintain momentum amid backlash to what passed and resistance to what����ap proposed next.

Rep. Jennifer Bacon, a Denver Democrat who was elected in November 2020 and has worked on a slew of criminal justice reform bills, said it still took Floyd dying on camera to spark the bill’s passage. SB20-217 serves as an “anchor,” she said, for more reform, like limitations on lying to children during police interrogations and .

“It����ap not one and done,” Bacon said of SB20-217. The fact that the bill hasn’t been rolled back shows the durability of the moment, she said. “But then on the movement side, we can build upon it. But it����ap hard.”

Impact

Several parts of the bill have already made tangible impacts in Colorado:

• At least two police officers have been convicted of failing to intervene in another officer’s excessive use of force, which was a crime created under SB20-217
• Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser has used new powers granted to his office to investigate the Aurora Police Department����ap patterns and practices and require the agency to make reforms
• The Colorado Peace Officer Standards and Training Board of all officers in the state who have lied, been de-certified, been the subject of a criminal investigation or fired for cause
• All agencies completed training on new, stricter use-of-force laws

Through SB20-217, Colorado became the first state to eliminate qualified immunity for police officers. Qualified immunity is a legal defense that states some government officials — including law enforcement — cannot be sued in their individual capacity unless they violated a person’s rights in a manner already determined unconstitutional by the courts.

One of the most controversial sections of the bill allows local governments to decide whether an officer should have to pay up to $25,000 of a settlement or judgment from a lawsuit if the officer acted in bad faith or should have known the action was unlawful. The law change sparked conversations about officers enrolling in insurance programs to shield them from financial liability.

Law enforcement leaders have often cited the changes to qualified immunity and indemnification as reasons they have struggled to recruit and retain officers.

Despite the fear around financial liability, that part of the law hasn’t been utilized yet. No Colorado law enforcement associations or organizations representing local governments were aware of a case where a government decided to make an officer pay.

The number of certified officers leaving positions in Colorado did increase after 2020, according to employment data collected by the Peace Officers Standards and Training Board. Between 2020 and 2013, an average of 1,876 officers left their positions – up from an average of 1,646 in the previous three years.

A survey of 232 officers released in 2022 found that concerns about SB20-217 and other legislative changes were the top reason for officers leaving their jobs.

Paul Pazen, who was Denver police chief from 2018 to 2022, said the bill may not have been the sole reason officers left, but it was a contributing factor. Criticism of police from elected leaders and calls to defund or abolish the department also hurt morale, he said. Officers outside of Colorado are hesitant to move here and lose qualified immunity, he said, and officers already here are taking jobs elsewhere.

SB20-217 was crafted and passed too quickly, he said.

“If doing what Colorado did was such a great idea, why didn’t it catch on?” Pazen said.

While dozens of other state legislatures have considered bills to end or limit the qualified immunity defense for police officers, few have passed. Only New Mexico and Connecticut have passed laws limiting the use of the legal defense, and those laws are not as far-reaching as Colorado’s.

Sen. Bob Gardner, a Colorado Springs Republican who voted for the bill and , also cast the bill as negatively affecting police recruitment. He said the bill was “very much a product of that moment,” meaning its proximity to Floyd’s death, and that he doesn’t think the law would have passed as it had otherwise.

He said he “wasn’t sure I can answer” when asked if he’d vote for it again now. He worked on the bill and supported it so his voice — and that of other Republicans — were included. The discussions around the drafting of the bill, Gardner said, were the toughest he’s had over the 15 sessions he’s spent at the Capitol.

“At this place, at this time, at this moment and in good faith discussions with my co-sponsors, this is what we needed to do,” he said.

Bacon said the finger shouldn’t be pointed at reform-minded lawmakers and advocates responding to a pattern of behavior. The suggestion, she said, just “confirms that we have a problem.”

“When you see a man kill a man on camera and the whole world sees it, (police) did that,” she said of a negative public perception of law enforcement. “That����ap no one else’s fault. And they have to come to terms with that.”

This is the tension of movement versus moment, she said: Yes, SB20-217 passed just weeks after Floyd’s death beneath the knee of a Minneapolis police officer. But that doesn’t mean it was a reaction to one incident, Bacon said. Suggesting otherwise is an attempt to reduce a years-long movement to a singular, tragedy-driven burst.

“It has been a decade of talking about the tolerance of the brutality toward our bodies,” Bacon said. “What happened was not a moment. And what 217 is not is a knee-jerk reaction. It was things that people have been fighting for for decades.”

Trusting footage

The full impacts of the most tangible change — and the most expensive — are yet to be seen. While many agencies in the state, including the Denver Police Department, already had body cameras, many did not. Large agencies such as the Colorado State Patrol, the Lakewood Police Department and the Adams County Sheriff’s Office did not use the cameras until after the passage of SB20-217.

The state of Colorado awarded more than $4.9 million to law enforcement agencies across the state to help them purchase body cameras and storage to comply with the mandate, according to data from the Colorado Department of Public Safety.

It����ap unclear whether all 237 agencies in the state have complied, however, because nobody in the state government was tasked with enforcing the mandate.

The ubiquity of body cameras — and guidance around when and how footage is released — has been critical, lawmakers said. Herod, one of the bill’s sponsors, said the equipment has allowed for people to get justice that previously wasn’t available. Earlier this month, for instance, the Loveland Police Department released footage showing a now-fired officer hitting a 59-year-old woman who’d been taken to the hospital for evaluation,

The deadlines mandating the release of body camera footage within 21 days has also forced change within departments. The Aurora Police Department released footage of an officer fatally shooting 14-year-old Jor’Dell Richardson seven days after the June 1 shooting. After Elijah McClain died in the custody of Aurora police and paramedics, the city waited nearly three months to release footage of the violent arrest.

The availability of body-cam footage can also contradict law enforcement descriptions of incidents and refute standard narratives that are often driven by racial bias, lawmakers said. For example, one day after a Clear Creek County Sheriff’s Office deputy shot and killed 21-year-old Christian Glass, the agency issued a news release characterizing Glass as “argumentative and uncooperative,” while claiming that law enforcement officers did everything they could to help him. Body camera footage released later contradicted the account.

The final piece of SB20-217 yet to become public is the result of mandated data collection. The law requires every department in the state to collect data on all uses of force where an officer seriously injures or kills someone; data on all instances where an officer resigned while under internal investigation; and detailed data on all law enforcement contacts.

The data will for the first time offer statewide insights on the demographics of people being injured by police as well as detailed data on who police are stopping and the outcomes of those contacts. Previously, comprehensive and accurate information about even fatal police shootings in Colorado was nonexistent.

The new data will fill a “huge gap,” said Taylor Pendergrass, director of advocacy and strategic alliances at the ACLU of Colorado.

“There just is no real way to identify patterns of systemic racial bias or to answer even questions as simple as how are police officers spending their time,” he said. “Without data, there’s just no way for the public and, to an extent, for the police chiefs to know how their departments are operating and where there might be red flags and problems that need to be addressed.”

The Colorado Department of Public Safety plans to compile that data and release a report by the end of July, spokeswoman Paula Vargas said.

Despite the reforms in SB20-217, the number of people killed by police in Colorado every year has not changed. Police shot and killed 36 people in 2019 and 42 in 2020, according to the Washington Post����ap database of fatal shootings. Colorado law enforcement shot and killed 41 people in 2021 and 40 in 2022.

Momentum

SB20-217 was a sweeping accountability measure and notable victory after other reform efforts had stalled or been shelved, including in the months before SB20-217 passed. But lawmakers maintain it����ap not enough, and the legislature has considered dozens of other policy changes in the years since, including setting aside millions in grants for law enforcement and bumping the Department of Corrections’ budget toward $1 billion.

“I feel like we’re never doing enough. That����ap just where I’m at,” said Coleman, the Democratic senator. “… I don’t feel like we’re doing enough when it comes to preventative measures. We’re 50th. We’re 50 out of 50 (states, in terms of criminal justice reform). We’re not No. 1, we’re not No. 2, we’re not No. 3. We’re at the end. That����ap not true, I know it, but that’s how I feel. Because there’s still people hurting.”

Herod, the House Democrat who co-sponsored SB20-217, said reform-minded lawmakers and their allies are in a more “defensive” posture now. The law enforcement lobby has regained its footing after 2020, lawmakers and advocates have said.

In some cases, legislators have changed their tactics. In 2022, a bill to limit police lying to children during interrogations died amid law enforcement opposition. This year, Bacon and other lawmakers brought it back, but with a key rhetorical change: They framed the bill not as a response to lying police but as a way to build trust between law enforcement and communities. This time, the bill passed.

But sometimes even changing tactics hasn’t been enough. Coleman said Democrats broadly hadn’t unified around a criminal justice reform platform. One of his bills this year — to limit arrests of kids under 13 — stalled in the state Senate, despite Coleman and his fellow Democratic sponsor, Rep. Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez, securing two conservative co-sponsors.

Police chiefs came out hard against the bill: Led by interim Aurora Chief Art Acevedo, they held a news conference in the Capitol in the waning days of the session and warned that the bill would empower crime lords to dispatch armed kids onto Colorado’s streets. Coleman said he’d never seen so many police and district attorneys outside the Senate chamber.

“I know that they’re powerful, I’ll say that,” he said of the law enforcement lobby. “I know they have a lot of power and influence.”

In the wake of the 2020 protests, that lobby’s influence “took a shot” in the Capitol, said Raynes, of the district attorneys council. But that’s changed, he and lawmakers said. He told The Denver Post last year that “elections, crime rate, the drug crisis of fentanyl” had combined to “foster a more balanced analysis and decision-making process.” He said this time around that a more “collaborative” approach had helped rebuild trust in the legislature.

After extensive lobbying, Coleman’s juvenile arrest bill was gutted of its core goal — raising the age of arrest — and turned into a study, plus money for social services.

Raynes pushed back on the idea that reform efforts have hit a lull. This past session, he said, lawmakers passed bills to limit no-knock warrants and to codify Miranda rights into state law, plus ongoing work around reclassifying felonies and bail reform. He lamented the end of the Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice, which has worked on reform bills and was allowed to expire by legislators in May.

Sen. Rhonda Fields, an Aurora Democrat who also co-sponsored the reform bill three years ago, agreed and said she thought reform efforts had become more calculated, rather than defensive. She sponsored the no-knock measure signed into law this year and said it was a direct result of SB20-217’s passage. More collaboration and deliberation isn’t a loss, she said.

“There’s been a lot of momentum since George Floyd, I don’t think it����ap waned at all,” Raynes said. “We expanded post-conviction DNA testing this year. There’s a lot of stuff going on. I really don’t see the momentum slowing. So we’ll see — this session (in 2024) may be different because people… either get very aggressive or very tentative because it����ap an election year.”

Pazen urged more transparency and accountability for other parts of the criminal legal system: judges, prosecutors and prisons. If police officers who make split-second decisions in the field can no longer use qualified immunity as a defense, neither should other government officials who generally have more time to make decisions, he said.

Christie Donner, the executive director of the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition, said she had more support for certain prison reforms 24 years ago than she does now, and she called the legislature’s broader position “schizophrenic.” That����ap perhaps most evident when it comes to drug policy: The House this year passed a bill to allow safe drug-use sites to open. The Senate passed a bill to tighten criminal penalties on drug dealers. The bills passed their respective chambers and then died when they crossed over.

Bacon said she wouldn’t call it “schizophrenic” but agreed that Democratic lawmakers weren’t unified on a criminal justice strategy. Achieving that and maintaining momentum is the work now, she and others said. It shouldn’t take the loss of a human life to foster change.

“The success of 217 is we have a starting place,” Bacon said. “We can’t go backward now.”

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Decision Denver 2023

The Denver Post will be diving deep into key issues facing the city’s top elected leaders in the runup to the pivotal April election. In the coming weeks, The Post will examine crime, homelessness, housing and the future of downtown while providing insight into how each of the 17 candidates for Denver mayor intend to deal with each issue. Read more Denver Post election coverage.

The 17 people vying to be Denver’s next mayor agree on one thing: The city feels less safe than it did the last time there was an open race for its top leader 12 years ago.

Crime data proves that to be true. Denver, like many large U.S. cities, has experienced a spike in homicides and gun violence as well as overdose deaths since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Questions about crime and public safety have been central for the 17 candidates running to succeed Mayor Michael Hancock as the leader of the state’s largest city.

Twelve of the candidates use the word “safe” in their campaign slogans or name safety as a key issue in their platforms. Several have released detailed public safety platforms with solutions ranging from adding 400 more police officers to expanding non-police responses to 911 calls.

“Public safety has come to the forefront because Denver and the state of Colorado used to be remarkably safe,” said former Denver police Chief Paul Pazen, who retired in October. “Now, we see some things we don’t like. We see teenagers getting shot outside of high schools. Murder rates are higher than they had been.”

RELATED: Read every Denver mayoral candidate’s take on how they would handle crime and pubic safety if elected

Since Hancock took office in 2011:

• Denver’s homicide rate nearly doubled, from 7.1 per 100,000 residents to 12.4 homicides per 100,000 residents — though it fell in 2022 for the first time since 2018. Homicide rates in Denver remain significantly lower than those recorded in the early 1990s.
• The per-capita rate of motor vehicle theft has more than tripled and the rate of aggravated assaults has nearly doubled
• The rates of some crimes — like robbery and burglary — have remained relatively level
• The rate of drug deaths also has nearly doubled, from 36 deaths per 100,000 residents to 60 deaths per 100,000 residents

Civic leaders, community advocates and the candidates themselves agree the next mayor needs a bold vision to confront crime and policing in Denver. But there’s no consensus on how to do so.

“What we’re looking for in a mayor is someone who is creative, who doesn’t take the lazy approach, which is to delegate every public safety issue to law enforcement,” said Robert Davis, project coordinator for the .

The mayor’s influence on public safety lies in their power to appoint, budget and lobby. The mayor has the power to hire and fire the city’s police chief, sheriff and director of public safety, and decides how much money each of their departments should receive. The mayor appoints Denver County Court judges as well.

The mayor also has the power to veto or approve City Council proposals and sway lawmakers at the state Capitol.

“Typically, the (Denver) mayor has an outsized voice in the state of Colorado,” Pazen said. “A mayor in this city can influence the entire state and lead the way in many of the significant challenges we are facing.”

Several of the candidates have direct experience with Denver’s public safety system:

• Al Gardner chaired the and serves on the , which oversees police and fire department hiring and promotions as well as hears disciplinary appeals
• Councilwoman Debbie Ortega served on the and her daughter is a major in the
• Kelly Brough worked on policy as chief of staff to Mayor John Hickenlooper and served on the Denver Civil Service Commission
• Rep. Leslie Herod sat on the and has passed numerous bills related to policing and public safety, including the landmark 2020 policing reform bill SB-217
• Lisa Calderón spent decades pushing for change in Denver’s legal system, taught university classes on criminal justice, worked as a victim advocate for domestic violence survivors and led a project helping people reintegrate into society after incarceration
• Terrance Roberts was a Bloods gang member and spent years in prison before leaving the gang and becoming an advocate for violence prevention and police reform

The April mayoral election is the first since massive protests in 2020 calling for reform — or abolition — of the .

Thousands of Denverites took to the streets in the wake of the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. The protests prompted conversations here and nationwide about the use of force, alternatives to policing and accountability.

While the protests prompted some change in Denver, the next mayor should consider more reform, advocates said.

The next mayor must creatively reassign duties from the police department to other city agencies or community organizations, said Davis, the task force leader. The , or STAR, program — which sends a clinician and paramedics to some 911 calls instead of police — is a great model that should be expanded and replicated, he said.

“I don’t think the mayor’s job is to re-establish trust between community and law enforcement… it����ap the mayor’s job to minimize interaction between law enforcement and community,” he said.

The next mayor also needs to take seriously the put forth by the task force after the 2020 protests, Davis said. Seventy-six of those recommendations were directed at the mayor’s office but, overall, the Hancock administration has slow-walked the implementation of the recommendations, Davis said.

Some of the recommendations for the mayor’s office include prohibiting the use of handcuffs on minors, creating a civilian review commission that has the power to discipline law enforcement, and requiring the police and sheriff’s departments to pay for misconduct settlements out of their own budgets instead of from the city’s general fund.

“We’d get bogged down if we went through each and every one they didn’t fulfill,” he said.

The mayor must remember that crime is rooted in deeper social ills, like lack of affordable housing, lack of opportunity and substance use, said Julia Richman, chair of the Citizen Oversight Board.

“It����ap just not more cops on the beat,” she said. “We want community-led solutions.”

Size of Denver’s police force

But more cops on the beat are exactly what some candidates and residents think is needed. One candidate, Andy Rougeot, promised to add 400 new officers to the streets.

Pazen said the department needs more police officers, but those officers should be carefully deployed to prevent over-policing and maximize crime prevention.

“It����ap not just a raw number increase equals a decrease in crime,” he said.

During Hancock’s administration, the authorized strength of the Denver Police Department increased by 10% — from 1,445 to 1,596 — as the city’s population increased by 14%.

Clearance rates for violent crimes have remained steady during that time, . But the proportion of property crimes solved has fluctuated. Denver police in 2011 cleared 8% of property crime cases and grew that number to 20% by 2014.

But the percentage of cases cleared has fallen every year since. In 2021, Denver police once again cleared only 8% of property crime cases.

The number of positions at the Denver Police Department is similar to or more than the number of budgeted officers in other departments in similar-sized cities. This year, the funded approximately 1,300 positions and the budgeted for 1,608.

Currently, 1,448 of Denver’s 1,596 officer positions are filled and 70 recruits are in the academy, according to Denver police.

In his 2023 budget, Hancock allocated $611 million to the Department of Public Safety — a 33% increase from the $461 million allotted to the department . The city in 2021 temporarily decreased the public safety budget in anticipation of a pandemic-fueled financial crisis — not as a result of protesters’ demands to defund police — and restored and increased the department’s funding in 2022.

Kourtny Garrett, president and CEO of the , said she’d love to see an analysis of the department’s staffing and whether it’s enough to address the city’s needs.

Adding more officer positions won’t matter if the city can’t find enough qualified applicants, Richman said. The city has struggled to recruit and retain officers and has had dozens of vacancies over the last few years.

“A very holistic approach”

The city should consider using the savings from unfilled police and sheriff’s positions to pay for social services, record expungement or non-police response programs like STAR, Richman said.

Regardless of staffing, the next mayor needs to help restore a sense of safety downtown by coordinating police and social service response, Garrett said. There are two separate issues happening downtown that require separate responses: an increase in some crimes and homelessness, she said.

The perception of a lack of safety downtown is driven by visible substance use and mental health crises, she said. The next mayor will have to be creative in finding compassionate solutions for those people, Garrett said.

That’s going to be the next mayor’s biggest challenge, said Carol Peeples, director of , a nonprofit that helps people leaving jail and prison find resources to reintegrate.

The next mayor must come up with a solution for the people who are unhoused, deeply mentally ill, addicted to drugs, unstable and dangerous. Many of those people have been kicked out of the city’s shelter programs and cannot meaningfully engage with service providers, she said.

“We need a mayor who will come in with a very holistic approach,” Garrett said.

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He had just returned to his hometown after completing five years serving in the U.S. Marine Corps during the Gulf War. When the department hired him, he set his aspirations on becoming a patrol sergeant, which seemed like the best job in the world.

“My goals were pretty simple,” he said. “I’ve been very fortunate along the way — through mentors and support — to achieve levels that I’m very thankful for.”

Twenty-seven years later, Pazen will retire from the department on Saturday after serving as its chief for four years and steering the department through what he called “the perfect horrible storm.” Beginning in 2020, the department weathered a deepening political divide, a global pandemic, the economic uncertainty that followed, and massive protests of police brutality that took over downtown Denver for days. Violence swelled in the city as the pandemic waned — the city in 2021 recorded its highest homicide rate since 2004 — as Pazen’s ranks of officers shrank.

The department had dealt with such problems previously, he said.

“But no generation of police officers or police departments had to go through all of them at the same time,” Pazen said.

The job had a pronounced impact on him, he said. Pazen said he and his family had planned for an Oct. 15 retirement for a long time. He’s looking forward to spending more time with them and relaxing.

“You do absorb some of that trauma, whether it’s crime victims or even what we saw in 2020,” he said. “I think to do this job right it does take someone who pours their heart and soul into this work and who does absorb some of that.”

Pazen said he does not have another job immediately lined up and that he is evaluating his next steps. He wouldn’t say whether he planned to run for Denver mayor.

“I just want to have a big impact on our community,” he said when asked if he planned to run for mayor. “I just want to help in any way possible, whether it’s being the face of something or doing things in the background. What has the greatest impact is what excites me the most. I know that’s a dodgy answer.”

He listed his greatest accomplishments as expanding the department’s co-responder model — which pairs an officer with a mental health professional — from four to 40 teams, which now operate 24/7 across the city. He also touted the department’s work in helping create the Support Team Assisted Response team, which sends paramedics and behavioral health professionals instead of police to some 911 calls. The department also drew national attention for solving more non-fatal shootings by creating a team that specializes in those investigations.

The department drew national attention in negative ways as well.

People injured by police during the 2020 racial justice demonstrations have filed at least a dozen lawsuits against the department alleging officers used excessive force against them. A federal jury awarded $14 million to 12 protesters injured by police in one of those lawsuits. The city’s police watchdog lambasted the department’s response to the protests and officers inside the department chalked up some of the injuries incurred by officers and protesters to “leadership failure.”

Some of the most difficult days of his career came during the protests as public perception of officers shifted from valued essential workers dealing with COVID-19 to villains, he said.

“In an instant, we went from hero to zero and were vilified as a profession,” he said.

The department also faced public outrage after police officers on July 17 opened fire on an armed suspect in a busy nightlife district downtown and injured six innocent bystanders, some of whom suffered serious gunshot wounds.

The announcement of his departure was met with mixed responses. Some city and community leaders thanked him for his service while others said he took the police department backward.

“We did a lot of good and I’m going to try to focus on the positive stuff,” Pazen said. “Yes, there are challenges and, yes, you can always learn from responses and ways to do things better moving forward. But overall, we were dealing with multiple complex issues that I don’t think we ever could’ve conceived.”

Pazen said he was thrilled Mayor Michael Hancock selected Ron Thomas to become the next chief. Thomas took over day-to-day operations of the department in September.

“Whatever the next step is I want to help make a positive impact on the issues that we’re facing,” he said of his future. “Public safety is such an integral part of it. Public safety is foundational, as Maslov’s hierarchy of needs points out.”

Division Chief Ron Thomas this week effectively took over leadership of the department from retiring Chief Paul Pazen as the agency struggles with recruitment and retention, rising violent crime, increasing response times, and faltering public trust that Thomas said was at a “low point.”

Thomas committed to addressing the problems at a news conference Thursday introducing him as Denver’s new police chief.

“I am a man of very few words,” he said. “I do believe that actions speak louder than words.”

Mayor Michael Hancock thanked Pazen for his decades with the department and his leadership during his four-year stint as chief. Hancock said Pazen made the decision to retire and that he did not ask Pazen to step down. Pazen will be eligible for full retirement benefits on Oct. 15 and will use paid time off until then, Hancock said.

“We’ve been in the foxhole on some unprecedented times and issues, including the pandemic, the unprecedented social justice efforts and protests that occurred in our city and around the region,” Hancock said.

Hancock said Pazen, who didn’t attend Thursday’s news conference, was on a previously scheduled vacation. The mayor said he learned of Pazen’s plans to retire on Tuesday.

Pazen has not publicly spoken about his decision to step down aside from a quote in a city news release Wednesday. He did not return a call or email for comment Thursday.

Thomas said he effectively took control of the department Tuesday, though he will not officially become chief until Pazen retires Oct. 15 and he is confirmed by the City Council.

Hancock said Thomas’s priorities under his administration will be reducing crime, improving recruitment and retention, and rebuilding community relationships — especially in communities of color.

“We have 300-plus days to make this the model city in the nation on how to restore trust in the community,” said the term-limited Hancock, who will leave office next summer.

Thomas graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School and worked as a Denver police cadet before joining the police department in 1989. He then worked in nearly every division of the agency, including investigations, patrol, special operations and internal affairs.

Before becoming head of the patrol division in 2018, Thomas helmed Police Districts 2 and 5 as commander. District 2 covers a swath of central Denver, including Park Hill, City Park, Congress Park, Cole and parts of Five Points. District 5 covers the far northeast neighborhoods of Central Park, Montbello and Green Valley Ranch.

Community leaders in Montbello said they were thrilled to hear about Thomas getting the top job. Thomas was a reliable presence at community meetings and events, they said. He may not be the loudest voice in the room, but residents and organizers knew that if you invited Ron Thomas, he’d be there.

“He has a stoic look to him, but once you start having conversations and interacting with him, he’s very open,” said Latoya Petty, director of partnerships and collaboration with the Montbello Organizing Committee.

She recalled long talks she had with Thomas about everything from police culture and the Black Lives Matter movement to gang violence and innovative approaches to getting guns off the streets.

“He’s definitely someone who’s willing to work toward a person-first approach to policing instead of a systems-first approach,” Petty said. “That’s an awesome quality that he has.”

Thomas always seemed willing to break down issues into language that ordinary citizens could understand, said Dianne Cooks, who runs Families Against Violent Acts, a Montbello nonprofit organization. If someone requested more information about robberies or other types of crimes, she said, Thomas would always follow up.

“He brought the community and the police department a lot closer when he was commander out here in Montbello,” she said.

That’s one of the reasons Hancock nominated Thomas to be chief.

“When you see community gatherings on the issue of safety… you see Chief Thomas there listening, building bridges,” Hancock said. “He’s everywhere.”

With his mayoral term coming to an end in July, Hancock said he didn’t have time to conduct a lengthy search for a new chief. Thomas’s name was the first one out of every person’s mouth when he asked his staff and advisers who should become chief, Hancock said.

Thomas needs to focus on the tasks left undone by Pazen and prepare the department for the mayoral administration change in 2023, said Lisa Calderón, a longtime city activist who worked with Thomas on a project examining racial profiling data.

Thomas never seemed motivated by internal politics, she said. That’s a good qualification for a chief — it allows them to put the politics aside and work, she said.

“He’s an even-keeled guy who is open to feedback,” Calderón said. “I’ve seen him in meetings where the community has been very frustrated and angry with DPD and he never lost his cool — he took in the feedback.”

Thomas wasn’t afraid to hold other cops accountable during his time as a lieutenant and commander in the Internal Affairs Bureau, said Nick Mitchell, who worked as the city’s independent monitor from 2012 to 2021. Thomas was willing to take criticism and use it to improve the bureau.

“When he has something to say, people stop and take notice because it����ap always thoughtful and careful and factual,” Mitchell said.

Pazen’s decision to retire gives the department a chance to create new approaches to the city’s most difficult problems, like homelessness and addiction, said Al Gardner, immediate past chair of the Citizen Oversight Board.

“(Pazen) was bogged down and overwhelmed with the issues,” he said. “We need the new chief not to be stuck in the issues but have new ideas and a growth mindset.”

Thomas was not specific when asked about his plans to restore community trust and improve recruitment, but said he will make changes.

He gave a 13-word answer when asked what he wants the department to be in two years.

“I want this department to be what the people want it to be,” he said.

Staff writer Sam Tabachnik contributed to this report. 

Mayor Michael Hancock nominated Division Chief Ron Thomas to succeed Pazen, and Thomas will take over day-to-day management of the department as acting chief on Tuesday.

Pazen spent 28 years rising through the ranks of the department and Hancock appointed him chief in June 2018. He was the city’s second Latino chief and joined the department in 1995 after serving in the U.S. Marine Corps.

During his tenure overseeing the 1,500-officer agency, Pazen steered the department through the COVID-19 pandemic and advocated for initiatives that provide alternatives to police response, like the STAR program.

In the past two years, he led the agency as the city’s violent crime skyrocketed and the department struggled to maintain full staffing.

“It����ap been an honor to serve the people of this city, and I couldn’t be prouder to have done it alongside these dedicated women and men of the department who’ve answered the call to protect the residents of Denver no matter the circumstance,” Pazen said in a news release Wednesday. “It����ap important to me that the next police chief take the reins at this time so the department and our officers are well positioned for the future of policing in our community.”

The departure follows a July 17 police shooting during which Denver officers opened fire on an armed suspect in a busy nightlife district downtown and injured six innocent bystanders, some of whom suffered serious gunshot wounds.

Pazen also led the department as it reacted to massive racial justice protests in 2020, during which thousands of people marched through central Denver. The city’s police watchdog lambasted the department for using tear gas and pepper balls on peaceful protesters, mismanaging internal communications and failing to properly document officers’ actions and assignments.

Officers inside the department chalked up some of the injuries incurred by officers and protesters to “leadership failure.”

Injured protesters have filed at least a dozen lawsuits against the department over officers’ actions that summer and the city will have to pay $14 million to protesters injured by police after losing a jury trial in one of those lawsuits.

Pazen, through a spokesman, declined an interview Wednesday.

“Chief Pazen has had a distinguished career with the Denver Police Department, and over his nearly three decades in law enforcement, he has served the residents of our city at nearly every level of the department, including its highest rank, with integrity and a community-focused approach to policing,” Hancock said in a news release. “I want to thank Chief Pazen for answering the call to serve, and for his leadership of our community’s police department during these difficult past few years in the life of our city and our country.”

Pazen’s departure comes as Hancock’s time as mayor nears an end. Hancock is term-limited and will leave office in July, prompting a series of high-level city officials to find new jobs. The next mayor likely will conduct their own search for a new chief.

“It’s typical when a mayor is term-limited and people start looking for work,” Denver City Councilman Kevin Flynn said.

Hancock chose Thomas, who oversees patrol operations, to be the city’s next police chief, pending City Council approval. Like Pazen, Thomas has spent his career rising through the department’s ranks. He joined the department in 1989 and is a regular fixture at community events and meetings.

Pazen’s retirement nearly a year before the end of Hancock’s final term surprised some and elicited mixed reactions from members of the City Council and the community.

The timing of Pazen’s retirement surprised Dr. Robert Davis, , but he said a change in leadership was necessary for the city to move forward. The department lost more of the community’s trust under Pazen’s leadership, he said.

“His tenure took us backward in every way,” Davis said.

Although Pazen gave “lip service” in support of community-driven reform ideas, he didn’t embrace any of the meaningful changes recommended by the task force and instead distanced himself from them, Davis said.

“I hope that a new chief will sit down with the community and think through how public safety should look in the 2020s,” Davis said.

Councilwoman Candi CdeBaca called Pazen’s early departure a gift and said his time as chief was marked by problems.

“His time in leadership is really characterized by failure on many accounts, and that failure is evidenced by not only the amount of settlements and payouts that we’ve made, trials we’ve lost, police mass shootings that we’ve witnessed, but also the lack of accountability that we’ve seen for any of it,” she said.

Others lauded Pazen for his work leading the department during tumultuous years.

“I very much appreciated his methodical approach to policing, his use of data, his knowledge and his research into the causes of crime, especially with the rising crime rate we’re seeing nationwide,” Flynn said.

Denver District Attorney Beth McCann said Pazen was a dedicated public servant who helped launch innovative programs, like the STAR program and another that allows police officers to divert people from the criminal justice system.

“He was committed to improving relationships between the police and the community,” she said in a statement.

Councilwoman Robin Kniech said she hopes Pazen’s replacement will be clear-eyed about the problems facing the Denver Police Department.

“We have to acknowledge that work needs to be done, full stop,” she said. “…I’m looking for leadership that acknowledges these deep challenges and doesn’t try to average them out with the good stuff, that is willing to stare at them head on and really focus on them.”