City officials have suspended a new approach to deputy discipline at the Denver Sheriff Department that had shifted some disciplinary matters away from independent investigation — a move that comes after months of pushback from police oversight groups.
Denver Department of Public Safety Executive Director Al Gardner paused the new approach, which he put in place in late May, to give the Office of the Independent Monitor time to review the changes, meet with city officials and make recommendations for how discipline should be handled, he wrote in a pair of letters to the independent monitor and to the sheriff’s department on Friday.
“I want to be clear and upfront with you all that I am not rescinding the directive,” Gardner wrote in the letter to the sheriff’s department. “Furthermore, this pause is not a reflection that the original purpose of the directive, or its importance, has changed. Rather, it is an opportunity for the Department of Public Safety and the Denver Sheriff Department to work collaboratively with the Office of Independent Monitor to ensure recommendations are provided. We intend to lift the pause as quickly as the review process allows.”
Gardner in May unilaterally changed the sheriff’s disciplinary process in a four-page directive that exempted at least 14 types of policy violations from default investigation by the city’s Public Integrity Division, a civilian unit created in 2019 to investigate internal affairs complaints and policy violations for the sheriff department after a pair of outside reviews found significant problems with the sheriff department’s internal affairs processes.
Sheriff Elias Diggins said in May that the new approach was intended to empower first-line supervisors to handle minor disciplinary issues in order to avoid unnecessary internal affairs investigations. He hoped the change would improve morale, retention and hiring.
He said Wednesday that the effort was well-received in the sheriff’s department during the two months in which the changes were active and that he is “cautiously optimistic” the directive will be reinstated.
“I support Gardner’s decision and look forward to working with the monitor to hear her thoughts and continue to move our department forward in a way that best serves the sworn members of our agency and the people that we’re called to protect,” Diggins said.
The directive initially raised alarm among the city’s police oversight groups both because it shifted some discipline back into the sheriff’s department and away from civilian oversight, and because Gardner did not take time to hear feedback from the Office of Independent Monitor before making the change — a process required by city ordinance.
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Rufina Hernández, chair of Denver’s Citizen Oversight Board, said Wednesday that pausing the directive is a step in the right direction.
“We consider this pause as an important and encouraging step in the spirit of transparency for policy changes made to the discipline process of the sheriff’s department,” she said, “and we sincerely appreciate that the mayor and Department of Safety heard the concerns raised by the community, the Office of Independent Monitor and the Citizen Oversight Board and responded accordingly.”
Gardner invited Independent Monitor Lisabeth Pérez Castle to a series of meetings to discuss both the directive itself and how to build a “more collaborative process for future policy development,” according to the letter he sent to her office.
A spokesman for the Department of Safety, Brent Weisberg, declined to offer further comment.
“The Department of Public Safety continues to believe there is value in empowering supervisors to quickly address appropriate low-level performance issues through documented coaching and corrective action, while still preserving formal investigations for serious policy violations and conduct that requires independent review,” Gardner wrote in the letter. “I also recognize that any lasting reform must be developed in a manner that inspires confidence among our oversight authorities and the communities we jointly serve.”
Pérez Castle said Wednesday that she is looking forward to working with public safety officials to address “issues of concern.” The letters did not lay out a concrete timeline for the review.
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