When Denver City Councilman Paul Lopez was 17 years old, he jumped the fence around a city swimming pool and ended up with a ticket for civil disobedience.

While disclosing that kind of “record” might not disqualify him from being hired for a city and county job – if he wasn’t an elected official – most city job applications have not required those with arrest or conviction records to show that history upfront since the first of August.

The City Council Finance and Governance Committee was recently presented with information about Denver quietly joining the “Ban the Box” movement that grew out of President Obama’s executive order earlier this year. The criminal or arrest record question was removed from city job applications, so that information is not available as a screening tool for hiring managers or recruiters.

Cindy Bishop, director of talent acquisition in the city’s Office of Human Resources, said requiring job applicants to show their arrest or conviction records “creates an immediate bias” when potential employers see it on an application.

Mayor Michael Hancock talked about Denver joining more than 100 U.S. cities and counties that have adopted policies, ordinances or executive orders to remove the disclosure requirement from job applications in his State of the City address in July.

Bishop said specific exceptions are some jobs for Denver’s Department of Public Safety, district attorney’s office and Office of Emergency Management.

“Those specific job requirements allow a criminal record to disqualify someone and we tell that to applicants up front,” she told the committee.

If an applicant makes it to a certain point in the job consideration process, a criminal background check is conducted, Bishop added, so the city still potentially accesses that information. However, she pointed out that disqualifying someone with a record that has nothing to do with that job’s duties solely for that reason is discrimination.

So far this year, Denver has filled more than 3,100 openings, and the “Ban the Box” policy was instituted Aug. 1, when Hancock amended an executive order on criminal background checks, Bishop added. Employment offers are not made until an applicant passes that background check. With about 1,000 open positions now, the city has not seen an increase in job applicants failing background checks, something that was potentially expected, she said.

“We pay a lot of lip service to creating opportunities and helping people establish themselves,” said Councilman Kevin Flynn. “This is a good step forward.”

Lopez, who offered the information about his civil disobedience ticket, said the “Ban the Box” movement helps eliminate a discriminatory filter in the hiring process “that is absolutely abused.”

“I’m so proud of our city,” City Council President Albus Brooks said.