The Citizen Oversight Board, which assesses how effectively the Office of the Independent Monitor is performing its duties, presented its annual report to Denver City Council’s Safety, Housing, Education and Homeless Committee on Wednesday morning.

Board Chair Julia Richman outlined the board’s 2021 assessment of the independent monitor, changes and concerns it saw throughout public safety in 2021, policies from the Public Integrity Division the board wants to prioritize as well as recommendations for the future.

Richman highlighted the addition of a formal database for processing disciplinary actions and complaints for the Public Integrity Division to use. Before, processes were very informal and not well tracked, she said.

“Being able to have all of these complaints in a single-source system creates not only good data and information for constituents in the city to understand how things are going, but also allows the OIM to have better oversight over the processes there,” Richman said.

Some of the primary concerns Richman presented from community feedback include conditions relating to quality of food service, medical treatment and living conditions for those in custody of the Sheriff’s Office, something she said has been at the top of everyone’s mind with a recent inmate death. She said the board also wants to see improved transparency around Denver Health’s relationship with the Sheriff’s Office.

Richman also said the board wants to see jail-specific dangers of destabilization addressed and ensure inmates can continue consulting with preexisting outside providers.

Other concerns come from continued cases and complaints with the Denver Police Department relating to 2020 protests and settlements as well as Street Enforcement Team operations, which some believe should have more accountability.

Richman said she sees the large number of openings in the Department of Public Safety as an opportunity to implement recommendations from the city’s Task Force to Reimagine Policing and Public Safety. She said police departments across the U.S. have experienced issues with their image, and the same is true locally as Denver continues paying settlements related to its Police Department.

Council members expressed concerns over the monitor’s office having proper access to triage information, notifications and Evidence.com. Richman said the monitor’s office is only receiving evidence and footage if it is approved and sent by the police first. This gets complicated because the system either allows access to everything or individually selected items, and there are certain pieces of evidence involving identities of children that the monitor doesn’t have authority to access.

“Without the OIM being able to go into that system directly and look for things, they are only able to hold the DPD accountable for the things they are given, which is like leading the witness in some cases,” Richman said.

Working out this technicality is one of the board’s recommendations, and Public Safety Director Armando Saldate said he would be in contact with the system’s vendor to work out a solution.

She said the issues highlighted in Denver Health’s relationship with the Sheriff’s Office need to be addressed, a key concern from the public as well as the oversight board. She said it can be difficult to enforce accountability when the relationships are confusing, both at a contractual and oversight level.

As for the Public Integrity Division, the board wants to see operating policies put in place. Richman said the city frequently has conversations about how it isn’t working and that if there aren’t policies and processes put in place, it becomes harder to change behavior and find root causes of these issues. She added that earlier efforts to work out these issues got lost in the shuffle with continued leadership changes and unnecessary administrative confusion, and that the Sheriff’s Office sees the biggest confusion around this relating to accountability.

“Deputies themselves often find it very challenging to understand how the discipline process goes,” Richman said. “… Being in an environment where you don’t know how you will be disciplined for your actions is really confusing. We hear complaints from the deputies about how long the process takes. They don’t understand why, when, how the process is to take place. … Having a fair discipline process really matters to employees.”