Denver’s civilian public safety oversight system is not receiving information it needs to properly review certain programs within the city’s police department, according to Lisabeth Pérez Castle, Denver’s independent monitor.

Pérez Castle, who presented the OIM 2025 annual report to a Denver City Council committee Wednesday, said that her office has been sidelined in its efforts to obtain the information necessary to conduct a thorough policy review of DPD’s new Education-Based Development program, which allows supervisors to opt for less punitive types of discipline, such as coaching and mentoring, for many lower-level policy violations.

Denver Chief of Police Ron Thomas told The Denver Gazette that the EBD program officially launched at noon Tuesday.

The training regimen first proposed almost a year ago would ultimately reduce the chances of officers reoffending and lead to quicker resolutions of disciplinary cases, Thomas said.

Critics, including the OIM, argue that the police department failed to provide sufficient details about the policy and hastily attempted to implement the new program without sufficient public feedback.

Pérez Castle said that her office believes the rollout violates the city ordinance and the city charter.

The ordinance, according to Thomas, requires that, before policies relating to discipline are instituted or revised, the OIM be given the opportunity to make recommendations and suggestions.

“And that always happens,” Thomas said.

A Denver ordinance grants the OIM independent oversight authority, but DPD has sometimes pushed back on how that oversight applies to the department’s internal programs such as EBD.

Citing concerns that the OIM lacks sufficient information to properly review the program now that it has been rolled out, Pérez Castle asserts that DPD is withholding information about the program.

“They’re refusing to give us minimal intrusive information as it is, and this is going, this is a pattern, this is not just with EBD, but with other things,” Pérez Castle said. “We have asked for all of the community surveys that are being used, for when the Chief (Ron Thomas) says that there’s overwhelming community support, they refuse to give it to us.”

Thomas disagrees, stating that DPD has provided the OIM with all the raw data from both community survey opportunities.

“What she does not have is the redacted personal identifying information,” Thomas said. “Number one, she’s not a law enforcement official, and number two, when people filled out this survey, none of them agreed to, it was never indicated to them that their personal information would be shared. And so, I thought that it wasn’t reasonable to provide them with that personal identifying information, but all of the raw data, all of the comments, the pro, the con, you know, all of that was provided to her.”

Pérez Castle added: “We have asked for all of the training materials that they’re using to determine how to implement this training program, so if an officer is going to get EBD, what kind of training is he going to get? Is he going to watch a movie? Is he going to write a paper? I have no idea. I have repeatedly asked for that information, and they have refused to give it to us.”

Thomas said his department has provided training documents on topics such as emotional intelligence and decision-making, but many of the development programs are highly customized to the individual and the particular offense being addressed.

“Because this specific training is going to be tailor-made to the specific infraction, I can’t build a curriculum on things that I didn’t even know happened,” Thomas told The Denver Gazette. “And so, each of these training modules is going to be very specific to the incident, the impact that it had on the agency, or it had on the individual, what it is that we want them to understand relative to department policy, and also what the community expectation is.”

Thomas said there’s often a perception that his department and the OIM are adversarial, adding that evidence to the contrary can be found in the OIM’s own annual report.

“When we make discipline recommendations, 89% of the time, so almost 90% of the time they (OIM) agree with the disciplinary recommendation that we make, and so I don’t know what more suggests collaboration and a healthy working relationship than that.”

Denver Gazette reporter Michael Braithwaite contributed to the story.