DENVER, CO — After more than a year of back-and-forth with the city’s oversight body, the Denver Police Department on Tuesday rolled out a new alternative to discipline for low-level misconduct by officers.
The department first proposed the new policy last winter. Now, after at least three rounds of edits, questions from the Denver City Council and a dispute over DPD transparency requirements, the policy will offer educational training as a substitute for formal penalties in many cases. The new policy will cover roughly 60% to 65% of the department’s misconduct cases.
The new method is called “Education-Based Development” because, in the words of safety department official Wendy Shea, “It’s really not discipline.”