 We're going to get started. Thank you for coming and braving the weather today. I'm Kayla Christensen, Director of Communications for Public Safety. It's my pleasure to introduce Executive Director Rivers. All right. Good morning. Thanks for braving the weather. I'm going to be quick and to the point. I want to begin by thanking the Chief and his command staff. They took over mid-year. They've done an exceptional job. But I also want to talk about some of the challenges for public safety, in particular the Police Department at this time in the history of Denver. You know, last year we have more and more people moving in. The largest population we've ever had. There's a lot of challenges for the Police Department due to that. But then if you also look at the events that we've had in the growth of events in this community, that happens kind of organically. A lot of people are out promoting those events. But that puts a lot of stress on the Police Department. Puts a lot of stress on public safety. And I can tell you that Chief Payson and his very qualified command staff have done a good job dealing with that. But I also need to say a thank you to our rank and file. Those officers and civilian employees, they're always nimble. They work very hard. They address some of the rapidly growing elements within our community. So we're very pleased with that. One thing that we're not so pleased about is that we're seeing some increases in certain types of crime that the Chief is going to get into here in a moment. I will just simply say this. When you look at the crime rates, I want you to remember, one, that we have far too many people using weapons to sell disputes at this time in Denver's history. And we need the public's help. If you see someone in an argument, you see someone that is in some type of altercation, please call the police immediately. You may be stopping an aggravated assault or potentially a murder as well. It's important for the police to be involved early and often in these cases. No one's going to be upset if you call the Police Department if you see someone arguing. We want to restore order and peace. With that said, I want to thank Chief Payson for his leadership. I want to ask Deputy Chief Archer to come up here as well and also answer any questions you may have. But thank you for being here in Chief. It's all yours. Thank you. Thank you, Director. We appreciate it. What was passed out, you have a copy of the 2018 crime stats. That's the UCR Universal Crime Reporting, as well as the Niber's National Incident-Based Reporting System. We share this, this is posted online, and really what we're here to talk about is digging into these numbers and seeing what trends, what patterns are taking place, and essentially what we can do about them. It's not a secret that our homicide rate is up and we have drilled down extensively with our major crimes and homicide unit team, our analysts to make sure that we identify any of those patterns, the causal factors, and really what we're looking for are root causes. Many of the initiatives that we have addressed or recently enacted are to directly target these types of crimes and do something about them. Violent crime is up, as you can see from the year-end reports. Really what is driving that is homicide as well as aggravated assault. Homicides are up 17% over 2017. In 2018, we had unfortunately 67 people in 60 incidents. We had many or five double homicides and one triple homicides that contributed greatly to that number. Aggravated assaults, we see nearly the same increase, a 16.9% increase on par with our three-year average. What we've noticed to reiterate the words that Executive Director Riggs spoke of is 25% of these increased with use of weapons, firearms. We need to do something about this. There were 214 guns stolen in Denver last year. That is up from the previous years. When we're looking at commonalities, gang violence is also up 15%. Over the three-year period, we're actually down 21%, but we see that spike from 2017 and we have plans to initiate or to address that. Domestic violence is also up 37% over our three-year average, 30% over 2017. Again, we have to do better moving forward. And as we alluded to those gun crimes, with the homicides, firearms were the most common weapon used. 47 incidents resulting in 49 victims. I'm sorry, 42 incidents resulting in 49 victims. Did I say 49 twice? I think I did. All right, thank you. Six of those weapons were stolen. All 10 of our gang-motivated homicides, a firearm, was used. We see an increase in robberies involving the use of guns, an 8% increase over the three-year period. We're about flat compared to 2017 with that same comparison. And then robberies involving a gun accounted for 41% of all the robberies in Denver. Many challenges there with regards to violent crimes. Property crimes, we see a slight increase in 2018 versus 2017. And really what was driving that number was car break-ins, step-for-motor vehicles. And we can talk more extensively about that as we move forward. Really, again, kudos to the analytical team in the Denver Police Department and the Safety Department for really drilling down into these issues. We have launched many initiatives. We have additional programs and initiatives that we will be launching or announcing as soon as next week. We have a couple more in the coming weeks that we will be talking about. But how we are going to address this increase in violent crime is utilizing our precision policing model. This is a component of the Denver Opportunity Index. There's a geographical and innovation and a technology component to this. Some of those initiatives that we've already discussed and announced is that city-wide impact team, that social harms reduction team. When we talk about drilling down and looking at those causal factors, we see a thread or a commonality with those social harms that we talk about, mental health and substance abuse. Utilizing this team, a team of officers and a full-time mental health clinician, we are confident that that will assist us, as well as additional partnerships and collaborations with other city agencies, other nonprofits, other faith-based groups to assist us in that level. We've also initiated, we see a nexus to narcotics. There were seven of these incidences where narcotics were involved, and we've launched a mid-level narcotics team to help us address these concerns. We started them just weeks ago, and the results have been great so far. Over 35 pounds of methamphetamine taken off the streets in just the last few weeks. Also, we've seen six incidences where domestic violence was involved. We want to continue to support the tremendous advocates out there that continue to help the victim side of the equation. What we are doing is launching a program to get enhanced resources and support enhanced outreach to the offender side of the domestic violence equation. We believe that the program that you will hear more about here in the near future addresses both sides of this, and we believe that that will assist us in addressing the increase in domestic violence incidences. Overall, our precision policing model is about enhanced public-private partnerships, which again we'll be discussing next week, as well as enhanced local and federal partnerships. We have a great program that will be announced in the coming weeks with regards to this partnership with other metro departments, as well as enhancing that relationship with our federal partners, as well as using the latest technology. We believe that there are four small suppliers out there that can help us keep this city safe, and you will be hearing more about that. Overall, our precision policing model is a comprehensive approach that involves more than just the police department. Violent crime is an issue that we all need to work to address. That's connecting with community members, the nonprofits, the faith-based groups, the other city agencies, as well as our law enforcement partners to address this in a holistic way. I've spoken way too much as it is, so at this time, if you have any questions, we'd be happy to answer them. It sounds like violence in general is a gang violence, domestic violence, and is there any overall indication of what's causing that, or is it just cyclical? That's part of what our team has done, the deep dive into the data. We have looked for those commonalities, 10 incidents with gang members being motivated, as well as the six incidents with domestic violence. There are pre-indicators in some of these cases, and we want to make sure that we can identify what those pre-indicators are and do this outreach to folks to see if we can get them into supportive services and prevent the violence from occurring in the future. That's what you will hear a lot more of here soon with Division Chief Montoya's Domestic Violence Prevention Program that we have recently launched. Part of our model, we've actually increased the staffing over there. We've added six full-time members to the gang unit team. I can't emphasize this enough in our preventative model. Much of this is looking back at those social harms, mental health and substance abuse. We want to do outreach and identify if there are challenges within the home, if young people are dealing with parents or grandparents that have challenges with mental health and substance abuse, and they're out, they're concerned for their own safety, and that's why there's an increase in guns. We're looking at all of these, but there is just as much outreach as there is enforcement as we move forward in this plan, because we want to tackle this on multiple levels. It's more than just going out and arresting the perpetrator and thinking that all of the violence is going to stop in the future. This is a multi-tiered approach to really get to those root causes, the social harms. We're dealing with the current situation as well as looking forward in a proactive way to address these issues, and that's what we're doing with domestic violence. That's what we're doing with reducing gang violence as well. How about we go? So I'll hand just slightly each other. You were speaking about three-year trends being up, but then just from the data you gave us from 2017 to 2018, it's really relatively flat. Can you elaborate on the three-year trend versus the one-year and if there's any reason for the flatness? So, as we see historically, there's ebbs and flows, and when we do our crime strategy briefing, we look year-to-year as well as a three-year. We want to make sure that, for example, this time last year, if you compared the first three or four weeks of 2017 and 2018, you would see a dramatic drop in homicides. We were near 10 incidents at the beginning of the year last year where we were at one incident. We'd sit here and say, pat ourselves on the back and claim that we're making progress. You need to look at those bigger pictures and make sure that you're examining a broad view of these challenging aspects and making sure that our comprehensive plans are there to look at the short-term, making sure that we are addressing those short-term challenges without losing sight of the long-term preventative issues or preventative models that are going to assist us as we move forward. Did I answer the question appropriately? One year, though, the flatness, do you attribute that to anything or is that just kind of your saying is kind of a fluke because it must still be much? Exactly. I'm saying that it is important to look at year-to-year, but it's also important to broaden your perspective and look at that three-year trend as well. The more information with regards to violent crime in general gives us a better opportunity to enhance our strategies to address it. I'm sorry, at least. Have you guys looked at it? Were there any trends or factors that are shared? So without getting in front of our community partners and you heard us allude to these public-private partnerships that we have, we recognize that we as the police department can't solve all of these issues alone, but what I can say is we have a big announcement next week to address exactly what you've seen there, and it is truly a collaborative partnership with stakeholders beyond just the Denver Police Department, beyond the safety department, beyond the city and county of Denver to enhance the safety of the neighborhoods you just spoke of. A little off-topic, but I've been asked to ask you a question about post-city ordinance being considered next week that will allow the independent monitor to oversee investigations into your position, to your juxtaposition, and just your opinion on that. So we support oversight, we support... We just got done talking about collaborations and partnerships. We're being transparent with these numbers, providing them as well as our plans. We'll continue to do that. We'll continue to work with the OIM's office to ensure accountability and transparency within the Denver Police Department. What's their goal? So we're really excited about this team, and they've actually served us remarkably well in the short amount of time that they've been in place. You're right, there is a response. When you have a violent crime that happens, it has a negative impact on the community. Fear of crime, we have to make sure that we're addressing fear of crime as well. So with this supportive team, after a violent incident, we go in there and make sure that those needs are addressed. However, this team is designed to be proactive as well. So by permanently assigning or by having a full-time mental health clinician as part of this team, it's all about those social harms. Again, instead of just looking at the initial incident itself and holding an individual accountable for that and thinking that the crime is going away, we need to look at those drivers. Mental health and substance abuse has a tremendous linkage and root cause to many of these incidents, and we are proactively attempting to address this with this team, as well as with our homeless outreach team, with the clinicians that we have that are assigned to patrol officers. We want to make sure that we are looking at these violent crime issues in a much broader way moving forward. Signs leading up to it, and if somebody intervened, you could have perhaps been prevented. Is that kind of what you're talking about? Yes, it is. And we see that with domestic violence, our domestic violence prevention program. You heard that from Executive Director Riggs, the Denver Opportunity Index, using the data that we have to make sure that we're focusing our efforts, that precision policing model to reduce the social harms that often are the social determinants or the impacts that have causal factors to crime occurring in the first place. So you are correct. That's drilling down into the data that we do have, as well as looking at any of the pre-indicators that can assist us and do this in an outreach and supportive way. Exactly. I would love to just echo Executive Director's words. If you see something, if you see somebody that's involved in a disturbance, a fight, an assault, please let us know. We want to get there. We want to help people and prevent future violence or higher levels of violence. So to your words, see something, say something. We want for us to be successful, it's better if the 700,000 plus residents of Denver are assisting us in this, that they're letting people know that they're calling 911 when they see something and the police are responding to those types of situations. Thank you, Sharon. So again, to be respectful to our partners and all of the hard work that they've done over the last couple of months to get this, I don't want to get ahead of that particular announcement, but essentially it's technology, using technology that assists us in not only responding to crime but preventing crime. Yeah. You see, I talk too much, right? That's pretty much the same. I'm so glad that you asked that question. So domestic violence is one of the key areas that's up, but also assault to police officers or assault to sheriff's deputies account for 30% of these crimes. So that is a challenge, right? You have our law enforcement team that is out there trying to keep the community safe, and we saw a huge spike in assaults to both law enforcement officers, Denver police officers, as well as Denver sheriff's deputies in 2018. You're right. We are a growing city, and the mayor, budget management, city council has supported the Denver Police Department. We're a growing police department in order to meet a growing city's needs. So our staffing has increased, and we are continuing to work together to ensure that the police department has the resources necessary to meet these growing demands. We work very closely using data to ensure that we have the appropriate number out there, and we continue to look inward as well. And part of this process, we freed up at least eight officers and a supervisor to go back out on the street. So we look internally, are there things that we can do to maximize the staffing that we have? This is something that just happened over the last couple of weeks as well, at the same time that we're looking at a growing city and growing demands. Beyond just the population, there's also a growing number of events. This year was a record year for this city to host many great events. We want to make sure that each one of those go off safely, and so those are challenges that the leadership within the city has supported us, and we anticipate that they would continue to support us. We are working towards a number of officers, both internal and external, to make sure that we do have the resources necessary. This is part of the civilian report writers that we have. Again, if we want to make sure that we're rightsizing the department, if a position would be better filled by a civilian and allow for a patrol officer to get back on the street, then that's what we continue to do. We utilize data to make sure that the calls for service that we have, calls for service slightly increased in 2018, but our officers did more self-initiated, proactive outreach, subject stops, traffic stops, all of that than they did in 2017. At the same time that you have this growing police department and a slight increase in calls for service, I believe it was about 1%, you had about a 2.5% increase in officers doing self-initiated, proactive, preventative work to try to reduce the crime that we're facing.