 That's the highest honor bestowed from the police department to a civilian right now on Denver police news It's quite extraordinary that she was able to do this honored I was not expecting this at all a local teacher saves the life of a child It's like another part of you just takes over hear the story here Then triumph is the happiest moment of my life so far Happiest moment will warm your hearts and introduce you to an amazing group of children. I'm just really excited I've never done this before so a local group of foster kids learns to persevere and overcome and Finally Denver may soon persevere and join the ranks of New York, Los Angeles and other big cities around the country as we are well On our way to making and opening the doors to the Denver Police Museum Get the sneak peek today and find out how you can help Hello everybody and welcome to studio a and Denver police news. I'm sergeant Steve Warnacky Many consider teachers to be heroes because of the jobs that they do every single day Here's the story of one teacher whose quick thinking and response has saved the lives of three different children and Earned her one of Denver police departments highest honors Well, good afternoon. It's a pleasure to meet you. I'm Joe Montoya I'm the commander of district three which covers this area today BJ Peebler will be receiving the commandatory letter from the Denver police department That's the highest honor bestowed from the police department to a civilian. I'd like to ask BJ. I Was not expecting this at all This is how it reads the death of a child can have a long-term devastating effect on a community Over the past three years Betty Peebler a teacher at the Denver Academy has taken extraordinary Actions to prevent tragedies to three young students. The first experience was in the lunch room And I started to hear a little bit of a commotion at a table and I looked over and that's when I noticed one of the Students was kind of grabbing at his throat. You know, yes, are you choking and you know, he gave me the look like Yes, I am he didn't know what to do at that point I turned him around and gave him the him look right there and then and out came the meatball and You know, I think in the moment every time it's happened. It's like another part of you just takes over Like it's not something you're thinking through. It's I need to do this and I need to do this now The Denver police department would like to extend their thanks to Betty Peebler for her actions And this is signed by Robert C. White chief of Denver police department It's quite extraordinary that she was able to do this on three separate occasions And maybe she's just a guardian angel for these children to be the one that's there and I know to be able to do this I think the biggest reward is probably the three kids that I Know are gonna be just fine And what could have happened to them? Congratulations to miss Peebler and to her and all of the teachers. Thanks for everything you do Here's a group of young adults who are familiar with doing today We'll introduce you to some wonderful foster kids who despite many hardships have worked extra hard to make their goals a reality Today is the 16th annual celebration of educational excellence. It's a statewide celebration of our youth in foster care Who have achieved high school graduation high school equivalency diplomas Thanks to the foster care system been in this foster home for about two years It's been working out. I had my lips and downs here, but I got myself on track. I left foster care when I was 18 and I got pregnant like the same month So I want my son to know like it's nothing can hold you back. Nothing Graduation is hard enough for any of our youth in our society today It's a big feat to overcome just being a teenager in the society But we've got a group of kids in there who have overcome tremendous trauma abuse neglect So they've overcome quite a bit to get here today I'm just really excited. I've never done this before. So It was like I actually made it, you know It's the happiest moment of my life so far Happiest moment. You set your standards high I think it's better because you're not settling for something less than you deserve I'm gonna go to college and I'm gonna try to double major. I'm going to go to a culinary school in Arkansas and Get my life started there These kids are the kids that you see every day you probably don't even know that they're in foster care You probably don't know that they've been through such traumatic things in their life because they just keep going forward They have no choice. They have to keep moving forward I didn't think I was gonna graduate high school and now here I am. I'm actually doing it and I made it Congratulations to all the kids that made it. That was a lot of hard work Well, we've made it over to studio B at Denver police headquarters, and I'm joined by technician Dean Chris Dofferson Dean very few people in this department have meant so much to the museum project That's going on at the Denver police department Than you can you tell us about what your vision is for this museum? Well, I've been lucky enough that since we started this program we formed the 501c3 about almost six years ago now and We've assembled a good team of volunteers key people who have become integral components on the formation of a police museum to Honor the many thousands of officers that have served on his department in the last 154 years Big cities have these this isn't well This won't be the first in the nation in fact We'll be falling in line with some of the bigger cities and some of the places where police museums already have a great impact on the community absolutely Some of the forerunners have been Los Angeles LAPD has a museum. They've had for a number of years Cleveland has had one New York City's had one for quite some time you look at Houston Seattle almost any major Metropolitan city has a museum of some type whether in-house or in a freestanding location Which is available for the public to come in and get a feel for what we do That's a great point the museum is not just for police officers and their families I mean this does have an impact on the community and the citizens and and add some value to the community I'd imagine absolutely from day one we decided this isn't going to be a shrine to the DPD and it's not going to be a Just a bunch of dusty old display cases in a corner But what it's going to be is a view or perspective of Denver's history as told through the Denver Police Department's eyes What is happening now with the museum right now? We've moved into our second phase, which is we've moved into headquarters sweet 108 first floor That has enabled us to set up what's called our archiving and processing Center and a business office We are looking at cataloging and archiving all the different artifacts the department has that have been given to the museum individually and a place for people to bring things in if they want to donate them and Have us catalog them is this open to the public right now as of right now It's not open to the public per se because we're behind the secure zone of the police headquarters But we will allow for some tours. We've given some youth group tours through there whenever there's been some functions at the department We've had people come back We'll try to get someone escorted back if we can can do that at all however officers of course can come back in We're gonna have regular business hours on Tuesdays from 10 a.m. To 2 p.m. We're trying to have that staff by volunteers and we'll add more hours as we get more volunteers So how can people help if they're interested in assisting you well naturally as a museum and as a 501c3 nonprofit? We didn't want to be a budget item for the city We didn't want to take any resources away from patrol or equipment or cars And we didn't want to have to you know face being cut maybe some year if they needed more police cars or equipment So we are 51c3. So naturally we're always looking for donations financially The other part we're also looking for is donations of artifacts a lot of retired officers a lot of family Officers have interesting items and those are what tell the story of an officer And it doesn't necessarily have to be just guns and badges all the time But the little things a little personal items that help humanize what an officer is or what he what he had done in his career Stories about the first black officer the first female officer the first officer killed in the line of duty all of that stuff It's relevant to the city. It's our history and it's important Yeah, absolutely. It's it's not just the department's history But it truly is a community's history when you stop and think that we may have had anywhere from 8,000 to 10,000 officers That have served in various capacities in the last 154 years. That's a sizable amount of people And there's a lot of people in in the city that have a direct link whether through family or friends to the department It's not unusual to have generations that have served on the department three or four and and again Just people who will constantly come up to me and say, you know, my grandfather was on the department Or he served for a short period of time and something else changed in his life. So he wound up not having to do it It's an interesting story again and every major event that's ever occurred in the city. The police department is there I mean we go if a spaceship lands in the middle of you know Colfax and Broadway, they're gonna send the cops first So we've always been pretty much the first people to get called for almost anything major What will this mean to you personally when when the museum's up? It's in its own space. It's open to the public and all the hard work that you've put in comes to fruition It's a legacy thing for the entire department And for me, it's the pride of being a Denver police officer and spending the last 23 years in law enforcement And to honor the the 71 officers that are currently on our memorial right now Their legacy needs to be protected and it has to be carried on from generation to generation to ensure that That we know their sacrifice that we know where we came from any organization or group or Any entity that forgets where it came from is often going to forget where it's going and not have an understanding and not have a way to pursue that In a fashion and learn from its past mistakes and successes Well, I can't think of a better way to showcase The amount of effort that you've completed so far other than for you to just take us on a short tour Would you mind doing that? No, absolutely. I mean Law enforcement is just one of the most fascinating things in the public's eye If you look at the top ten movies at any given time the top television shows periodicals Magazines everything crime drama driven. Just take a look at the starting lineup for any network television roster And you'll see that people are fascinated by our type of business And we just want to give them an accurate and in a true portrait of what we do from behind the scenes and how we interact Let's give everybody a sneak preview shall we? So this is it We have a combination of City-owned artifacts and privately owned by the the museum We have entered into a contractual agreement with the city and county of Denver and the police department to inventory and catalog their items One of the first things we have to look at to get grants and loans is that what type of collection? Do we have and as of right now all we can say is there's some stuff in a closet some stuff over here? Things are coming in constantly so we want to have a complete Accurate inventory list of what the department has and what we have and then eventually both those will marry up for display down the road This is some of our intake that is coming in Every item that comes in will get a receipt to the individual who donated it some bits as simple as a baton and And a badge that their ancestor may have worn at one time This one happens to be from World War two from the civil defense police during World War two We were short on manpower because every able-bodied man was fighting in the war So they had civil defense and auxiliary police four platoons of 40 apiece And I mean this isn't something that is issued nowadays. No, definitely not and so the family donated the items and Thought that it was a great place for them again Sworn in as a police officer during World War two they would put in one of the Civil defense officers with a full-time officer and then have two-man cars even during World War two So again, just a small part of the history of the department, but again Several hundred of these people did serve in the department and take the same risk that a regular officer did in the course of the night Now these weren't around when I started but this is an important part of Denver police history exactly this This call box was stationed as you can see it's it's call box 114 And it was used from about the night probably the turn of the last century all the way up until the late 1960s When the final ones were phased out, but even back during the 50s before we had personal radios This is how you responded to a call. You'd simply pick this up Click it a couple of times and you'd call in on your beat And if there was something you need to be dispatched to it would send you over Every half hour or every hour you'd check in on the corner call box. This dates from the earliest This is probably 1870 1871 and this would have been a uniform worn The this uniform was worn By one of our earliest law enforcement officers Robert Yardley force He was also a deputy sheriff because we were part of a Rappahoe County at that time And then he actually was appointed chief of police for about a week and a half or two weeks in 1877 Wow, that is a neat piece of history. Yeah, he had been one of our original first three policemen in the city of Denver We have a retired detective Who flagged me down when he found out about the museum project his daughter had worked actually in Weld County as an intern a couple years ago and she remember clearing out the Inventory room of that sheriff's department and she said she distinctly remembered finding badge number two that said Denver on it So we were a little intrigued by that so I got a hold the Weld County Sheriff sent a request up there and asked that They in fact did have one he said yes We have it on display and he said absolutely you can have it back for your museum and for your department's history This style of badge was worn from 1890 to 1896 in some prior research I had done at the state archives I had found the original handwritten ledger of the officers appointed to service and their dates So we were able to find star number two which belongs to KC Martin It lists his start dates higher dates where he was assigned it showed how many gold buttons He was given from the department to wear in his uniform What his night stick number was and what his call box key was higher dates and when he finally resigned that led me to the fact that I was able to find out more information from a Someone who'd recapped the book he actually had served on the department since about 1880 and then he retired in 1909 And the reason we know that is because he's obituary. We were able to locate Which shows that he died in 1911 and he retired in 1909 so The dilemma that we have though is that the records are scattered everywhere somewhere at the state archives Some are at the Denver Public Library somewhere in the department a lot of them private collections somewhere in history, Colorado So there's no one centralized source to go to to tell the story of this one item You have to go to multiple sources to get that information Our goal one day is to have a research library that a family member or an artifact comes in We'll be able to track it down be able to go right to a list of Resources that tell that time frame we'll be able to figure out who it belonged to well You got your work cut out for you for sure We absolutely do but it's a great project and and I think it's gonna work. It is thanks for everything you're doing Thanks for your time. All right. Thank you. All right. We'll see you soon. Thank you everybody for being with us on Denver police news I'm sergeant Steve Warnicke. We'll see you next time