Different from candidates running to represent a specific district, at-large members of Denver's City Council represent the whole city and have to have their fingers on the pulse of residents’ concerns who may have widely different opinions about top issues like public safety.
Five candidates vying for two at-large Council seats on April's ballot attended a forum Thursday night hosted by Denver’s Task Force for Reimagining Policing and Public Safety. Public safety, homelessness, urban development and housing took center stage, largely mirroring the top issues that make up mayoral candidates’ platforms.
The task force released a report nearly two years ago that made 112 recommendations focused on giving control of public safety to communities and directing resources toward policies that emphasize intervention over traditional policing and prosecution in low-level “quality of life” issues. Its focus drove the framing of questions at Thursday’s forum.
“My top three priorities — housing and affordability, safety, and environment and transportation — they aren’t just buzzwords,” said Dominic Diaz, who is the youngest candidate on the city’s election ballot at 25. “They’re core to my vision of Denver. They’re the issues that matter most to you and your family.”
The candidates fielded questions about a variety of issues linked to public safety, including reducing interactions with police for low-level offenses that some insist are linked to poverty and mental illness; Denver’s camping ban; and policies aimed at decriminalization, such as sanctioning a site to ingest illegal drugs under official supervision. Below is a sampling of the issues they discussed.
Question: Will you support policies that increase access to long-term treatment, limited drug arrests and implement evidence-based harm reduction services such as "safe consumption spaces"?
Penfield Tate III: “Denver’s already passed an ordinance that would allow for (safe consumption spaces). We need the state to pass a law to allow our measure to be implemented. I think it’s worthwhile to see how that works, and see if that is worthy of expanding in terms of moving forward.
Harm reduction policies are, I think, in line with what I just said a moment ago. In terms of the other recommendations, we ought to look at what needs to be implemented as part of that process as well.
The unfortunate reality is that many of us have had friends and family members who have had addiction issues. I’ve had it in my family. We know that sometimes addressing the issues is not a fast or painless process. So we need to commit as a community to implementing policies and programs that will help address those who have substance abuse issues, because if we can help them with that, we can help them on the road to self-sufficiency and become contributing members of our community."
Dominic Diaz: “My answer is yes, and as a City Council, we need to be putting our money where our mouth is and funding these programs appropriately. I’m a big proponent of harm reduction.”
Tim Hoffman: “There’s the period of time before someone has started committing criminal conduct, and showing signs of either addiction or mental illness. Getting to those people early in the process, providing them the resources and stabilizing them in the community nine months, or a year, before a crime ever happens, has to be a priority.
When criminal conduct has taken place, there’s a lot of people committing crimes largely due to the fact that they are an addict or dealing with mental illness. It doesn’t excuse the fact that they are committing a crime, but it goes a long way toward explaining it. And I’ve been a big proponent of some of the diversionary programs that we have within the court system or even before the court system.
And then after the fact, when someone is getting out of custody or getting off of probation or parole, we as a community need to make sure that we are, as the government, stepping in and providing them some of the supports at that moment as well. The reality is when you take someone into custody, you've taken away most of the stabilizing factors in their life. They're going to lose their job, a lot of their social network, and housing is going to be hard to keep. And if we don't provide them mechanisms on the back end to support themselves, that is guaranteeing that there's going to be this cycle of recidivism. So breaking that cycle has to be a key focus here.”
Travis Leiker: “Yes to the long-term treatments, and yes to harm reduction approaches. I am skeptical of what is known as 'safe injection sites.' I'd like to see some further data, both from peer municipalities as well as some Canadian counterparts and European counterparts, just to assess efficacy.
I will also go back to the fact that it is very difficult to operate a support program within the city and county of Denver, both from a funding perspective or procurement perspective, as well as just contracting with the city to do this work.
And I'll tell you a story. So I work at the University of Colorado, and I work in healthcare. We operate drug addiction support services and programs within the City and County of Denver. However, we are unable to work with the City and County of Denver as an institution to support those in need, those who have gone through the legal system, within the city, because it is just simply too hard to work with the city from an insurance perspective, from a contracting perspective and the light. Now this is a major healthcare organization, one of the largest in the country that finds it difficult to work with the City and County of Denver.
If it's too hard for major institutions, to even break down barriers to access to support the patients in need, then how is a small-scale nonprofit or direct-service provider able to deliver those services effectively?”
Sarah Parady: “I don't tend to think of humans in terms of when a crime has occurred. City Council defines crimes for the City and County of Denver. Right now, our municipal criminal code criminalizes poverty. A lot of it is about what people are doing in public spaces. If you're homeless, you may have no choice but to urinate in public, drink in public, and generally exist in public.
There was a statistic from a few years back that something like — I'm going to get the numbers wrong, so I'm hesitating a little bit here — but a third to one-half of prosecutions under the municipal criminal code were essentially crimes of poverty. That creates a revolving door through the jail that drives people further into the situation that they're already in.
If we're talking about safe injection sites, I don't think those need to be studied further. They're effective. Right now, there's a legal hurdle. However, even if there remains a state legal hurdle, I would be a fan of Denver talking to those who enforce state law and asking them if they’re really going to enforce it against us if we offer to be a laboratory for that kind of thing here in Colorado. Harm reduction is about saving lives and I'm always in favor of that.
And then the third category was long-term behavioral services, I believe. We have a very broken behavioral health care system. We've seen it in our youth. We've seen it even more since the pandemic. And I think the very simple answer to that is funding. There are access and navigation concerns, but we have to start taking that seriously as something that is a basic human need and treat it as such.”
The five who appeared at Thursday’s forum were:
- Travis Leiker, a 16-year resident of Denver who lives in Central Park. He named housing affordability and neighborhood safety as two of his top priorities. He’s the senior director of development at the University of Colorado and former president of Capitol Hill United Neighborhoods.
- Tim Hoffman lives in south central Denver. A prosecutor in the Denver District Attorney’s office, he mentioned investing in intervention services for people to prevent crime as a top priority, because of the high number of cases he has seen that have roots in poverty, mental illness and housing instability.
- Dominic Diaz, a Denver native who lives in Sun Valley. Diaz works for the city’s Office of Children’s Affairs. He said he’s the youngest person to run for a municipal office in Denver at 25. He named housing and affordability, safety and environment and transportation as his top priorities.
- Sarah Parady, a civil rights attorney and employment attorney who describes herself as an abolitionist. Policing reform, better public transit and homelessness and housing are key priorities for her.
- Penfield Tate III, a former state representative and senator who represented northeast Denver. An attorney by background, he says housing affordability, the homelessness crisis and crime prevention are top concerns. He mounted an unsuccessful bid for mayor in 2019. He touts his experience working in government.
