DENVER — Politicians are putting campaign promises above established procedures at the expense of public safety, according to new claims by the Executive Director of Denver's Civil Service Commission (CSC) and some members of the City Council.
Civil Service Commission head Niecy Murray alleged the standards for police and fire recruits have been lowered to meet a quota established by the mayor's office. She and some council members say "political pressure" from the Johnston administration is causing the commission to cut corners, including ignoring red flags in applicant profiles. In one instance, the commission ignored a pysch evaluation that showed a candidate as not recommended for hire, according to city council member Sarah Parady.
Leadership, Murray said, has told her those issues could be fixed in police and fire training academies.
“The mayor has made it clear that he will not back off of the staffing numbers he set in his campaign,” Murray said. “Simultaneously, academy staff have shared increasing frustration with the quality of recruits that show up for duty. If you show up with a pulse, you’re in there.”
After a brief news conference Tuesday morning on the steps of Denver's City and County Building, Murray sat down with Denver7 Investigates, doubling down on the claims.
"I want every academy to have every seat filled., but I also want people to be properly vetted, properly screened, make sure that we're not only keeping our community safe but these individuals that we put in badges and guns, they need to be safe as well," said Murray.
Murray was joined by council members Parady, Shontel Lewis and Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez on Tuesday morning.
"The public's trust is placed in us to ensure standards for safety are being met," said Murray, who spoke at the news conference as "a last resort" and "at tremendous personal cost," according to Parady. "The role of the Civil Service Commission is far too important to be diminished to one which is strictly performative."
Denver7 reached out to the mayor's office and were referred to a statement from the City's Department of Public Safety:
"Ensuring Denver is a safe and thriving city is the Department of Public Safety’s top priority. We hold our agencies to the highest standards, including a shared priority with the Civil Service Commission to recruit top public safety candidates through a thorough, equitable, and expeditious hiring process. Modernizing the Civil Service Commission process is an essential step in building a diverse, dedicated, and highly skilled public safety workforce, and we must make evidence-based changes to that process to make that vision a reality.”
Murray's words do not speak for the CSC as a whole.
Amber Miller, a commissioner for the CSC, said the board is "disappointed" in Murray's "unilateral decision" to address the public on Tuesday.
Miller wen ton to say "... we do not agree with her claims that the Administration has pressured the Commission to lower standards."
In 2019, the minimum score for Denver's entry-level police officers was 70, Murray said. It dropped to 67.14 in 2020 and city leaders now want it lowered to 60, she said.
“This is not the time to decrease our standards for who holds our community members’ lives in their hands,” Councilwoman At-Large Gonzales-Gutierrez said. “Denver has demanded that only the best fill these roles and we should not sacrifice the needs nor safety of our communities, and those who serve them, simply to meet an arbitrary quota.”
"At a time when our city is being asked to restore trust in our police, that faith is being built on a clear expectation from the public that our first responders will hold themselves to a certain standard – one which makes everyone feel more safe about who will be answering a call for help," Lewis said at Tuesday's news conference. "To hear that our city's officials are encouraging the public to trust the process to upkeep a particular standard, while encouraging sub-standard hiring practices behind the scenes, raises real concerns for myself, and many of my colleagues at Denver City Council."
Council members also spoke of a "changed dynamic" within the Civil Service Commission due to "political interference."
In Denver, three of the five members of the Civil Service Commission are appointed by the mayor.
Watch the full comments from Murray and the city council members in the video player below:
