A resolution approving the Mayoral appointment of Armando Saldate as Executive Director of the Department of Safety, pursuant to Charter Section § 2.2.6 (D). The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 2-9-22.
Madam Secretary. Please put the first item on our screens. Councilmember Ortega, will you please put Council Resolution one, four, five on the floor for adoption? Yes, ma'am. Madam President. Pro tem, I move that resolution number 22, dash 0145, be adopted. It is a moved and seconded comments and questions by members of Council. On Council Resolution 145. Councilwoman CdeBaca. Since the appointment of the director. The. And I've called this out tonight trying to lift up the voices of my constituents and residents across the city. So many residents are concerned about this appointment for several reasons. My constituents have raised the issue of the lack of proven successes, as well as the lack of concrete commitment to community recommendations regarding reimagining policing. Constituents have pointed several times to the confusing, problematic and ineffective initiatives around traumatic displacements of the sick and unhoused. These initiatives were implemented unsuccessfully under the leadership of Mr. Solidarité and have been the only examples of his capabilities. Yet here we are elevating him to the highest office that is responsible for public safety at one of the most challenging times in our history. As an employee, he participated in false allegations against not only my office, but other situations, as we heard in public comment. And each time he failed to show the integrity that we should expect from a leader at this level of government and speak up against injustice. I hope that in this role he'll find the courage to not only speak up against injustice, but to act to remedy it with his new powers. Because I have not witnessed his ability to act courageously in a public fashion or show the leadership necessary in such a powerful and controversial role. And because I must honor my constituents concerns as their voice. I cannot in good conscience support this appointment tonight. So I'm a no vote on this. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember CdeBaca. Next up, we've got Councilman Cashman. You know. Thank you, Madam President. I see Mr. Soldat in the audience. Can I ask him up for a question, please? We'd ask that you introduce yourself for the public record. Hi. I'm Armando Soldat de, the third interim executive director. Public Safety. Well, it's good to have you here, sir. I think one of the most important things that the Task Force on Reimagining Policing brought forth was shining a light on the importance of looking at public safety through a public health lens, as well as the traditional enforcement arrest and incarceration lens. Can you talk about your view of public safety through that public health lens and anything that you have done or plan to do to honor that perspective? Yeah, absolutely. And thank you for the opportunity to address this question with counsel and members of the public. So I don't know if you've heard me in the past or you've heard me talk about this. Well, before I became the interim public safety director, I've always talked about public safety through the public health lens. I thought that a lot of the challenges that we face, a lot of the major challenges we face in public safety are rooted in public health, those being mental illness, substance misuse, sometimes the co-occurrence of those both. Public health has been very impactful. I mean, our lives were all upended by this pandemic. I saw that firsthand. I was one of the efforts I took forward prior to being in the latest roles and working in homelessness space. I led the effort that the Department of Safety stood up at the Pepsi Center for COVID testing. It's something that is very near and dear to my heart. As I was in this position of being an interim executive director and my former duties in homelessness and the homelessness response for the Department of Safety. I needed some help. I needed some help in that regard. And I reached out to our public health and environment executive director in the mayor's office for that help. And I asked for Jeff Holliday, who many of you know, he's currently the director of Office of Behavioral Health Strategies, but he's also someone I know personally and I've worked very closely with throughout my time here with the city. And I asked for his help to back from that position for me. On loan. He's on loan right now because I'm waiting to be confirmed. But he's he's on loan to our department. And he's already been a significant voice in helping us create our priority and agenda around public health. I don't just want to talk about it. I want to do it. And him providing his his lens as a clinician, as someone that as a mental health commission, as a licensed clinical social worker, and in his role at public health and environment. He's been over in our office helping with us in that regard. Thank you. One more question, Madam President. What is what have you done thus far and what is your intention moving forward as far as interactions with the task force? So my interactions with the task force have always been a priority to me, just not only the task force, but community. Since the time I was a young officer in the early nineties in Phenix, Arizona, where I was born and raised, I was always involved in community as a uniformed officer, but also on my own time I got to know my community that I served. I felt that that impacted me a lot and made me a better police officer. When I hear Councilwoman Ortega talk about we didn't see that I was one of those young officers in Sweden seed neighborhood working with kids one day in uniform and one day playing basketball with them in those same neighborhoods, trying to divert them away from gangs and all those other things that we were working towards. The first call I made after I was announced by the mayor as the nominee was to Dr. Robert Davis from the task force, the task force coordinator. I wasn't asked by anyone to make that call. That was something that was important to me. I wanted to start the dialog. I wanted to start the conversation. We were in spots. We meaning public safety. The city and the task force were both in our corners. And I don't I know one thing for sure. Nothing gets solved. No problems get solved when people are in their corners. We have to come to the middle. We have to be able to talk to each other with respect, with courage. We have to be courageous to have these smart conversations. I've always made myself available for those hard conversations. So I committed to them. I had a very good conversation with with Dr. Davis. He's someone I respect and someone that I've worked with in the past. On other endeavors. I committed there to try to start the productive dialog work of our teams getting together and trying to come to some solutions with all these challenges we face. I committed to go to the next task force meeting. That was a commitment I didn't take lightly. I actually I was conflicted in that commitment. I wanted to make sure I came to that first task, first meeting. But my daughter was also going. Undergoing a medical treatment at Children's Hospital. So I took that note. Even with that balancing that priority, because it was that important to me, I didn't do it for politics or anything like that, but I wanted to make that commitment. I didn't we I made myself open for questions. I answered the questions. And then I made myself available the next week for another time. Another time. And I know they're volunteering. So I made a time that was mutually convenient for a lot of those folks, and I made myself available for another 90 minute dialog. I continued to. I will take their calls. I will I will talk to them. I will I will get to a space where we can talk, but we are going to disagree. That's the problem. There's going to be disagreement. We can't just take that disagreement and then say, well, you know what, we can't talk to Armando because he disagrees with us on something. We need to have a dialog and I hope to still foster that productive dialog. Thank you for that. I, I do believe there are areas where we can come to agreement with that, with the recommendations, and I hope we can find those in short measure. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Cashman. Next up, we've got Council Pro Tem Torres. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you, Armando. I have just a couple. Of questions for you as well. So what would we expect to be different or to change under your leadership? Well, the first thing I really want to show, and I think I've shown this, is accessibility. Accessibility to the community being out and being seen by the community being available to you all. And that availability isn't just business hours Monday through Friday. It's being able to talk to you at all times when problems come up that I hope that all of you can reach me and reach my staff. I've also set an expectation with my staff that it's not only going to be me and the community and me here at these meetings, it's going to be all of them . I think it's important for us to be seen, but it's also important for us to also treat everyone with respect and to have dialogs with our our constituency. You said something about Commander Fleece earlier that really resonated with me as he listened to the community. He handed it over to people in Westwood to hear. We need to do more listening and handing things over to folks. And really. So that's something that I really prioritize. And so one thing you're not going to hear from me is a lot of promises, a lot of, you know, big agendas, big initiatives. I'm not going to say that we're going to do an opportunity index or we're going to do that. What I want you to see a substantive change on things that matter. I want to also build sustainable change. And I want to back that up with policy and practice what we do and what we say we're going to do. We're going to back up with policy and hopefully you'll see a much more communicative and and much more information sharing from my office and with council and with the community. That's something that I hope that that we accomplished here in this and the time frame I have. Okay. Thank you. One of the things that I've. Experienced and I think. Anybody who lives in any major city. Has seen. Seen this expressed in Denver. I joined the city in 2001. A public safety review commission. We reviewed complaints after IAB can review them. So this was the predecessor to the Independent Monitor. Toxic employees create a toxic workplace, and we hold our public safety personnel to a really high standard because we literally place our lives in their hands. What is your commitment to removing toxicity in public safety departments? Yeah, absolutely. So my my career part of my career has been devoted to internal accountability, internal affairs, functions. I've arrested uniformed cops. Very hard to do. Very hard to do. I've had that. That's been a responsibility of mine. When I first joined the city, I joined the city as a calling. At the time when I first moved here, my wife's career brought us here to Denver. And thankfully this is a beautiful place to live and to raise my family. When I got here, I was watching in the news. I'm a news junkie. I was watching the Denver Post. The Denver Sheriff's Department was in the news for not good reasons. Marvin Booker Those situations just came out. They were talking about backlogs in their internal affairs functions. It was just an utter disarray. The sheriff had stepped down at the time and then there was a calling for. External candidates for to help their internal affairs department. At that point, I said, you know what? I could help. I can help there. I have good experience there. And I came here as one of those external investigators. Then rising to their civilian commander, their accountability has been something that's always been important to me. And I'm not afraid to hold that accountability for our officers. I do think with the power that an officer has the power to arrest or to detain, we give them a firearm. You know, ultimately they can take someone's life and the preservation of other lives. That's significant. And we have to make sure that those folks that are out there wearing our uniform and doing the job that they've sworn to do are held accountable when they don't when they are those toxic employees, when they are the folks that shouldn't be wearing the badge. I've encountered those folks. They need to go and they need to have that accountability. So I'm going to work hard with our independent monitor, with our citizen oversight board, with all those entities that provide oversight, but also with our leadership team, with our leadership teams of our departments, and letting them know that this conduct misconduct is not going to be tolerated. And when I'm making those final decisions on discipline, you can trust that I'm going to make those decisions based on, first the evidence, but ultimately on holding folks accountable. We cannot continue to to allow behavior of misconduct to take place and not me. And with that, though, I do want to balance you know, people make mistakes. Officers are not are not robots. They make mistakes. I made mistakes as an officer. We got to balance that. Right. We got to make sure that we're not exacting a pound of flesh for an honest mistake, that we we recognize that that folks will make mistakes. Where can we train? Where can we make our officers better? We have to take advantage of that as well. So I want to work with our our police, you know, our police department, our fire department or sheriff's department, community corrections, all our departments and our safety department to make our staffs better at their job and provide them more training. So it limits those mistakes that we do make. Thank you. I appreciate that. I will look for that. I will support your nomination tonight, but I will hold you to that standard. It may only be a year and a half. Left in this particular administration, but every one of. Those days matters to our residents. So I hope you'll be swift and judicious in that work. Thank you. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for not seeing anyone else. And I'd like to hear from you. Earlier, I was on, I was like by 3 minutes, hoping. We continue on. With our meeting. Madam. Mr. Hagan, you. But this is not the time. Madam Secretary, please roll call on Council Resolution 145, please. See tobacco. No. Clarke, i. Flynn. I. Herndon, I have. All right. Cashman, i. Kenny Ortega. I. Sandoval. I. Sawyer. I. Torres. I. Black Eye. Madam President, I. Madam Secretary, please close the voting and announce results. One Me 12 Eyes 12 Eyes Council Resolution 145 has been adopted. That concludes the items to be called out this evening. All bills for introduction are ordered published. Council members remember this is a consent or block vote and you will need to vote. Otherwise, this is your last chance to call out an item for a separate vote. Councilmember Ortega, will you please put the proclamations and resolutions for adoption and the bills on final consideration for final passage on the floor? I will then, as President, I move that proclamations and resolutions be adopted and bills on final consideration be placed on final consideration and do pass in a bloc. Vote for the following items. Proclamation 244. Resolution 146. 153. 154155156157158148. 1491 5132. 133. 134. 135 to 38. 239 240. 129. 136 137 139 one 3815. Ten. 21. 15. Ten. 22 127. And I believe that's it. I believe that is it. We we got them all their council secretary. We did. Thank you. All right. Wonderful. It has been moved and seconded. Madam Secretary, roll call, please. CdeBaca. I. Eye for an. Eye. Brendan. Hi. Hi. Cashman. Hi. Kenny Ortega. Sandoval. I swear, I. Torres. I. I. Madam President. I. Madam Secretary, closed the voting and announced the results. 13 eyes. 13 eyes. The proclamations and resolutions have been adopted and the bills have been placed upon final consideration and do pass. Tonight, there will be a required public hearing on Council Bill 20 20003 changing the zoning classification for 735 North Milwaukee Street in Congress Park.