Climate shift

Kevin Vaughan, Rocky Mountain News

Published July 28, 2007 at midnight

Text size  

• 0 Comments
• Email
• Print

Manager of Safety Al LaCabe has undertaken a huge task in changing the culture of Denver's police, fire and sheriff's departments. He has earned some praise, but the glacial pace of the reviews of police shootings has frustrated many.

Denver Manager of Safety Al LaCabe has a bright red "easy" button on the desk in his third-floor office, but it's been little help in the quest to prod the city's police, fire and sheriff's departments not only to do things differently but to think differently.

LaCabe's work in what may be the most thankless job in city government has led to a sweeping overhaul of policies governing the use of force and the oversight of the police department. Vast changes in the way cops are disciplined are on the horizon.

But some of LaCabe's goals - like hiring more women and minorities in the fire department - have proven frustratingly elusive.

And a man widely acknowledged as one of the hardest workers in town has found himself the subject of criticism that he's not getting things done.

Particularly vexing to city officials and outside observers has been the slow pace at which he has followed through on issuing public reports detailing police shootings - a move aimed at transparency that has bogged down.

It hasn't all been fun, acknowledged LaCabe, a former street cop turned prosecutor turned assistant U.S. attorney, but he said he relishes the challenge.

"This is a job that I have found that I've used every bit of experience that I've had in law enforcement to do every day," he said.

Immediate controversy

On July 4, 2003, a little more than two weeks before John Hickenlooper moved into the mayor's office, Denver police officer James Turney confronted a developmentally disabled teenager armed with a knife. Turney, who was responding to a 911 call, shot and killed Paul Childs, unleashing a vocal cry for changes in police procedure and discipline.

LaCabe walked into that controversy when he agreed to become Hickenlooper's manager of safety, a job that many people don't understand.

In a nutshell, it is this: LaCabe oversees Denver's police, fire and sheriff's departments. He makes all hires and metes out all discipline. He is responsible for the policies of all three agencies.

Those three agencies count for roughly half of the city's budget and form perhaps the most visible presence of city government in the lives of many residents.

During his tenure, LaCabe has taken on a number of difficult, long-term projects:

• Revamping police use-of-force policies and increasing the independent oversight of the department.

• Overhauling the system of discipline.

• Trying to increase hirings of minorities and women, particularly in the fire department.

• Bringing a new level of professionalism to the sheriff's department.

The heft of LaCabe's workload is reflected in his office on the third floor of the police building, with a view across the plaza toward City Hall and the Denver Mint. The office is decorated with mementos of his time as a Marine, as a police officer, as a prosecutor.

It is the office of a busy man. Thick three-ring binders line one wall. His conference table is clean, but only because he stacked everything he was working on a nearby shelf.

And that "easy" button that sits on his desk?

"It doesn't work," he said, deadpan.

On this day, LaCabe is impeccably dressed, as always: charcoal suit, monogrammed white dress shirt, lavender tie with matching cuff links and a handkerchief tucked neatly into the pocket of his jacket.

One former colleague, Denver attorney and talk-show host Craig Silverman, gives LaCabe high marks both for the way he carries himself - and for the substance behind it.

The two of them worked together for more than a decade in the Denver District Attorney's Office. More recently, Silverman has found himself across the table from LaCabe in police discipline cases.

"He's always been fair - I think he has good judgment and is a good person," Silverman said.

New oversight of police

When LaCabe took office in 2003, the city faced a budget crisis. And he also had to deal with the fallout from the Childs shooting and the questions it raised: How do you approach the use of force? How do you change the dynamic so officers know they have options besides their guns? How do you build a system that fosters trust, rather than suspicion, from the public?

"It's really not about the Paul Childs shooting in and of itself," LaCabe said. "It's about how do you deal with, and how does the police department deal with, these types of issues."

In the wake of the Childs shooting, LaCabe pushed initiatives to increase the use of less-lethal weapons, like Tasers that fire electrified darts, and to improve training on how to deal with mentally disabled people.

And ultimately, the old oversight system was replaced with an independent monitor, who participates in investigations of police officers and sheriff's deputies and recommends possible discipline, among other duties.

At the same time, LaCabe was determined to do away with the age-old practice of looking at police shootings only at the moment an officer pulled the trigger.

Instead, he was determined to begin looking at all the decisions officers made leading up to that point. His goal: Get to the mindset where officers work hard to avoid shootings by controlling situations through other means, whether that's different tactics or less-lethal weapons.

More public information

On April 15, 2004, LaCabe suspended Turney for 10 months, concluding that he made a number of tactical mistakes that led to the deadly confrontation with Childs.

At the same time, LaCabe dramatically altered the way police shootings are investigated - and what the public is entitled to know about them.

Under the old system, the district attorney would decide whether an officer was justified in firing a gun. State law requires only that an officer have a reasonable belief that someone is in serious danger before using deadly force, and charges against cops for on-duty shootings are almost unheard of.

If decisions were made internally that an officer made mistakes, they stayed internal.

No more.

Now, the DA still conducts a review on whether criminal charges should be filed. But LaCabe vowed to issue a detailed, public "decision letter" in each case that looks at the tactics and actions of officers.

But writing the letters proved to be more difficult and time-consuming than LaCabe had anticipated, and the work languished.

On April 30 this year, Denver District Attorney Mitch Morrissey threw open his office's files on police shootings - which he had been keeping closed while LaCabe did his work - and indicated his frustration at the backlog in LaCabe's office. In the past two years, LaCabe had issued a ruling in only one case, and in six others, including one dating to May 2005, LaCabe had not completed the work.

"If sufficient progress has not been made by the time of the next officer-involved shooting, we will move away from the city's new protocol, which has significantly slowed the process of opening our case file," Morrissey wrote in a letter to Police Chief Gerry Whitman.

The reason for the delay, LaCabe said, was simple: He had a lot of other initiatives under way, and the work was time-consuming and difficult.

Hickenlooper lauds the idea of offering the public a look at police shootings that never existed before. But he also said failing to get the letters done defeats that goal.

"I'm not sure that we're not going into too much detail," Hickenlooper said. "And Al and I have talked about it - is there a way we can get these out more quickly and still get all the information we need to?

"Al's a very conscientious person. He doesn't do things halfway."

City Councilman Doug Linkhart believes the delay has been tantamount to not having the new policy.

"I think the slowness of that has meant that we really haven't implemented that policy to a degree," said Linkhart, chairman of the council's safety committee. "We're not there yet."

One of the most vocal critics of the delay has been Mark Silverstein, legal director of the ACLU of Colorado. He said LaCabe's letters in the Childs case and another controversial shooting were "very detailed, in-depth letters, and I think they are a step forward in transparency."

"The problem has been the intolerably long delay," he said. "The public needs to have available full information, but it needs to have full information as promptly as possible.

"And that's been a problem."

For his part, LaCabe has shifted some responsibilities in his office and has a new goal of getting caught up on the letters by the end of this year. Since Morrissey's letter, he has released two more.

But getting completely caught up will take more months, he said.

Overhauling discipline

One of his other initiatives - changing the way discipline is administered - presents its own problems.

It is LaCabe's responsibility to impose discipline in any cases in which police officers, firefighters or sheriff's deputies break department policies or rules. But as he began studying the city's existing system, he found himself frustrated.

"What I found was that it was consistently inconsistent," he said.

Department supervisors made wildly different recommendations on discipline.

The goal now is to make the system more equitable.

A task force and outside experts looked at the system, and at how it's done in other cities and even in private industry. The work is not finished, but LaCabe said the process will result in a new way of doing business based on two things: categorizing misconduct into six categories, from least serious to most serious, and outlining "presumptive discipline" for each level.

LaCabe hopes the system - expected to be in place by next February - will be more fair.

Two other initiatives - increasing the number of women and minority hires and modernizing the sheriff's department - have seen baby steps that LaCabe hopes will blossom into full-blown change in the coming years.

Recently, two blacks began work as Denver firefighters - the first blacks hired by the department in nearly seven years.

LaCabe's goal for 2008 is to dramatically increase the number of qualified candidates when he fills positions.

In recent years, if one of the departments had 25 openings, LaCabe might have 27 or 28 candidates to choose from. The new goal: three times as many qualified candidates as openings.

At the sheriff's department, LaCabe has presided over a uniform change - out with brown, in with dark blue - that has given deputies a more professional look. The new justice center, under construction along West Colfax Avenue, will dramatically improve working conditions for the deputies who shuttle inmates to and from court.

Ultimately, LaCabe said he wants the sheriff's department to become "a jewel in the public's eye."

Plenty of other things keep LaCabe busy.

He's trying to break down the "silos" that separated the three agencies, to streamline a budgeting process that for decades saw the three departments competing against each other for money.

He's working to move police officers out of the city's 911 center and replace them with civilians. His office oversees an "alternatives to sentencing" project aimed at easing jail crowding by keeping people out of the criminal justice system.

He also finds himself reviewing about 50 disciplinary cases a year and testifying in a disciplinary hearing, on average, every four or five weeks. He teaches classes at the police academy, and he spends time at community meetings.

High marks

So, how is he doing?

His boss is happy.

"Everybody has their own opinion of how fast things should change," Hickenlooper said. "But I look at the timeline that we talked about back in 2003 and we've gotten more done than I ever thought, and certainly more done than we had imagined in 2003.

"On top of that, the changes within the culture have been significant."

He pointed to the time LaCabe has spent teaching at the police academy, working with the 465 officers hired during Hickenlooper's first term.

"Al LaCabe has been out there many, many times to every single academy class and talked to every one of those officers individually for hours," Hickenlooper said. "If you want to talk about how to change a culture, that's the best way to do it, to go out there and put your fingerprint, your psychological fingerprint on the new people coming into that culture."

And Richard Rosenthal, the city's independent police monitor who, like Morrissey, was critical in the delay on the shooting letters, gives LaCabe this endorsement: "I believe LaCabe is the right manager at the right time."

Denver police Sgt. Mike Mosco, president of the Police Protective Association, declined to talk about LaCabe, citing ongoing negotiations for a new contract.

Denver City Councilwoman Jeanne Faatz, vice-chair of the safety committee, believes LaCabe is "plenty busy." But she also believes he is hamstrung, to a certain degree, by the very nature of a job where every decision is open to second-guessing.

Linkhart agreed with that assessment.

"It's certainly a tough job," he said. "It's thankless."

And sometimes even LaCabe - who often leans on the old Marine motto "If it doesn't hurt, you're probably not doing it hard enough" - wonders what he's doing.

In May, after a vacation and some soul-searching, he started thinking about how long he could do the job. His father died of a heart attack at 49. LaCabe will be 60 later this year, and he wondered whether the job could kill him.

He shared that thought process with his staff, and within hours the City Hall-police department rumor mill was in high gear - he was going to pull the pin and walk away, it was whispered again and again. But he talked it over with Hickenlooper, and he rearranged some of the assignments in his office, and he vowed to stick with his original plan, to stay on the job at least through Hickenlooper's second term, which runs until 2011.

"When I retire from this position, I want to retire," he said. "I do not want to leave this position.

"Even though this is a lot of work, I enjoy this."

Al LaCabe

• Born: New Orleans

• Age: 59

• Military: Marine Corps - four years

• First law enforcement job: Joined the New Orleans Police Department in 1970. Started law school in New Orleans.

• Heading west: Came to Colorado in 1977 and took a job as a criminal investigator at the Denver District Attorney's Office while continuing pursuit of his law degree at the University of Denver. Was later assigned to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation.

• Earned degree: Graduated from the DU law school in 1979.

• A new job: Spent three years as an agent at the Colorado Bureau of Investigation before returning to the Denver DA's office as a prosecutor in 1983.

• Federal work: In 1994, LaCabe moved to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Denver, where he stayed for nearly a decade, interruped only by a short foray into private practice, calling it "my brief bout with insanity."

• Back to the city: Agreed to become Denver's manager of safety when John Hickenlooper took office as Denver's mayor.

• Salary: $136,786

• Family: Married, two grown sons, two grandsons.

Letters hanging fire

Denver Manager of Safety Al LaCabe was criticized in April for delays in issuing letters explaining his conclusions about the actions of police officers involved in shootings.

He still has not issued letters in four cases:

• March 19, 2006: Officer Jason Brake shot and wounded Lorenzo Pasillas-Hernandez, 60, in a confrontation that began when the man allegedly choked his wife, armed himself and fled his Clayton Street home. He was later charged with third-degree assault, for the alleged attack on his wife before the gunfire, and disorderly conduct.

• April 20, 2006: Officer Rick Nixon shot and killed Jimmy Orozco, 23, after the man sped toward him in a car. Orozco was suspected of breaking into a Cadillac.

• June 25, 2006: Officers Ryan Grothe, James Sewald and Derick Dominguez shot and killed Michael J. Ford after the man went on a rampage at a Safeway distribution center, killing a co-worker and wounding four others.

• Dec. 2, 2006: Officer Larry Valentia shot and wounded Daniel Ayon, 43, as he hid at his mother's house after allegedly robbing a gas station.

Staff writer Todd Hartman contributed to this report. vaughank@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5019

Featured

• Winter Escapes

  

  Your insider’s guide to the copious joys of the coolest season.

• Rocky Multimedia

  

  The news comes alive in our videos and slide shows. Catch up on what's happening today.

• Broncos Video

  

  More Broncos videos. Get the latest from Dove Valley

• Sam Adams' Open Mic

  

  Open Mic: Ink-stained wretches in sports

• Season To Share

  

  The Post-News Season To Share campaign provides grants to area nonprofits.

• The Rocky @ 150 Years

  

  The Rocky was there when Colorado became a state in 1876. Read our coverage.

• A Dozen on Denver

  

  And the winner is... Robert Ziegler! See the whole fiction series by clicking here.

• Stein's View

  

  Editorial cartoons by Ed Stein

• Bronco Dean's rant

  

  Listen to Bronco Dean's midweek rant on the Raiders.