Mayor Mike Johnston’s team this week insisted the proposed Denver Police Department cuts to help pay for the immigrant crisis will not result in fewer officers on the street.
City leaders are scrambling to find money to support the humanitarian effort that has cost city taxpayers nearly $70 million.
Laura Swartz, a spokesperson for the Department of Finance with the City and County of Denver, pointed to budget shuffles of unspent police funds and a proposal to shift financial responsibility for training officers who work at the Denver International Airport to the airport as reasons for optimism.
Every year, DPD returns to the city’s coffers between $7 million and $10 million in unspent funds that are earmarked for recruiting and hiring uniformed and administrative positions, Swartz said.
The reason the money goes unspent?
Officials are unable to find and hire new officers, she said.
“It’s not positions,” Swartz said. “It’s a dollar amount set aside.”
As of April 12, the department had 1,545 sworn officers, said Doug Schepman, a police spokesperson. The department is budgeted for 1,639 officers.
Johnston has proposed this year redirecting roughly $4 million of these budgeted, but unspent police funds to the immigrant response.
These actions, Swartz said, would mean no “material impact” to public safety.
More than 41,000 immigrants — mostly from South and Central American — have come to Denver over the past 16 months. Most crossed the southern border illegally.
The city has spent more than $68 million on the humanitarian response, but has been reimbursed about $14 million.
Early in the crisis, city leaders decided to assume the cost of temporarily housing these new arrivals and paying to transport them to the city of their choice.
The programing for the response is expected to cost $90 million this year.
Johnston had feared the costs would be twice that amount and directed department heads to tighten their budgets by as much as 15%.
The city has already scaled back on Department of Motor Vehicles and Parks and Rec services with $5 million in cuts from the budget.
It hasn't been enough.
Johnston has proposed roughly $35 million more in departmental cuts, which city council still needs to approve.
The proposed cuts came from about two dozen departments, according to a slide presentation on the city’s proposed budget cuts.
Under Johnston's plan, the DPD for example would be cut $8.4 million, or 1.9% of its entire budget.
But that $8.4 million represents nearly 25% of the $35 million Johnston is looking to shave from the city's overall budget.
Public safety — which includes fire, police and the sheriff’s office — accounted for nearly half of Johnston’s proposed cuts, or $16.9 million.
Swartz said the city has been receiving calls from Denver residents concerned about what the public safety cuts will mean for public safety.
“Even if it’s a small percentage of the budget, this has real world consequences,” DJ Summers, director of policy and research for the Common Sense Institute, has said.
Founded in 2010, the institute is a nonprofit organization in Greenwood Village that conducts fiscal and economic research.
Last week, the institute released a report that analyzed Johnston’s proposed cuts — particularly those to public safety — and its impact at a time when crime is on the rise.
“This is starting to have the consequences we were afraid of,” Summers said.
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