DENVER — It's now a lot easier to get all kinds of information about the Denver Police Department.
On Thursday, the department published an online dashboard with details about internal affairs investigations, officer-involved critical incidents, even calls for service and response time trends. It’s located under the “Transparency and Performance” tab on DPD’s home page.
“I hope it adds a layer of transparency, that it allows people to see what we’re doing, see that were holding ourselves accountable,” said Denver Police Chief Ron Thomas. “[Let people] see that we're measuring response times and doing everything we can to reduce those response times. I’m sure there's always questions when officers use force. Being able to get specifics on those cases, I think, is important.”
The department said it will soon add two more dashboards to its website: DPD’s strategic objectives and use-of-force incidents. DPD said both are still being developed. When asked if the upcoming use-of-force data would include cases stemming from the 2020 protests, Chief Thomas said “yes.”
“Some of this information will soon be legislatively mandated to provide to the community,” Thomas said, referring to a 2020 state law requiring, among other things, that departments share this data with the state.
“But we wanted to get ahead of that. And not just collect it – but make it available to the public.”
Chief Thomas said the department will be open to public feedback on this dashboard if someone spots an error or has a questions about the content. Online, DPD offers an email dpdlistens@denvergov.org for people to contact them.
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