Ten years ago, Denver city officials persuaded voters to approve funding for a $378 million justice center that included a modern downtown jail.
The sales pitch promised relief for a crowded jail on Smith Road and pledged to manage the expanded number of inmate beds without increasing the Denver Sheriff Department staff.
But nearly four years after the Van Cise-Simonet Detention Center opened its doors on Colfax Avenue, those promises have fallen through.
The jail already is at maximum capacity, especially in the women’s unit, where inmates often are forced to sleep on the floor.
The jail never has had enough employees, causing deputies to work thousands of hours of overtime a month and leading supervisors to spend most of their time juggling schedules. As of Nov. 30, the department has spent $6.9 million to pay for 146,268 hours of overtime, the highest amount since the jail opened.
When Denver paid out nearly $10 million this year to settle excessive-force lawsuits, the inmates in those cases had been housed at the Downtown Detention Center.
Inmates at the downtown jail file three times the number of grievances, compared with inmates at the county jail on Smith Road, even though the downtown jail is not even twice as big.
And the jail has been at the heart of multiple problems identified by The Denver Post, including Taser usage that violates federal guidelines and a rash of erroneous releases.
All of this leaves people involved — including elected officials, public safety experts and attorneys — asking: What went wrong? And what can be done to fix it?
“There’s no disagreement there are challenges with the Downtown Detention Center,” said Stephanie O’Malley, executive director of the Department of Public Safety. “Part of what is causing these challenges is what I call missteps when the jail first opened.”
As the problems at the Denver Sheriff Department have piled up, Mayor Michael Hancock has demanded change. He launched a massive reform effort, leading to multiple committees, studies and public forums and to the hiring of two out-of-state consulting agencies who are expected to produce solutions.
A modern design
The Downtown Detention Center opened in 2010, the result of a hotly contested voter referendum.
The project won voter support on the argument that it would relieve crowding at the county jail on Smith Road without increasing the tax burden.
Part of the sell included the theory that Denver could double the number of inmate beds without hiring additional staff members.
Multiple people, including Hancock, have said that was how the new jail was pitched.
However, no one in today’s city government will place blame or accept responsibility for the plan.
James Mejia, who oversaw the jail’s construction and now runs a private consulting business, said he made huge efforts to get buy-in from the sheriff’s department, City Council and the community. Countless presentations were given, and he was confident the new jail was headed in the right direction when its opening was celebrated.
“A lot of what’s happening now is really disheartening,” he said. “I’ve got to think there were signals between building it and now that changes needed to be made.”
The city used outside consultants and architects to design the building. But the ultimate decision on staffing was made within the department, Mejia said.
“The design was configured to be able to operate with fewer staff than there were in older buildings,” Mejia said. “Again, it was up to the sheriff’s department to determine if that was a best practice.”
The downtown jail is a direct-supervision detention center and was designed to feature the most up-to-date trends in jail management.
The jail features an open-bay intake center where people waiting to be booked sit in a lobby with televisions and pay phones. Only the most dangerous or unruly people wait in locked cells.
Inside the housing area, deputies work in open pods where inmates sleep, eat, shower, perform chores and socialize. Most pods hold 64 inmates, and one deputy monitors them for a 12-hour shift. Other deputies are stationed in long corridors, and supervisors are supposed to roam the pods and corridors.
The downtown jail also features an infirmary equipped with high-tech medical equipment. It has space for mentally ill and violent inmates, known as “special management pods” by jail employees.
The downtown jail was built with one pod for female inmates, and it is too crowded, often forcing women to live three to a cell, with one sleeping on the floor on mats.
Each year, about 30,000 people come through the jail’s doors, said interim Sheriff Elias Diggins. About 12,000 of those end up spending at least one night behind bars.
Anyone arrested by Denver police, transported by U.S. marshals or delivered on a warrant from another jurisdiction is taken there.
As a result, a volatile mix of people who are upset and angry, often under the influence of drugs and alcohol or dealing with psychiatric problems are brought there, Diggins said.
“This is the place where folks come through after being arrested,” he said. “A lot of them are still dealing with addiction issues. A lot come in and haven’t had their mental health medication. There are a lot of emotions going on when people first come into custody. That leads to more incidents.”
But Diggins acknowledged there are problems within the jail’s operations that have led to problems and unfavorable public perceptions of what goes on inside the jails.
Staff shortage
Almost every day, acting Sgt. Herman Peeper begins his shift with a massive problem on his hands.
There aren’t enough deputies to fill that day’s schedule.
On a recent Tuesday, Peeper spent his first 6½ hours on duty calling deputies to fill the gaps for the next 24 hours. The problem finally was solved when Peeper found a deputy on another floor who was willing to work an extra four hours that evening so other deputies could take their meal breaks.
But Peeper knew the crisis on his floor at the Downtown Detention Center had been diverted only temporarily. He could look at the schedule for the next seven days and see the same blank boxes where no deputy was scheduled to work.
Independent Monitor Nick Mitchell this year called out the staffing shortage and its impact on sergeants in a letter to the City Council. He recommended the sheriff’s department hand over scheduling to an administrative staff so sergeants can get back to supervision.
“Sergeants are the front-line supervisors who can help deal with problems before they spiral out of control,” Mitchell said in an interview.
Instead, sergeants spend most of their time dealing with administrative details such as scheduling, he said.
“When sergeants are absent from the pods, we see uncorrected behavior,” Mitchell said.
The scheduling gaps stem from a staffing shortage. But deputies also use sick days, take vacations and serve disciplinary suspensions.
According to one report released this fall, deputies work an average of 24 hours of overtime per week.
Corrections experts say overworked deputies get tired, and tired deputies can lose focus and patience, which breeds more serious problems.
It also is expensive; the department this year is on track to pay more than $7 million in overtime. The department says it does not track overtime hours worked at each location, but Diggins estimated that three-fourths of the overtime is accrued at the downtown jail.
He and others repeatedly have said the staffing shortage is a major problem. Early projections on the number of deputies needed to run the new jail were short of what is needed, Diggins said.
But the problems for the downtown jail extend beyond its manpower.
Fundamental flaws
In July 2011, inmate Jamal Hunter was beaten and had his genitals scalded with hot water by other inmates. Hunter, who also was choked by a deputy, filed a civil rights lawsuit in federal court after he was released.
The deputy on duty when the attack happened had turned off the pod’s lights in violation of the jail’s rules and was accused of looking away when the attack happened.
But those inmates were able to attack, in part, because of blind spots inside the jail pod where Hunter was housed, said Qusair Mohamedbhai, Hunter’s attorney. Those inmates knew exactly where the obstructed views were, he said.
Jail officials were reluctant to discuss specific design flaws, saying it was a security issue.
But The Post has obtained an October organizational assessment that identified some problems with the physical layout.
The downtown jail also has blind spots in cell pods, the report said. In some pods, support columns were built in the middle of the room so deputies’ views of inmate bunks are partially blocked.
When the sheriff’s department updated the Smith Road complex, architects made sure the support columns were built into the walls, Diggins said.
But the few blind spots at the Downtown Detention Center should not be excuses for violence toward or among inmates, he said.
“We want our staff to move around inside the pods,” Diggins said. “One of the principles of direct supervision is to interact with the population.”
The report also found that the building’s design discourages face-to-face interaction among staff members. That means deputies can work for hours without seeing another deputy or supervisor, the report said.
Deputies also reported that the information desk and lobby space created security and safety concerns, the report said.
The downtown jail also has suffered from poor leadership, as top officers who were in charge of daily operations faced discipline problems of their own.
Michael Than, a former division chief, resigned last December after former Sheriff Gary Wilson put him on investigatory leave. Since then, Than has pleaded guilty to one felony count of filing a false tax return and one misdemeanor count of attempted theft of less than $500. Prosecutors have dropped six other felony theft and tax fraud charges.
Frank Gale, who replaced Than as division chief, remains on investigatory leave after a department captain in June filed a complaint against him.
And Wilson stepped down in July after repeated reports of excessive force by his deputies became public.
O’Malley declined to speak about individual officers. But she said “distractions” can affect someone’s ability to lead.
“You always hope to have leadership that is attentive to the needs of an organization,” she said.
Hope for progress
The man who is one of the names on the building believes the sheriff’s department can turn things around.
There are good people who work at the jail and who want to do a good job, said John Simonet, a former undersheriff and safety manager.
When asked if he regretted his name being associated with the downtown jail, Simonet, who retired in 1999, said no.
“I’m sad other people are experiencing the pain. Frankly, I’m very proud my name is on the building,” he said.
True reform for the Downtown Detention Center begins with a change in the culture, Mohamedbhai said.
“It’s about changing the role of a Denver sheriff from the culture of law enforcement to one of collaboration and rehabilitation,” he said.
Help is on the way for the staffing shortage. Twenty-one deputies graduated from the sheriff’s academy in November, and another 21 are expected to graduate in early 2015. And the City Council approved funding in the 2015 budget to add 47 new deputy positions.
Still, the department must account for attrition, which averages about three deputies per month, said Simon Crittle, a department spokesman.
The goal for all of the consultants, committees, reports and forums is to come up with a plan to change the entire department, O’Malley said. She fully expects many of those recommendations to address issues at the downtown jail.
“I’m optimistic,” she said. “There’s a lot of interest in the Downtown Detention Center. Our job is to ensure those investments have a return on them, and our goal is to work to make that happen.”
Noelle Phillips: 303-954-1661, nphillips@denverpost.com or twitter.com/Noelle_Phillips
What is wrong with the downtown detention center?
As the Denver Sheriff Department undergoes a massive reform effort after a string of embarrassing excessive-force cases, multiple problems have been identified at the city’s Downtown Detention Center.
• In February 2006, 24-year-old Emily Rice died in the jail 20 hours after being released from the hospital after a serious car wreck. Rice bled to death from a lacerated spleen and liver. Denver Health Medical Center reached a $4 million settlement with her family. Four deputies were disciplined for falsifying paperwork to cover their failure to make rounds the night she died.
• In July 2010, Marvin Booker, a homeless street preacher, died in the jail’s intake area after deputies forced him to the ground, used nunchuks on him, put him in a chokehold and shocked him with a Taser. Last month, the city approved a $6 million settlement to cover a federal jury’s award to his family and the family’s attorneys’ fees.
• In July 2011, inmate Jamal Hunter, who was jailed on a misdemeanor charge was placed in a pod with more violent inmates. The other inmates beat him and scalded his genitals with hot water after a guard turned off the lights and looked away. Eight days later, another deputy pushed Hunter to his cell’s bunk and choked him. In July, the city reached a $3.25 million settlement with Hunter.
• Former Division Chief Michael Than, who oversaw the downtown jail’s operations and had worked at the department for more than 21 years, resigned in December 2013 after he was put on investigatory leave. Shortly after his resignation, Than was charged with multiple felonies, including theft of thousands in merchandise from Target stores and tax evasion. He pleaded guilty to one felony count of filing a false tax return and one misdemeanor count of attempted theft of less than $500. Prosecutors agreed to drop six other charges.
• Than’s successor, Frank Gale, was placed on investigatory leave in June after a sheriff’s department captain filed a complaint against him. The complaint alleged that Gale gave preferential treatment to Capt. Sonya Gillespie, who had been arrested after allegedly throwing her cell phone at her boyfriend. Gillespie is the ex-wife of former Sheriff Gary Wilson, who was in charge of the agency at the time.
• Between Jan. 1 and Nov. 5, the sheriff’s department released five downtown jail inmates in error.
• As of Nov. 11, deputies at the downtown jail had used their Tasers 14 times, including six incidents where mentally ill patients were shocked because they were not following orders. During the summer, Wilson changed the department’s Taser policy because deputies’ usage of the device did not comply with federal guidelines.
• As of Nov. 30, Denver sheriff’s deputies have worked 146,268 hours of overtime this year at a cost of $6.9 million. The department says it does not break down how much overtime is worked at each jail, but interim Sheriff Elias Diggins has said three-quarters of the overtime hours worked are logged by downtown deputies.
• In early December, a small group of women staged a “nurse-in” outside the jail after one of them had been ordered by a desk sergeant to stop breast-feeding her child in the lobby. The sergeant’s orders violated state law.
• Sergeants spend more time filling work schedules than actually supervising front line deputies. The supervisory gap leads to poor oversight of daily operations and is a serious problem, Independent Monitor Nick Mitchell wrote in September in a letter to City Council.
• The system used to track rounds by deputies is deficient. It only records whether deputies walked through a pod at an appointed time and not whether the rounds were comprehensive and actually involved checking on inmates, Mitchell’s letter also said.
• The majority of inmate grievances are filed at the downtown jail. As of Oct. 31, 2,639 had been filed by inmates downtown, more than three times the number filed by inmates housed at Smith Road, according to data obtained by The Post. The downtown jail houses 1,500 inmates compared to 830 at Smith Road.
