Dave's Blog

Open space, parks, arts, culture and other amenities are reasons people move to a community but it is the lack of public safety that causes people to leave. Knowing this simple truth, I (and the rest of city council) give public safety our top priority.

To improve my knowledge of police operations and the challenges law enforcement faces I recently completed the Lakewood Citizens Police Academy. In addition to the high level of training officers receive, the professionalism Lakewood achieves and the respect officers are taught to give citizens, there are a couple things I don’t think most people appreciate.

The first is the daily requirement to make life or death decisions in a split second without the benefit of adequate information. The class got to use computer simulations (a super video game) where we were put into situations where innocent bystanders and criminals intent upon killing us were mixed together in an daily life situation. With just a quick visual evaluation of the circumstances we had to decide whether to use deadly force (shoot someone). As each class mate went through their scenario the outcomes were usually bad with either the officer getting killed or an innocent bystander being shot.

In my exercise, I came upon a young man waving a gun around. While clearly a deadly threat situation, I didn’t shoot because he might be an undercover cop. But he continued to wave the gun around despite my repeated orders to drop it. Finally he suddenly started to aim at me. The threat was overwhelmingly so I shot him before he could fire at me.

The object of the exercise was to teach officers to assess a situation quickly. Although the department teaches its officers to use every tool possible to avoid the use of deadly force sometimes it is unavoidable. The key is to figure out the right course in a split second without the benefit of knowing all the facts. It was easy after the fact to play arm chair quarterback and decide what should have been done. The difference was after the exercise we had the benefit of knowing how it was going to turn out and who were the criminals and who were the innocents. In real life an officer doesn’t have the benefit of knowing who is who and how things will turn out.

The other surprising thing was how much compassion is involved. I took a couple of ride-along with officers to see their daily lives. In my first outing with Sgt. Fisher, we were called to the scene of a suicide. An elderly man in hospice care decided to speed up his departure with a bullet to the head. He was found by his family and neighbors who called police. Upon arriving the officers had to treat the scene as a potential crime. But while they were determining whether it was a suicide or a murder, they were dealing with the grieving family members. In the midst of potential chaos with firefighters, corners’ office personnel, several police officers and a victim’s advocate along with several family members the officers managed to assess the situation while comforting the grieving family and neighbors.

A couple days later, I rode along with Detective Stacy Collis, the school officer for Green Mountain High School. We started off patrolling the streets around the school to make sure the kids leaving school for lunch were driving in a safe manner. We then got a call to check on an elderly woman who hadn’t come to work in several days. The stack of newspapers on the doorstep wasn’t a good sign. Officers broke into the townhome and found the woman dead. Again the scene had to be secured and assessed to determine whether she had died of natural causes or whether a crime was involved. Again this was done quickly and professionally all the while comforting the friends and neighbors who had arrived. With two deaths in as many ride-alongs I was beginning to feel like the bad-luck angel of death.

After leaving this scene we were called to a grocery store where an elderly man didn’t know how to get home. He was embarrassed and probably had been warned not to drive alone. He didn’t want to tell us how to contact his family while the officers needed to find someone to come get him.

A couple days later I attended the police department’s annual awards ceremony. Scores of officers and employees were recognized for extraordinary acts of courage and/or dedication. None of the acts I had witnessed rose to the level of recognition. Instead they were just the daily routine for our officers. While not to take anything from the awardees it seems to me the way our officers manage to professionally enforce the law, treat everyone with respect and help those in need on a daily basis without going crazy in the process is nothing less than heroic.

After a couple weeks off for the holidays, I’m now back at it with a vengeance. It’s been crazy with meetings and tours. Met with our state legislators (Betty Boyd, Mike Kopp, Max Tyler, Moe Keller, and Sue Shafer) for breakfast with the city council legislative committee (Adam Paul – Chair, Stack, Peterson, Baroway and Quinn). They have their plate full with 1 to 1.5 billion dollars in more budget cuts and medical marijuana rules.

GMCA had a successful holiday season with Adopt a Family, Santa Visit to Foothills School and Holiday Lights Contest. Their website site (www.greenmountainestates.org) is improving in leaps and bounds.

Met with business leader Steve Hart of FirstBank to hear business concerns about medical marijuana and Bill Marino (former Planning Commissioner) to discuss plans for an innovations lab. Also met with former Jeffco Sheriff (and Ward 4 resident) Ron Beckham to get a law enforcement perspective on marijuana. Also attended the Lakewood Police Union’s Holiday potluck.

Attended the January meeting of the ArtsLinkJeffco at the Lakewood Art Council’s gallery at 85 Union Blvd. to hear about the exciting arts and cultural programs coming to Lakewood. Attended the NARFE (National Active and Retired Federal Employees) monthly meeting to hear about changes in Federal tax laws. Visited West Colfax Community Association.

Attended the quarterly meeting of the Rooney Valley Joint Planning Committee where my ward mate, Adam Paul, was elected Vice-Chairman. At city council, I got the opportunity to nominate my ward mate to be Council President this year. Adam is also chair of the council’s legislative committee.

My friend Tom Keller invited me to visit an auto club here in Lakewood that displays classic, race and luxury cars. I’m going to write a news story about this wonderful program and will try to get them to collaborate with the railroad enthusiasts’ club that is hoping to bring a restored electric trolley car to the new RTD Oak Street Station area.

Adam and I held our January town hall meeting a week later than normal (to accommodate the holidays and the rescheduled state legislator’s town hall). Unfortunately the confusion surrounding the rescheduling caused problems with our normal venue at the Presbyterian Church. So we moved to the Methodist Church on Cedar Blvd. School board member Jane Barnes was the featured guest with a lively discussion of school closings and other educational issues.

Attended Green Mountain High School’s After prom and Community Connections meetings to keep up on the great work the school is doing. Found out that GMHS has the lowest dropout of any school in Jefferson County (more on these successes later).

In order for the citizens to have confidence in the integrity of their city council reps, it is important to address the issue of campaign financing. After all, large special interest donors do not make contributions to candidates without expecting loyalty to their causes should that candidate get elected.

Council recently passed a measure saying that there is no limit to the amount or the source of campaign donations. Instead of legislating campaign finance reforms, the council decided to rely upon public disclosure to moderate the influence of special interest money.

The Council’s thought was that if the public knew where a candidate was getting their donations, then the voters could decide with their vote whether they approved of the outside influence. However, this depends upon the voters having access to campaign contribution information.

Many voters are not aware that my opponent received the majority of her $17,000 in campaign donations from lobbyists, special interests, political insiders and developers… including $1,000 from Carma, the company that developed over the Rooney Valley.

Although the campaign finance disclosure reports are available on the city’s website, very few people will be able to find them and check them out. (You can view the disclosures here.
http://www.lakewood.org/index.cfm?&include=/CC/FCPA/Candidates/2009/Candidates.cfm)

What is most unfortunate is that the disclosures are not reported until AFTER many voters have received their mail ballots. I have been reporting my campaign contributions on my website throughout this election cycle here.

Most voters depend upon the media for their information. Unfortunately, our primary news source, the Sentinel, didn’t say a word about where the campaign donations came from. With the exception of one or two letters to the editor and blog entries like this one, there has been no reporting about campaign donations.

Since I believe that transparency is critically important to a positive relationship between a government body and the citizens they represent, we have been doing our best to publicize where the Ward 4 campaign donations have been coming from. Unfortunately, some people believe that simply reporting the facts is a form of negative campaigning. I say let the people know what is happening and let them decide for themselves what they think about it.

Having been around the block, I’ve seen how old ideas reappear as new ideas.

I’m sometimes asked where my ideas come from and I believe that they come from the many years of experience in community service, military service and my work as a professional economist.  As a people, we are always driven to improve our view of the world. However, complexities often arise which force us to listen to views which appear to be incompatible to ours.  One of my greatest strengths is to look at both sides from a positive perspective and to try to find similarities or complementary relationships which can be used to create acceptible alternatives.

 

For example, West Metro Fire has saved money by investing in employee wellness programs.  They have workout rooms in every station as well as in the administration building and they actively encourage everyone to particpate in the wellness program. Participation creates strong and more effective firefighters and it has dramatically reduced our workman’s compensation costs and our medical insurance expenses.

At Saturday’s October town hall meeting with Lakewood’s state legislators, participants got to try out the state’s Colorado Backseat Budgeteer, an interactive web site that explains how the state’s budget is compiled and offers users options for budgeting the money different agencies and programs receive. Each selection offers a synopsis of the costs and effects of cutting or funding budget option, including the “status quo” option that reflects current budgetary proposals.  The meeting also included comments from Mark Ferrandino, who sits on the Joint Budget Committee.