Mayor discusses race, Floyd, police

In the space of a few days, the scenes at Denver’s George Floyd protests went from chaotic and scary to crowded but peaceful.

Mayor Michael Hancock says that has everything to do with the protesters and is not a change in approach. Although Denver Post reporters covering the protests have observed a shift in positioning and aggressiveness from police, the mayor insisted in an interview that the city’s strategy hasn’t changed.

With calm restored to the streets, Hancock spoke with The Post for 15 minutes Thursday about his evolving views on law enforcement as a youth, his support for city police today and his skepticism toward the many who seek to defund public safety. The following conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.

I’m sure you heard what your aide, Kwon Atlas, said about firing cops, and that Public Safety Director Murphy Robinson quickly said that wasn’t going to happen.

Where do you come down on the remarks Atlas made?

Let’s be clear about something first and foremost — I’m not at all confused about who can dismiss police officers in this city. This is a flippant comment by a young staff member. It’s a teachable moment for him. One of the things we’ve seen not only in Denver but across this country is people have made statements that they’ve had to come back and say, “I was caught up in the emotion, and I said something I probably shouldn’t have.” So Kwon has been talked to. He is a bright young man that allowed his emotions to get to him. And so, with that said, we’re not confused about who can hire or dismiss a police officer in this city.

I’ve always said we’re going to do everything we can to hold officers accountable for the intentional errors they make, particularly when they result in putting people in danger and costing lives. We hold true to that and we’ll continue to do that, but let’s not make more out of this than what it is: that a staffer got caught up in his emotions and said some things that he probably shouldn’t have said.

You’ve mentioned that you share in the outrage we see in the street over the death of George Floyd, and clearly this moment has resonated with a lot of people. Why do you think that is?

Well, I think for one, this was very real. We actually watched, up close and personal, someone die on video. Not understanding why the officer and officers who were present couldn’t recognize that this gentleman was pleading for his life, and he made it very clear: “I can’t breathe.” To all of us watching the video, it didn’t seem like there was much of a struggle going on other than to find a way to breathe. So that was difficult to watch. I think it moved a lot of people, doesn’t matter what race you come from, what side of law enforcement you’re on, because I’ve talked to a lot of police officers across the country who are just as moved and disappointed and pissed off by what they saw as I was, as you were, as the people who were standing there. The realness of the video made it difficult for all of us.

But also acknowledging that we have, across this nation, seen and heard of such horrific incidents occurring. Many have been caught on video. Philando Castile — one that I can never get out of my head. As a black man I recognize and I know many other people empathize with the fact that we have got to stop this senseless loss of life at the hands of law enforcement.

When you were growing up, how did you view the police?

Just like a lot of young boys, you grow up wanting to be a police officer. I think the vast majority of 8-year-old boys, if you ask what they want to be when they grow up, they either want to be a professional sports athlete or a police officer, and I was no different.

I grew up, and at some point it begins to change. You see the unfortunate mistrust between the African American community and police departments. I have a healthy respect for police officers today because I’ve had a closer interaction with them over my adult life, but I’ll tell you there was a time when I had a very difficult view of police officers.

When was the time that you had a “difficult” view of police?

In my teenage years, particularly in my latter teenage years, as a young man out doing things I probably shouldn’t have been doing. But also I had more interaction with cops being pulled over as a young driver, not understanding why I was being stopped. I had an officer explain to me I was being pulled over because I was in the wrong neighborhood, and he wondered why.

Policing’s changed, and it’s because people have leaned in and demanded changes, have demanded levels of excellence, have demanded different standards when you interact with our community. We still have a long way to go, with George Floyd, Philando Castile, many others, including those in our city who have lost their lives at the hands of law enforcement.

It strikes me that there are two camps right now: One is saying we need to reform policing, and others say we need to burn it down, start from scratch, reimagine what policing can be. Which camp do you fall into?

I think that, without arriving at a destination in terms of “you have to tear it down,” I think we need to have serious conversations about what type of policing as a community we want. Denver has, to some extent, under my administration, gone through those conversations, and as a result we’ve changed a lot of our use-offorce policies. We’ve changed some of our tactics that officers use when engaging, and we have fallen on the side of bringing more support, including mental health support, as well as de-escalation tactics, in our city.

Now, are we where we want to be? No. But we’re a long way from where we started in 2011. And unfortunately it’s taken some tragedies to where we’ve leaned in and said we’ve got to make some changes. I know Chief (Paul) Pazen, Director Robinson and I are committed to doing those things.

and police tactics?

I think it’s maybe too early to know specifically all the things. But there are a couple things we’re doing.

One, we’re taking a look at the matrix that has been referred to in terms the eight metrics around 21st-century policing, to determine where we are with regards to those. I’ll tell you Denver is pretty much at six and a half of the eight that we’ve at least looked at, but they also don’t have everything that we’ve done. So we’re going to update it, see where we are and see how we can get all the way to where we are completely at eight. These are the same metrics that President Obama has talked about recently, as well as many people at these marches and demonstrations around the country.

Secondly, one of the passions I have is that as a nation we have not addressed the disease of racism and bigotry, which leads to bias, and it leads to biased policing.

I am committed to us finding a way for us as a community, as a society, but starting right here in Denver, Colorado, to look more in-depth at our own implicit biases that lead to unfortunate interactions between law enforcement and people in the community.

We will never deal with the issues that took the life of George Floyd if we do not confront, and really, really go into the laboratory to find a cause and the solution, the vaccine for prejudice and racism in our community.

Of Denver’s $1.5 billion budget for this year, $588 million goes to the Department of Safety. Does the city need to re-evaluate those numbers?

The reality is this is an evaluation we do every year. The question is: Can you balance it with investments in other areas? And we have tried to do that as well. For example, when I became mayor there were no social workers riding in cars with police officers. Today you have almost 30 people who sit second-seat with police officers in cars, abating the lack of translation and interpretation of what someone might be going through, and allowing for the mental health professionals and clinicians to assume control of a situation that would otherwise turn deadly, or end up having someone in jail.

To those who call for drastic cuts in police in our city, I’ll ask: When your family is in trouble, when there is a challenge with regards to maybe a burglary at your home, or you’re being physically threatened, who are you going to call if we don’t have the right complement of law enforcement?

In the last couple days, when police have kept their distance at the protests there’s been zero unrest among protesters. In retrospect, was the amount of force in the f irst few days a mistake?

Let me just say this: I watched and was involved and monitoring action on the street from Day One. There was a decided change in the tone of the protesters from day to night in the first few days, where officers had the same tactics that you see today where they just stood back and really managed the perimeter. We saw bottles, rocks, very deadly weapons being introduced in the night time.

Not much changed, as we move toward today, except for the tone of the demonstrators.

What you see are peaceful demonstrations occurring today because the demonstrators took it upon themselves. They stopped people who picked up bricks. People try to tag, they’re saying, “Stop, we’re not doing that here.”