Mayor Mike Johnston has a new plan for safety concerns in downtown Denver, featuring more cops, security guards, horses and a kiosk.
"Revitalizing downtown has been a core focus for our administration since we took office, and investing in our safety and outreach resources is the clear next step,” Mayor Mike Johnston said.
The new plan will see more police patrolling the city center, including a dedicated new team, as well as a permanent new kiosk to be staffed by police on the 16th Street Mall. It will also bring back horse-mounted patrols to downtown, among other changes.
The announcement comes ahead of Coors Field’s opening day on Friday and the partial reopening of the 16th Street Mall next month. It also follows a high-profile stabbing spree earlier this year — part of what Chief Ron Thomas described as a 2025 “spike” in violent crime, following last year’s drop.
Most of the new plan will be funded from current city resources. But it will also get backing from the Downtown Development Authority, which recently got voter approval to spend hundreds of millions in the city center. DDA has already dedicated $3.7 million to police overtime for the next year.
Johnston was joined at the announcement by the city’s new district attorney, John Walsh, the Denver Police Department and the Downtown Denver Authority, along with downtown boosters, lobbyists and business leaders.
So what’s the new plan?
The Department of Public Safety and the Denver Police Department are funding a 10-officer dedicated downtown police unit to patrol the city center on foot, bikes and motorcycles. The city will add ten extra patrol shifts per day for the next year.
The police department’s mounted horse patrol will be trotting through downtown. And the downtown motorcycle patrol will receive two extra bikes for a total of 20.
Cops also will be stationed at a new DPD kiosk at 16th and Arapahoe streets, where residents and tourists can get in touch with law enforcement easily.
Meanwhile, the Downtown Denver Partnership will hire five extra private security officers, and the city parks department will add several shifts for park rangers to patrol downtown parks.
Johnston also said it will ramp up work on infrastructure and cleanliness.
All of this will supplement other recent efforts, including a downtown mental health and support team, an expanded Denver Fire Department medical unit and bike paramedics with Denver Health.
Johnston also says the city will be consolidating its various emergency lines, like the police non-emergency line and the STAR line, into two numbers: 911 for urgent crimes and 311 to report people having mental health crises.
Business owners respond
Derek Friedman is the owner of Sportsfan, which made headlines for slapping a 1 percent “Denver Crime Spike Fee” on all purchases in 2022.
He purchased his shops in 2014. Back then, he said, the Mall felt safe.
“Starting in 2019, I saw and experienced a totally different environment,” he said. “We suffered from a massive increase in theft. I boarded up my stores during the riots. I cleaned up my stores after looting. And I consoled employees who had been personally threatened. I even spent the entire night, several nights, in the back of my stores, in an attempt to protect them.”
Yet more recently, he said he’s seen the 16th Street Mall bounce back to normalcy since construction fencing has come down. Tourists are back. Kids are playing outside. And he has recently dropped his “Crime Spike Fee.”
The new safety plan, as he tells it, is a return to how public safety was handled on the Mall a decade ago
Shoplifting has always been a problem for retail. And as he sees it, crime has not been totally solved. But things are getting better.
“This is a fragile situation,” Friedman said. “And so that's why I'm super excited about the increased investment, the plan for horses and bikes and foot patrol. It's exactly what we need, and it feels very familiar.”
