Denver City Council finally approved a union contract for the city’s sheriff deputies, nearly four months after the last contract expired.
Deputies will get a 4% pay increase, including retroactive pay starting from Jan. 1, 2026. That’s a smaller raise than police and firefighters received, but it comes in a year that most city employees did not get raises.
The measure passed the Denver City Council on Monday.
Sheriff deputies have been raising alarm bells over turnover, conditions and pay. Denver deputies mostly work in its jails, since the county does not have the kind of unincorporated land that sheriff deputies usually patrol.
Sheriff deputies have long described themselves as the “stepchildren” of the Department of Public Safety and say they go largely unseen by the public and the city’s elected leaders.
Negotiations with Fraternal Order of Police, Denver Sheriff Lodge 27, were scheduled to end last year and had stalled out for weeks.
The contract also comes with a range of other perks, such as expanded bereavement leave, more new shirts and specialty pay for the horse-riding mounted unit. It will run through the end of the year.
The Denver Sheriff Department is struggling with staff.
Sheriff Elias Diggins describes the department as the largest mental health provider in Colorado, since so many people in Denver’s jails are struggling with mental and emotional challenges. As of October, only 67% of the department’s deputy positions were filled, as Denverite reported in an earlier investigation.
Deputies have been quitting in droves, citing mandatory overtime as a major factor. Burnout is running high among deputies. And many are leaving the sheriff department for other law enforcement agencies.
“This creates dangerous situations for deputies and inmates alike,” wrote former Deputy Dennis Grandinetti wrote in a recent resignation letter. “Staff are regularly overworked, forced into excessive overtime, and left exhausted, which not only impacts professional performance but also takes a toll on their personal lives.”
Denver sheriff deputies received a smaller raise than both firefighters and police officers did in their recent contracts.
Police received a 5% increase over the course of 2026, a 6% increase for 2027 and a 4% increase for 2028. Firefighters received a 5% raise in 2026 and a 5% raise in 2027.
Other sheriff departments around the metro have had better pay in recent years at the Denver Sheriff Department and have far lower vacancy rates, as we found in our report last year.
The new contract comes less than a year after Mayor Mike Johnston laid off around 170 employees and eliminated hundreds of vacant positions.
Voters gave other city workers the right to collectively bargain as union units last year, and workers at departments like Denver Public Library and the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure have already joined labor groups.
