DENVER Denver's police department is proposing to not run a single recruit academy class in 2027, a decision that has at least one city council member warning it could push 911 response times back toward levels not seen since t he 2008 recession.The freeze was outlined during this week's City Council budget hearings, where Denver Police Chief Ron Thomas, Denver Sheriff Elias Diggins, and Denver Fire Department officials presented their 2027 spending plans.All three of the city's public safety agencies are seeing budget increases for next year, but only fire and the sheriff's department are still running new academy classes.In an interview with Denver7 Thursday, Chief Thomas said DPD's 2027 budget "compares, I think, quite favorably to 2026," saying the department was able to protect its core services and strategic priorities, including efforts that have driven down crime citywide."The two classes that are generally part of our budget were removed from the budget," Thomas said. However, he noted a class of 57 recruits starting in October are set to graduate in April 2027, meaning new officers will still hit the street next year even without a new class launching.Thomas said the decision came from a position of relative strength. "I think we're in a very good position staffing-wise, and so we thought that it would be better to sort of shift priorities to other things and be able to make sure that we were able to fund other things that were equally as important," he said, pointing specifically to the department's civilian staff who run the crime lab, property and evidence unit, and records department.DPD is currently at about 95% to 96% staffing, according to Thomas, its highest level in years after hiring more than 300 officers over the last three years.According to a spokesperson with the Denver Police Department, it is authorized to employ 1,637 sworn officers. As of September 11th, the deparments actual strength was at 1.565 officers.And the department expects roughly 70 to 80 officers to leave through attrition in 2027, a number Thomas said should be nearly offset by the incoming April graduating class."I do not," Thomas said, when asked whether the freeze would extend beyond 2027. "It's important for people to know that we constantly look at data as it relates to workload and make sure that we make those staffing adjustments to make sure that there's no district that is overworked or that response times are increased."But Councilmember Kevin Flynn, who represents southwest Denver's District 2, said the math concerns him."The biggest concern is the rapid turnover that we see in large departments like this," Flynn said. "We had a lot of hiring back maybe 30 years ago, and so we have a lot of officers who are coming up on their retirement. If we hire 100 officers in the course of a year, but we retire 75, we're really just treading water."Flynn said the consequences of falling further behind are personal for the neighborhoods he represents. "By pausing the hiring next year, I'm very concerned about losing even more ground," he said. "The impact that has for my constituents and everyone else's constituents on the street is longer response times to 911 calls. Very concerned about that."He pointed to the last time Denver went without new academy classes, a stretch from 2008 to 2012 following the recession."In my part of town, which is far southwest, when I took office, the auditor's office, Auditor Gallagher, had done a report that response times to high priority 911 calls was 16 minutes on average, which means that some were more than 16 minutes," Flynn said. "There's parts of my district that are hard to get to quickly, and if you have fewer officers and they're deployed farther north, they're not getting there in 16 minutes or less. That's troubling."Flynn said he's requested data showing 911 response times broken down by police district over the last five years. "There's a perception that it's growing, and certainly with pausing the hiring next year, and we're having officers retire or resign, we're going to have an even greater challenge in meeting a 911 call for my constituents," he said.Thomas pushed back on the direct comparison to the 2008 freeze, saying staffing levels were far lower at the time."Our staffing was much lower in 2008. 2008 to 2012, we didn't hire any recruits. Our staffing level was much lower," Thomas said. "Our authorized strength has increased by probably close to 200 officers since then, and so the number of officers that we had to start with was much lower back then than it is now."Flynn has also asked the department for the cost comparison between a standard recruit academy and a lateral academy, a shorter, less expensive class used to bring in already-certified officers transferring from other departments or cities.Denver Sheriff Elias Diggins, meanwhile, described his department's 2027 budget as "comparable" to 2026, despite what he called tough decisions to meet budget targets."In 2026, we had three academies that we were running. In 2027, we're going to run two academies, but if we're able to, we might be able to do a third as well," Diggins said. The adjustment shifts total recruits from a range of 60 to 80 in 2026 down to 40 to 60 in 2027, he said, a difference of about 20 recruits the department hopes to make up later in the year.The sheriff told Denver7 the proposed cut to its recruit academy amounts to $500,000 in the 2027 budget.Diggins said the department's staffing, currently around 64% to 65%, has been climbing steadily. "In 2021, we were actually at 54%. So through the years, we're continuing to move in the right direction," he said.He attributed some of the earlier staffing struggles to a wave of retirements among deputies hired in the mid-1990s. "That wave of retirements has subsided, and so in 26 and 27, we're able to say that we believe that our recruitment and retention will outpace our attrition," Diggins said.Diggins said he wants the public to understand the sheriff's department isn't stepping back from hiring. "I would like them to know that we're continuing to hire people, that we're going to continue to run academies, and we're going to continue to recruit the best people who want to become Denver deputy sheriffs," he said.Flynn said he supports the sheriff's department's approach specifically because of the risks understaffed jails present. "Very happy that we have two academy classes for sheriff's deputies. The turnover there is even greater. They're only at about 58 percent of staffing, and that puts us at risk in our jails," Flynn said. "In our two jails, that puts us at great risk in our two jails to be understaffed, and so I'm very happy to see that we're doing two recruit classes there."Flynn said he wants to see DPD return to a full hiring schedule as soon as possible. "I want to get us back to having police academy classes, three of them a year, because that's what it takes to build up to the 1,600, and I think it's 1,620; some officers is our authorized strength," he said.The Denver Sheriff Department's 2027 budget also includes the closure of five housing units across the city's two jail facilities and two corridor positions, producing an estimated $4.9 million in savings, alongside a $4.8 million increase to its Denver Health medical contract.Denver Fire Department's proposed budget maintains four-person staffing on all apparatus and plans an 18-person recruit academy for 2027.Denver's Department of Public Safety Executive Director Al Gardner also issued the following statement regarding the proposed changes: Denvers Department of Public Safety continuously evaluates staffing, deployment strategies, and operational needs across our agencies to ensure that we can continue providing comprehensive public safety services. The proposed 2027 budgets for Denvers police, fire, and sheriff departments deliver important investments in our employees and in the resources necessary to provide high-quality, core public safety services throughout every neighborhood in Denver. ...read more read less