But residents don't want to talk about that, he says.
"It's interesting," Thomas tells Westword. "Often we will go and we will have prepared our responses to violent crime increases, those kinds of things, and the most consistent concern is traffic."
Last week, the Denver Police Department released results of a 2023 public safety survey in which over 85,000 people from Denver's seven DPD districts and 78 neighborhoods reported what their top safety concerns were in Denver right now.
The top five: Police capacity, property crime, homelessness, traffic safety and community capacity, according to the results. The most prominent themes discussed in the narrative survey comments were traffic safety, public order crime, property crime, "laws/policy/accountability" and then, lastly, violent crime. Many of the concerns mirror safety issues that were brought up by residents during Mayor Mike Johnston's recent series of neighborhood town halls about safety.
Looking at the City's overall crime dashboard and year-to-date National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS) stats, however, it would appear residents are shaking their fists at the wrong things.
Denver residents appear to be more concerned with traffic safety and property crimes than drugs and violence.
City and County of Denver
Meanwhile, DPD data shows Denver has seen drastic decreases in property crime reports over the past three years, despite residents listing them as top and prominent concerns in the public safety survey.
According to the city dashboard, the amount of property crimes reported in Denver dropped by nearly 30 percent compared to the previous three-year average. At this time last year, more than 20,000 property crimes had been reported and nearly 23,000 were reported in 2022.
This year, that number is down to 14,898.
"Some of it just may be their perception," Thomas says. "Even if crimes are trending downward, I don't know that everybody feels as though their neighborhoods are safe. A lot of it may have to do with the fact that they don't see us [patrolling as much]...but they still see individuals openly doing it."
For property crimes in 2024, Denver has seen decreases in reports of motor vehicle thefts by 43 percent, burglaries by a little more than 23 percent, auto thefts by 36 percent, and arson by around 12 percent.
Drugs and alcohol reports, though? Those have increased by nearly 50 percent when compared to the three-year average. “All other crimes” are up 33 percent; robberies by 2.35 percent; aggravated assaults by 3.11 percent.
Many of the crimes that people are worried about, per the DPD survey, aren't being reported as much in recent years.
City and County of Denver
"The proliferation of guns in our community is a big issue," he says. "People possessing guns who shouldn't have guns in their hands, and then doing things with guns that are threats to the community."
Since 2022, the number of seized guns by DPD has fallen by nearly 12 percent, according to city stats, with 887 being confiscated this year compared to the 1,004 guns taken off the streets in 2023 at this point and 1,061 in 2022. Still, Thomas says gun violence is a "significant challenge" that he wishes more people recognized on the safety survey.
Another concern he brought up that wasn't highlighted as much was Denver's "drug epidemic."
"I don't know that [residents] recognize quite the epidemic that is going on," Thomas warns. "Whether it be meth or heroin or fentanyl, these are things that didn't make their way into [the survey's top issues] that are significant concerns for us."
Denver's police chief believes that many of the issues people brought up in the safety survey have either been addressed by DPD or are being worked on behind closed doors. This includes the number of officers currently patrolling the city streets, described in the survey as "police capacity," which was listed as the biggest overall concern among residents.
According to the survey, Denver residents were specifically concerned with delayed police responses to emergency calls, inadequate police staffing and lack of police followups.
"We are continuing to do things to both increase our capacity and also shave workloads so we can be more responsive," Thomas says, adding that a class of cadets was recently hired on by DPD. Another class will be starting "in a couple of weeks," in addition to more throughout the year.
"By December 2024, we will have hired enough people to count 167," he says, "which I think will help us in meeting some of those capacity challenges."
The city is addressing residential concerns shared in the survey, as well. Last week, Mayor Mike Johnston unveiled the System Providing Evidence-Based Enhancements in Denver (SPEED), a new pilot program intended to decrease traffic deaths in Denver. Run by the Denver Department of Transportation & Infrastructure, SPEED's first major project will bring $2 million worth of changes to Alameda Avenue and Federal Boulevard, including more speed limit signs, feedback signs that digitally display a car's speed, speed enforcement and long red-light times.
