LETAC citizen advisory committee gives Colorado Springs City Council recommendations tied to increasing police funding

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) -- The Law Enforcement Transparency and Advisory Commission formed three summers ago in the wake of nationwide protests against police after a Minneapolis man, George Floyd, died while in police custody.

But the current version of the LETAC is responding to a challenge from the City Council to be more proactive in responding to community concerns -- specifically, a lack of resources for the city's police department.

During a Council work session Monday, the LETAC presented three recommendations asking the Council to allocate more money from the city budget to police, starting next year.

"We have some new members and we decided that we need to get ahead of the curve and not solely respond to police incidents, which of course we are still involved in," said D'ontay Roy, LETAC chairman. "This is what citizens asked us to do."

The recommendations include: Filling at least 90 openings for officers, dispatchers and other personnel, and upgrading recruitment and retention efforts; lowering officer response times; and relying more on state-of-the-art technology.

The LETAC said that the recommendations resulted from several months of feedback from citizens, and Council president Randy Helms said that the recommendations provide more details than the Council has in its own efforts to provide more police funding.

Police Chief Adrian Vasquez said that the recommendations aren't new, but are objectives that the department has been working on.

"But it all depends on the budget process and the funding that's available," he said. "One thing I'm trying to do is increase the budget for recruitment and retention from $20,000 to $30,000."

Helms said that the preliminary preparations for working on the 2024 budget will start in September.

"The recommendations don't include specific amounts," Helms explained. "But the city's budget office will start looking at this soon. We know how important it is to LETAC and the community."