New Pueblo police officers filling in numbers

Officer Titus Mote has been learning the streets of Pueblo for seven months now. He is one of the recent additions to the Pueblo Police Department, and went through 22 weeks of classes and 15 weeks of field training. Now, he spends his days patrolling the city. “Helping people is probably the best part of what we do on a daily basis,” Mote said. The department now has 198 of 207 available officers on the streets. It’s a number that has Chief Troy Davenport feeling optimistic. “We, I think, have finally started to dig ourselves out of the hole that was created by the recession,” Davenport said. In the most recent police academy class, nine out of 10 recruits made it through training, a number that’s up from past classes. “We are very encouraged by our last academy class. It’s, again, very, very difficult to predict what might happen with any particular class. We’ve done the best we can to recruit resilient people,” Davenport said. Davenport said he hopes this success continues, but he also wants to make sure the city is getting the best officers. “We need officers, and we’re very well aware of that. But we need officers that can function; and can function, hopefully, on a very high level,” Davenport said. Mote says he is still getting used to the job, but he is looking forward to getting to know the whole community. The department is still a year out from hiring officers whose jobs will be funded by the sales tax increase passed by voters in November. That will bring the total staffing to 230.