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The Denver Sheriff Department will soon have 20 new deputies at the Van Cise-Simonet Detention Center as an entire graduating academy class will be assigned to the downtown jail.
The new sheriff’s deputies will be a source of relief for the department that paid out more than $6 million in overtime to deputies in 2014.
The deputies — who graduated Friday — will join the majority of recruits from the November 2014 class . Seventeen of those 21 deputies were placed at the downtown jail.
This class is still considered part of the 2014 budget for new sheriff’s deputies, as the 16-week academy began last year. In the city’s 2015 budget, there is money for 47 new sheriff’s deputies, according to department spokesman Simon Crittle. The next academy will start Feb. 17.
Mayor Michael Hancock and safety director Stephanie O’Malley both spoke to recruits at the graduation ceremony.
“Today my message to the prospective deputies is really simple,” Hancock said. “Today you take a sacred and solemn oath to serve and to protect the people of the city and county of Denver.”
Interim Sheriff Elias Diggins was attending a conference with American Correctional Association where he serves on the standards committee. Diggins left a prerecorded message that was shown during the ceremony.
Deputies did receive some new training in light of the city paying $8 million in two excessive force cases, but Crittle said any large-scale changes would come later.
“Really, we’re waiting to get recommendations from the task force before we make big changes,” Crittle said.
This class did receive new training on the use of Tasers after a new directive was handed down.
The new deputies will have a starting salary of $49,000. Crittle said the recruits went through a rigorous selection process and only one or two out of every 10 applicants are selected for the academy.
Among the graduating class was 55-year-old Donald Ward, who is starting his second stint with the sheriff’s department. Ward was a deputy in 1983. He thought it was a good time to try and come back since his current job is being phased out. While the academy was “brutal,” he said it was much better than 1983.
“This academy, I feel, has really prepared the recruits to succeed in the sheriff’s department in this day and age,” Ward said. “Thirty years ago it was nothing like this.”
Fellow graduate Dana Yarbrough, 50, is already familiar with the department: She had been working in the control room at the county jail.
“I just wanted to go in and start helping with the inmates,” Yarbrough said. “I felt I could do the job.”
Joe Vaccarelli: 303-954-2396, jvaccarelli@denverpost.com or twitter.com/joe_vacc
