Denver City Council Has Questions About Mike Johnston's Yellow Vest Ambassadors

Yellow vests aren’t just for crossing guards or French protesters anymore: They’re being sported on Denver’s streets by so-called Yellow Vest Ambassadors, the centerpiece of Mayor Mike Johnston’s Clean and Safe Downtown Initiative.

The ambassadors range from city employees to members of the Downtown Denver Partnership (DDP), property managers, business owners, representatives of registered neighborhood organizations and workers with the Denver Dream Center — a nonprofit that helps those experiencing homelessness, hunger, poverty, addiction or abuse. Beyond the yellow vests, ambassadors have one thing in common: They're already paid to be downtown.

“It's those personnel who already work downtown and can serve as that visible source of information and support to residents of Denver and visitors,” Laura Wachter, who works in Denver's finance department but was formerly deputy director of the Department of Public Safety, explained during the January 31 Safety, Housing, Education & Homelessness Denver City Council committee meeting.

Along with their mustard-colored vests, ambassadors are equipped with a QR code that provides information about activities and events downtown so they can give people directions. While Denver Police Department officers won’t wear vests, they're the enforcement arm of the program along with the civilian Street Engagement Team, which can issue citations for low-level ordinance violations.

The organizations involved with the Yellow Vest program have daily phone calls to be sure they’re on the same page and share a linked communication channel. Most ambassadors — particularly those who aren’t contracted with the city as security or, like the Dream Center, service providers — are simply there to “report and activate,” according to Wachter.

These people aren’t supposed to make contact with individuals experiencing homelessness or engaging in criminal behaviors. They’re just downtown as friendly faces for residents and walking directories for visitors with questions. The Dream Center and its employees can provide outreach for people in need of more help, connecting them to various food and shelter services as well as administering first aid and attempting to de-escalate conflicts, as the center has done for some time as a city partner.

The DDP’s contracted security guards are also ambassadors who can engage with people and provide outreach. At the January 31 meeting, Councilmember Shontel Lewis asked about the training that ambassadors receive and whether it is sufficient for their level of community engagement. She also expressed concern that while DDP security guards aren’t armed, private security guards for businesses involved in the program could be.

“I just think it creates the grounds for potential vigilantes,” she said. “It's giving me a lot of pause and concern.”

Councilmember Darrell Watson — who was wearing his yellow vest at the meeting — defended the program. He said he thinks the Dream Center and other city contractors receive solid bias training and that Lewis’s worries about private security guards having guns come from a lack of clarity and are not a potential reality.

The mayor's office confirms that no ambassadors will be armed.

Councilmember Sarah Parady expressed other misgivings.

“I'm beyond gravely concerned,” she said. “I would say that I'm appalled, and I'm not going to mince words about that. We are empowering property managers, downtown business owners or whoever else is in this category to police and surveil fellow citizens in partnership with private security services that are not subject to our public oversight systems.”

Parady added that because the program is run through an app developed by the DDP rather than a public system, there could be a lack of transparency. She said the premise of the ambassadors and the app is incongruent with the city’s discussion about how to bring about true safety for citizens after the 2020 protests in the wake of George Floyd’s death.

“This pilot takes place fully outside all of that because it is a privatization of a deeply public issue,” Parady said. “All of the progress that we have made and that we have yet to make is entirely contingent on public oversight and public processes. Surveillance and equating people experiencing homelessness with trash that you can report on an app is not where that conversation needs to go.”

Parady is correct about the privatized nature of the Clean & Safe app (which had the name before Johnston said he was running for mayor, much less announced the Clean and Safe Downtown Initiative this month). It's existed since 2021, when the Business Improvement District that the DDP oversees wanted to create a better way to monitor cleanliness and safety issues in the 120 blocks that make up downtown. The app automatically geolocates where someone sees a problem, and they can then take a photo of the issue that's reported to the DDP. Concerns can be as simple as new graffiti, or as tricky as needles left on the sidewalk.

Anyone has been able to use the app over the past few years. Now ambassadors have been instructed to not only rely on it themselves, but to point people to it. The DDP has also expanded its reach slightly beyond the 120-block area of the Business Improvement District.

“We are now working in closer collaboration with DDP to ensure fast, accurate, and easy reporting and responses,” the mayor’s office says of the new program's reliance on the app.

Jordan Fuja, the mayor’s press secretary, says Johnston sees the app as a tool that fits with his goal of increasing public safety and building a more vibrant downtown. Though it is key to plan implementation, the mayor’s office confirms that the DDP is still the “owner of the app and funds it directly.”

Another element of Johnston’s downtown initiative is a fast response time. The city is focusing on quickly deploying the right people — be it the Dream Center, the STAR response team, or even the DPD. The city also notes that people should still call 911 for life-threatening situations.

According to Fuja, reports through the Clean & Safe app are usually triaged within an hour. Ryan Ertman, director of safety and security for the DDP, explained during the committee meeting that each report in the app goes straight to his email.

“I directly triage all of these calls that are coming in from this app, specifically for this greater downtown Denver area that we are focusing our attention on,” he says. ”It's just a little bit of extra work on our part to make sure that we're monitoring these in a timely manner.”

Although Ertman presumably takes time off, Yellow Vest Ambassadors are currently deployed 24/7. The funding for the vests themselves (Cotopaxi brand, and about $78 each for the city) came from the Denver Department of Excise & Licenses and Denver Economic Development & Opportunity, out of American Rescue Plan Act funds intended for downtown safety and activation.

The mayor’s homelessness plan is also part of the effort to create “clean streets and safe sidewalks” downtown. At the committee meeting, Ertman showed that since January 8, the app has received 62 reports, with 26 related to maintenance and 36 related to safety. Camping was the subject of eighteen, and drug use was the subject of twelve; five more minor items were referred to 311.

Along with the vests and the app, the mayor’s plan calls for activating the downtown community and businesses. It will do so through previously announced Dynamic Downtown Denver grants and working strategically with business leaders.

Meanwhile, Denver City Council committee members plan to work more closely with the program, too.

“This will warrant additional conversations,” said Councilmember Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez, who chairs the committee. “This is also a clear example of how rolling out programs with little information and understanding can spark a lot of questions and concerns.”