Colorado prison guards to help out during DNC

Add Colorado Department of Corrections officers to the swelling list of public safety personnel who will have a role in the Democratic National Convention.

Corrections officers – who primarily staff Colorado’s prisons – will be used for security and for escorting visiting officials during the convention, Colorado Department of Public Safety spokesman Lance Clem said Wednesday.

“They’re going to be involved in a variety of different things,” Clem said. “A lot of it is escort duty. ... It’s nothing especially exciting or glamorous.”

Clem declined to say how many corrections officers would help out during the convention or precisely what their jobs would be. He said prison guards would not be staffing the detention centers Denver is setting up to handle people arrested during protests or feared street violence.

“That is not their jurisdiction,” Clem said. “That’s not their function.”

The number of corrections officers involved in the DNC is enough that three Denver-area prisons have cancelled their weekly inmate visitation time this weekend, “due to operational commitments during the Democratic National Convention,” according to the Department of Corrections’ website.

Visitation has been cancelled at the Colorado Correctional Center in Golden and at the Denver Women’s Correctional Facility and the Denver Reception and Diagnostic Center in northeast Denver.

“We have staff committed for the DNC,” Corrections Department spokeswoman Katherine Sanguinetti said.

She referred further questions to Clem.

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