With the decision this week to terminate two more Denver police officers, six have now been fired this year — one more than in the previous three years combined.

Authorities said the sudden burst of terminations is largely the result of changes made to disciplinary rules in 2008.

But the firings also have occurred under the watch of a mayor who chose not to seek election to the office, pledged not to let open disciplinary cases linger during his brief term and is not worried about maintaining political support within the Police Department.

The seeds for the terminations — all of which involved officers failing to tell the truth in reports or during investigations — were sown in 2008 when the new disciplinary rules were designed, said the city’s independent police monitor, Richard Rosenthal.

“The disciplinary matrix is fully in place now and is being followed by the department with respect to the commission of deceptive acts or lying to internal affairs,” Rosenthal said.

On Monday, safety manager Charles Garcia terminated officers Ricky Nixon and Kevin Devine, who were accused of excessive force for an incident caught on camera outside the Denver Diner in 2009. The two were dismissed for “commission of a deceptive act.” Garcia found that the reports they filed after the arrests did not match other witness accounts.

David Bruno, an attorney for the police union, said no one other than Garcia who reviewed the case made the determination that the officers had been untruthful. Police Chief Gerry Whitman had recommended suspensions for use of inappropriate force, not firing for dishonesty. Bruno said the officers would appeal the firings to the Civil Service Board.

The firings follow Garcia’s termination of Officer Devin Sparks and Cpl. Randy Murr in March for “deceptive acts” days after Garcia was sworn in to the position. Sparks and Murr were caught on videotape during a 2009 beating of then-23-year-old Michael DeHerrera.

Garcia “has done more in two or three weeks than has been done in some time. It has been a long time coming,” said Anthony DeHerrera, the father of Michael DeHerrera.

Garcia replaced Mary Malatesta, who terminated Officers David Torrez and Jose Palomares as one of her last official acts in the safety manager’s office last month. Investigators found that the two officers lied about details of their pursuit of a stolen car.

Prior to Oct. 1, 2008, when former safety manager Al LaCabe introduced a new disciplinary matrix, officers were sometimes fired for lying. But other factors were weighed, including the circumstances surrounding the falsehood, the officer’s disciplinary record and how similar cases had been handled in the past.

The new rules presume that an officer who lies in connection with an investigation, even if it is a first offense, will be fired unless there are mitigating circumstances.

“That should be the accepted standard of the Police Department, that if you make a false statement or try to hide something about an investigation, you shouldn’t be a police officer,” LaCabe said.

All the recent firings were for incidents that took place after the new rules were in place.

During a meeting Tuesday of the City Council’s Health, Safety, Education and Services Committee, Garcia said that without the new rules an effective discipline process wasn’t possible. “I believe sitting in that seat that you couldn’t put together the process without the matrix, it was the key,” Garcia said.

Garcia, who was appointed to the position by Mayor Guillermo “Bill” Vidal, is the former head of the Denver public defender’s office and the fourth person to hold the job in less than a year.

The safety-manager position has come under fire as the DeHerrera case and others have dragged on. It took 23 months to discipline the officers in the DeHerrera case, in part because the investigation was reopened after another former safety manager, Ron Perea, suspended Sparks and Murr for several days without pay, despite the matrix and public calls for their firing. The uproar led to Perea’s resignation.

Vidal, Denver’s former deputy mayor, became mayor in January when former Mayor John Hickenlooper was sworn in as governor.

In a telephone interview, Vidal said that in appointing Garcia, he told him the high-profile excessive-force cases should be handled quickly.

“I didn’t want these cases delayed. I saw them as not only being bad for our citizens but also for our Police Department,” Vidal said. “At the end of the day, our citizens should feel safe and they should not be afraid of our people in uniform.”

Vidal also asked Garcia to speed up the disciplinary process. Last week, Chief Whitman decided to disband the Disciplinary Review Board after Garcia recommended the panel’s elimination.

Eliminating the board is expected to reduce the time needed to reach a decision by 60 to 90 days.

More changes could be on the way.

“I am going to do everything I possibly can to shorten that process in the next four months,” Garcia said.

City Council member Paul Lopez, of District 3, said Garcia is headed in the right direction but warned that the next administration will have to assure future cases are handled expeditiously. “This water has to be carried by the next administration.”

Tom McGhee: 303-954-1671 or tmcghee@denverpost.com

String of dismissals

In March, then-Safety Manager Mary Malatesta fired Officers David Torrez and Jose Palomares for filing inaccurate reports on a police chase. A short time later, her replacement, Charles Garcia, fired Officer Devin Sparks and Cpl. Randy Murr after a long and publicized investigation into the accuracy of their reports following a videotaped beating of a suspect in Lower Downtown. Monday, Garcia fired Officers Ricky Nixon and Kevin Devine for filing inaccurate reports.