Colorado’s parole officers now must respond to tamper alerts on parolees’ electronic monitoring bracelets within two hours, the state Department of Corrections announced Tuesday.

The new policy is a significant change in how the department handled tamper alerts and comes three weeks after the shooting death of state prisons chief Tom Clements.

Evan Ebel, the parolee suspected of killing Clements on March 19 in the doorway of his Monument-area home, had removed his ankle bracelet five days before the slaying.

While the contractor that monitors parolees’ ankle bracelets notified the DOC right away, a parole officer didn’t try to call Ebel until March 16, and then contacted his dad on the 18th. An arrest warrant was issued on March 20 — the day after Clements was killed.

Authorities also believe Ebel, who was killed in a gunfight with Texas authorities March 21, may have killed a pizza delivery driver in the Denver area two days before Clements’ slaying.

DOC spokeswoman Alison Morgan said the new policy, which took effect Sunday, emerged from an ongoing review of the department’s parole operations.

“DOC is conducting the review to ensure its policies and operations maximize public safety,” she said in an email.

In an interview, Morgan said the new policy will have a financial impact.

“It will create an overtime situation,” she said.

There are about 14,000 people on parole or community corrections and 212 parole officers managing “the entire offender population,” Morgan said. About 1,500 are under intensive supervision, requiring them to wear monitoring devices. On average, there are three tamper alerts a day, she said.

Morgan declined to divulge specifics about the new policy, saying she didn’t want to reveal the department’s game plan to offenders.

“Because of security reasons, I won’t go into specifics,” she said. “But there is an escalation protocol in place for the officers as to how they will respond, including within two hours appearing at the residence if they have not made contact with the offender.”

Morgan said Tim Hand, director of the department’s parole division, has been working with his management staff on the new policy for more than a week and has been in “close contact” with Gov. John Hickenlooper’s office.

Hand “believes that this is an importation interim measure to implement as we continue to work with National Institute of Corrections for the outside audit” of the department’s parole operations, she said.

“It’s prudent as a result of a critical incident to internally look at procedures and practices as well as bring in outside objective consultants to also perform an analysis,” she said.

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FILE – This undated file photo provided by the Colorado Department of Corrections shows paroled inmate Evan Spencer Ebel. A clerical error allowed Ebel, suspected of killing Colorado’s prisons chief, to be released from custody about four years early, officials said Monday, April 1, 2013. (AP Photo/Colorado Department of Corrections, File) Photo by HOPD

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