The Aurora Police Department needs a new chief — again.
The city is on the hunt for its sixth chief in five years as the turmoil at the top of the troubled law enforcement agency continues. Interim police chief Heather Morris announced Friday that she would not seek to be the police department’s permanent leader.
The city opened its application process for the permanent chief position on Monday and was set to stop accepting applications at the end of the day Friday, Morris wrote in an email to police employees earlier in the day.
“After thoughtful consideration, I have made the personal decision not to apply for the position,” she said in the email, which was distributed to news media by Aurora city spokesman Ryan Luby.
Morris took the helm in January from former chief Art Acevedo, who left the city after 13 months as interim chief. The two worked together in Houston and during a contentious stint in Miami before both joined the Aurora Police Department.
When she was hired as interim chief, Morris said she’d “consider it a privilege” to be the city’s permanent police chief. On Friday, she said her reasons for leaving should be “secondary” to a focus on a smooth transition to the new chief.
“I’m looking forward to assisting in any way I can with the process, and the selection of a chief who is not interim,” she said. “That is something this department needs.”
The APD has seen five different leaders in the last five years. Chief Nick Metz, who retired in 2019, was followed by Chief Vanessa Wilson, who was controversially fired in April 2022. Former Chief Dan Oates then briefly came out of retirement to head the department until Acevedo was hired on an interim basis in December 2022 following a failed hiring process to find a permanent replacement.
Aurora city manager Jason Batchelor will select the next police chief, who will then need to be approved by a majority of City Council members, Luby said in the news release.
Whoever takes the role will face several challenges, including navigating a court-ordered reform effort within the agency after the state’s attorney general found the city’s police officers routinely conducted racially biased policing and used excessive force.
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Originally Published: July 12, 2024 at 2:27 p.m.
