AURORA | Heather Morris outlined her plans for strengthening ties between the Aurora police chief’s office and the rest of the police department and city this week, saying one of her top priorities as chief will be building trust through outreach.
“I think communication is really important, because in the absence of communication, it’s a vacuum. There’s a hole. And so, we start making things up. It’s just what we do if we don’t know what’s going on,” the city’s latest interim chief of police said Jan. 23, during her first interview with the Sentinel.
“This is a really great community, and I’ve really enjoyed getting out and meeting a lot of people, and I’m going to continue to do that.”
Morris is the fourth person in two years to hold the reins of the Aurora Police Department — after Vanessa Wilson’s firing in April 2022, the department was led for several months by Dan Oates, who had served as Aurora’s chief a decade prior, at the time of the Century 16 movie theater shooting.
The City of Aurora launched a nationwide search for Wilson’s replacement but came up emptyhanded toward the end of Oates’ employment contract. Before his departure, Oates was able to entice another experienced chief to Aurora, Art Acevedo, who previously led police departments in Miami, Houston and Austin.
Acevedo served as chief for 13 months but never shed the “interim” title. On Jan. 16, he announced publicly that he would step down and return to Texas to spend time with his teenage son.
Six days later, the mantle passed to Morris, who worked with Acevedo in Houston and Miami before Acevedo invited her to serve as Aurora’s interim deputy chief last year.
Like his predecessors, Acevedo left controversy in his wake. He sniped at police union representatives at a press conference shortly before announcing his resignation, and the City of Aurora has released surveillance camera footage of a heated courthouse argument that happened the following day, where Acevedo appeared to poke the chest of a city attorney as members of the public looked on.
Acevedo later said pressure from the city’s police unions — Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 49 and the Aurora Police Association — did not influence his decision to step down. The unions rallied opposition to Wilson in the months before her departure, organizing a “no confidence” vote in October 2021.
While Acevedo has not commented on the poking incident, City Manager Jason Batchelor has said it didn’t factor into the chief leaving.
Morris was standing next to Acevedo and Pete Schulte of the City Attorney’s Office during the incident, but brushed it off as “nothing unusual” for the two men, who she described as having “big personalities.”
“Had there been an attack, I wouldn’t have been just standing there,” she said. “Anything that was inappropriate in terms of physical contact, I certainly would have intervened.”
She declined to say what the two were arguing about, describing the subject matter as “attorney-client privileged.”
Morris also said her vision for opening lines of communication between her office and rank-and-file officers will involve sitting down and finding common ground with representatives of the department’s two unions.
Her comments stood in contrast to the adversarial rhetoric that Acevedo used shortly before leaving the department.
During a Jan. 11 press conference, the former chief said that “if you listen to the union rep, no officer has ever done anything wrong.” He also said he did not “care what the union thinks,” adding that “she doesn’t care what the union thinks,” in reference to Morris.
“The chief doesn’t speak for me,” Morris said this week. “I speak for myself.”
When asked whether she felt the need to reconcile with the unions after Acevedo’s comments, Morris said her concern was “probably not so much about reconciliation” but rather “moving forward.”
“It’s based on sharing information and having conversations,” Morris said. “It’s not about me, and it’s not about them. It’s about the men and women of this department. So, I’m going to do everything I can to establish a good relationship and good communication with both the FOP and the APA.”
She said she plans to start sharing weekly messages from the chief’s office and regularly attending roll calls and briefings to form a deeper connection with officers.
Morris also hopes to build on the progress the department made under Acevedo toward fighting officer shortages through recruitment. As of Tuesday, the department deployed 630 officers, with another 57 officers completing academy training in two classes, out of a budgeted sworn staff of 748.
The total number of officers in the academy is the largest the department has seen in years, which Morris credited to changes to the department’s hiring process that were designed to streamline recruitment and meet the requirements of the city’s consent decree reform agreement with the Colorado Attorney General’s Office.
“We didn’t do this alone,” Morris said, acknowledging the city’s Human Resources Department and the authors of the decree. “We now have the resources to be able to get folks through much quicker and offer up jobs.”
The department hopes to bring a cadet program online this year in partnership with the Community College of Aurora, which Morris said could serve as a “bridge” for high school students involved in the APD Explorers program and other young people interested in law enforcement careers.
Morris said the department will also prepare a strategic plan for retaining officers, incorporating input from her command staff, union leaders and officers themselves.
While the department has struggled to meet some of the goals included in the consent decree — specifically concerning the management of use-of-force data, which the firm tasked with monitoring Aurora’s progress has described as “extremely concerning” — Morris said the department is close to publishing its online “transparency portal.”
The webpage will make current APD enforcement data available to the public. Morris said the first phase of the rollout will include use-of-force data with a second phase including information about bias-motivated crimes.
She said the department’s anti-bias training for officers, for which the consent decree set a deadline of February 2022, will be unveiled “in the next couple of months.”
Morris also said she wants to continue to promote proactive policing efforts such as the department’s Direct Action Response Teams and other special units designed to combat gangs and gun violence.
Acevedo previously credited a recent local drop in crime to Aurora’s pursuit of proactive policing as well as municipal mandatory minimum sentencing laws, even as the state and other large cities experienced similar drops.
When asked whether she would consider sticking around to become the first permanent chief since Wilson’s firing, Morris said she was open to the idea.
“If, when we’ve done all these things, the men and women of the department, and the city, and the community want me to remain here as the chief of police, it would be a privilege,” she said.
“I’m proud to wear this uniform. I’ve worn the Houston Police Department and Miami Police Department uniforms, and I’m just as proud to wear the Aurora Police Department uniform.”
LOL at the newest Interim Chief describing the two protagonists, Interim Chief Acevedo and Public safety City Attorney Schulte as having big personalities. To begin with she does not even know Schulte and both he and Acevedo are stiffs. Already the new interim Chief who hopes to establish trust and communication with the public is lying to us.
My bad. Aparently the new Interim Chief has been here for several months and so should definitely know Pete Schulte does not have a big personality.
The city, and chief, keeps using the staffing number of 748 an intentional deception! The voter approved mandate sets the staffing number by population and should be 798. Part of that ballot measure was an additional sales tax. The city has been caught dipping into that before and there is no accounting for where that money is now. It should be a refund or being set aside in account to be used as the voters intended. Show me the money!!!!!