For new Aurora police chief Nick Metz, a hurried initiation

AURORA | Aurora police Chief Nick Metz’s first week on the job was hardly a smooth one.

Just five days into his tenure as the city’s top cop, a member of the SWAT team shot and killed an unarmed black man during an arrest. The shooting of Naeschylus Vinzant has sparked protests and outcry that mirrors similar flare-ups between minority groups and police around the country.

Police have released few details about the shooting, and Metz said he is working hard to balance the public’s howls for details with the need to get the investigation right. He said he also recognizes that he only gets one chance to handle the shooting correctly so he has to make sure everything is done correctly.

“If you don’t do it right the first time you can really muck things up,” he said in an interview at his sparsely decorated office last week.

Still, as he tackles one of the more-controversial Aurora police shootings in recent memory, Metz said he is focusing on other parts of his agenda as well.

Metz spent more than 30 years with Seattle police and climbed the ranks from officer all the way to an assistant chief. So it’s fair to say he not only has a keen understanding of how that department functions, but also a clear fondness as well.

But, Metz said, he recognizes that Aurora is a different place, the APD is a different police department and the agency’s culture is different from any other. Given that, he stressed that he isn’t looking to turn this department into a Rocky Mountain version of Seattle PD.

“What worked there may not work in Aurora, or for that matter, Aurora may have something in place that may work even better,” he said.

Metz said that while he may bring some ideas from Seattle to Aurora, his plan is to look at ideas from Aurora, Seattle and anywhere in between.

“I want to look at what other agencies around the country are doing. I want to hear other innovative ideas,” he said.

In Seattle, Metz said he often turned to the community for advice about how the department could be better. Those efforts resulted in the department turning to less-lethal options including Tasers and other devices, as well as giving officers more training on how to deal with a crisis, he said.

The Rev. Harriett Walden, a longtime activist and critic of some police conduct in Seattle, said her organization regularly turned to Metz when they had concerns.

She said she knew Metz from when he was a captain on the south side of town and that ongoing relationship with him helped quell community concerns and launch initiatives that improved the relationship with police and the community.

“It’s hard to build relationships in the middle of the crisis,” she said.

She said Metz was always approachable and easy to work with, something she expects will continue in Aurora and makes Metz an ideal fit to run a police department at a time of heightened tensions. 

“I think he is going to do a lot of great things there,” she said.

Aurora Mayor Steve Hogan called Metz’s first week on the job a “baptism by fire,” but said the affable and easygoing chief has handled things well.

Metz’s first week was marked by several media interviews and a church forum where he fielded questions from a frustrated public.

Hogan said that during tough times, Metz’s approachability will be helpful.

“I do think that it’s important that people feel comfortable and feel like they can approach someone and that they will listen,” Hogan said. “That’s exactly the persona the chief projects more often than not.”

Metz is the department’s first black police chief and he takes over the department when tensions between police and the black community — both in Aurora and around the country — are more strained than in previous years.

Hogan said he isn’t sure if Metz’s race will help ease any tensions, and noted that Denver’s police chief is black and that city’s police force  still has had a tense relationship with the minority community in recent months.

But, Hogan said, the fact that Metz worked in a diverse city with a diverse police force in Seattle will be helpful in Aurora, especially as the city tries to make the police force better mirror the city’s diversity.

“I think that background and that experience in a big city that we are on our way to becoming, is going to be more valuable than anything else,” he said.

Metz said he is committed to recruiting more officers from Aurora and the metro area as opposed to officers from out of state. He said he wants to launch a sort of ROTC program in local high schools that would let students interested in law enforcement take some college-level classes in law enforcement before they graduate. He had plans for a similar program in Seattle but it never got off the ground.

People from the community joining the police department will be crucial going forward, he said, and to do it the department has to keep improving its relationship with the community

“It really means getting out in those communities and building those relationships,” he said. “And building that trust.”