AURORA | Fran Gomez’s first exposure to far southeast Aurora was a horse theft on the rolling plains.
The call came in not long after she started with APD in the early 1990s, and the ride out to that desolate stretch of Smoky Hill Road seemed to take all day.
“To be really honest, I wasn’t sure where Smoky Hill Road was,” she said.
Since then, the city’s far southeastern reaches have boomed, and once-barren miles of road are now suburban thoroughfares. And that boarding facility where a disgruntled horse owner snatched their pony probably isn’t nearly as far east or south as Gomez’s new office at Tallyn’s Reach.
“It’s probably that way,” she said, laughing and pointing to the northwest. “I’m sure it’s not this far out.”
Now, two decades after her first foray into the distant reaches of southeast Aurora, Gomez is the neighborhood’s top cop. Last month, Aurora police Chief Dan Oates named her commander of District 3, a sprawling 53-square-mile district that stretches from Interstate 225 east and East Jewell Avenue south. Under her command, Gomez has 108 commissioned officers serving a population of more than 120,000 people in the largest of APD’s three districts.
The promotion marks Gomez’s first assignment in southeast Aurora after a career spent mostly on the north end of town. And since taking over for Commander Jack DaLuz, who retired last fall, she said she’s learned that the misconceptions about southeast Aurora — particularly that it’s all wealthy enclaves where bored cops cruise around all day — are pretty far from the truth.
Granted, the calls out here are different from the calls in north Aurora — construction site thefts are more common than street robberies, for example — but the cops here stay plenty busy.
“Before I came here, I would not have realized how busy the officers here are,” she said. “I listen to the radio and they are busy all day long.”
Gomez’s promotion makes her the highest-ranking female officer in the department’s history. It’s not the first time she’s been the first woman in a leadership role in the department, either. Back in 2006, she became the first female lieutenant overseeing the SWAT Team. Before becoming commander she was the executive captain assigned to the chief’s office, a first-of-its kind position.
Sgt. Tim O’Brien has known Gomez since early in her career when O’Brien was one of Gomez’s sergeants during her stint as a patrol officer in District 2. Now, he works for Gomez as a patrol sergeant in District 3.
O’Brien said Gomez has excelled at each stop along her career, in part because she’s friendly and can get along with everyone.
“Even the SWAT guys liked her,” he said with a laugh. “And they don’t like anybody.”
Even though her career has been marked by leadership roles in a line of work that remains very much a boys club, Gomez said she never set out to be a trailblazer. She just wants to be a good cop.
One of Gomez’s friends is Littleton Police Chief Heather Coogan, one of just a handful of female police chiefs in the area. Coogan said Gomez’s outlook on being a female officer climbing the ranks is the right one.
“We don’t think of ourselves as women first, we think of ourselves as police officers first,” she said. “It’s not about being a woman, it’s about being a really good cop.”
Gomez said that while she didn’t pay much attention to being the first woman in some of the leadership posts she’s attained, she hopes she can be an example for other female officers who might not see leadership roles as a viable option.
“I’m hoping now with me up here maybe other women in the department will think, ‘It’s not unreasonable to think I’m going to be a commander, or I’m going to go up maybe even higher,’” she said. “I’m hoping because I’m here people see that you can move up and there is that opportunity.”
Gomez said she never felt any discrimination from other officers, but there were a handful of times when she was on patrol that some people on the street had an issue with a female officer responding to her calls.
One instance that sticks out came when she was working patrol and she and her partner — who was also a woman — responded to a call from a mother whose mentally ill son was off his medication.
Gomez said the woman was mad because when she needed police to help with her son, it usually ended with an officer wrestling her son onto a stretcher. At 5-foot, 3-inches tall, Gomez wasn’t the ideal wrestling opponent.
But, Gomez said, she told the woman that the two female cops before her were likely all she’d get, so it was worth letting them talk to her son. After a lengthy and peaceful chat, Gomez said she told the man he didn’t seem to be feeling real well, and asked if he wanted to go to the hospital. The man agreed, and hopped on the stretcher without the rumble his mom expected.
“We can do the job,” Gomez said. “We just sometimes do it a little bit differently.”