Police chief leaving on own terms
Aurora’s Metz won’t completely rule out a return to policing
Outgoing Aurora Police Chief Nick Metz knows too well the toll years of law enforcement work can exact on a person.
After 36 years in policing — including five as Aurora’s top cop — Metz announced his retirement in hopes of leaving the profession before it burned him out and left him bitter, he said. Now, he wants to help other officers manage the stress and trauma inherent to the work.
“In my 36 years, I’ve seen a lot of death,” he said. “I’ve seen a lot of things that nobody should have to see.”
Metz’s retirement announcement at a Sept. 27 awards ceremony took many in the city by surprise.
As Aurora’s first African-American police chief, Metz has weathered many high-profile controversies and attempted to forge relationships between his agency and the diverse city it’s charged with policing.
“We didn’t always agree,” said Omar Montgomery, president of the Aurora chapter of the NAACP and a mayoral candidate. “We had many heated discussions about multiple things, but we always walked away respecting each other.”
Metz, 57, wanted to leave his position on his own terms. While working with the Major Cities Chiefs Association, he saw how common it is for leaders of large departments to get pushed out after a few years. With five years as chief behind him, Metz said he was one of the most senior chiefs in the association of 80 police agencies.
“I’ve been pretty fortunate to run my agency without a lot of interference,” Metz said.
Aurora Mayor Bob LeGare praised Metz in a statement after the chief’s retirement announcement, and the president of the union that represents the city’s officers said Metz’s departure was bittersweet.
“Under his leadership, the Aurora Police Department has grown more connected with the community it serves and become a model for how residents and police can work together to create a safe and unified city,” LeGare said.
“It was truly a pleasure to work with Chief Metz,” said Judy Lutkin, president of the Aurora Police Association. “He is the model of an officer of the law, a caring individual with a character all to his own.”
If there was an optimal time to leave, this was it, Metz said. He admitted that he’s doubted his choice since going public with his plan. But he’s not ruling out ever
returning to policing. If he found retirement boring, he might consider coming back, he said.
Metz’s leadership has been tested multiple times in recent months, including contentious protests over the privately-operated immigration detention facility in his city and the death of a 23year-old man after a violent arrest by his officers. Those incidents didn’t factor into his decision to leave, he said.
He also oversaw the department after the high-profile police shooting of 73-year-old Richard Gary Black Jr., a military veteran who was shot and killed by Aurora officers after defending his home from an intruder.
Instead, his decision to retire was influenced by his wife’s plan to expand her counseling practice for first responders. In his retirement, Metz plans to work for his wife, Sara Metz, at Code-4 Counseling.
He also plans to become one of her first students as she builds a graduate counseling program at Colorado State UniversityGlobal.
Metz’s retirement signals the end of a long career in a field he called a blessing.
While in college, Metz considered studying mortuary science — a trade his family traditionally followed.
But he changed his mind after tagging along with an officer for a week as a requirement for a college course.
“I was hooked,” he said. “The hardest part was I had to tell my mother.”
Metz joined the Seattle Police Department when he was 20 years old and rose to the rank of assistant police chief. He enjoyed a job that made every day different and that he felt allowed him to create positive change.
He has had moments of doubt, however. A three-month period in 2009 when seven Seattle-area law enforcement officers were killed on duty tested his career choice, he said.
He feared the impact on his family if he were to be killed.
“That was probably the only time I really questioned myself,” Metz said.
Those months were a turning point for Metz and sparked his passion for improving wellness and mental health for officers and their families.
When he became Aurora’s chief in 2015, he brought that focus with him. City officials said they chose Metz from a field of competitors because of his experience in a diverse city and hoped he would help forge bonds between the agency and the city’s communities.
Montgomery said Metz, or one of his representatives, attended nearly every NAACP meeting during the chief’s tenure as well as gatherings of many other community groups. He said the city still needs to make changes to the department, including a mechanism for independent review of killings by police, but that Metz created a foundation for changes to come.
“I think he did the best he can do with the infrastructures in place,” Montgomery said.
Metz said the community building he accomplished is one of his proudest achievements, as well as the creation of a wellness unit of two full-time employees dedicated to helping officers and their families.
Metz faced criticism for publicly stating that his officers would not work with federal immigration authorities. He said he stood by his decision and said it was a matter of public safety — he wanted immigrants, regardless of legal status, to feel safe calling 911. About 20% of the city’s 325,078 residents were born outside the U.S.
One unfinished case still haunts Metz. When 16-year-old Lashaya Stine disappeared in July 2016, Metz was determined to find her.
“That was one I always hoped that, before I left, I would be able to give that family some sort of answer,” he said.
He hopes the next chief will maintain the work he’s done with wellness and will further improve the department.
“This is not a department that needs to be fixed,” he said.