ESCONDIDO POLICE CHIEF DEPARTING FOR LEAD POST IN MENIFEE
Ed Varso, Escondido's chief of police since January 2020, will leave his post later this month to lead the department in Menifee, the Escondido Police Department announced Monday.
Varso will be just the second police chief in Menifee, in Riverside County. The city became incorporated in 2008 and created its own police department in 2020.
According to a news release, Varso is already a resident of Menifee, which is about 45 miles north of Escondido, between Murrieta and Perris. He'll head up a department that employs about 90 officers and other employees in a city of about 100,000 residents after leading Escondido's police force, which has about 225 employees in a city of about 150,000 residents.
Varso has worked for the Escondido Police Department since 2001 after starting his career in 1997 as a Los Angeles County sheriff 's deputy. His last day as chief in Escondido is slated for June 28, and he's scheduled to be sworn in at his new job June 30.
“I wish to thank the Escondido community for all of the support it has shown not only to me, but to the entire Escondido Police Department,” Varso said in a statement. “EPD is an outstanding police department and I know that it will continue to provide exceptional service for years to come.”
Escondido city officials will promote an internal candidate on an interim basis, according to the news release. City Manager Sean McGlynn called Varso's departure “truly a loss for Escondido,” saying in the news release that city officials “will work quickly to engage in a national recruitment” to find a new chief.
The city also planned a national search in 2019, but thenCity Manager Jeff Epp promoted Varso instead just months after he'd been promoted to a newly created assistant chief of police position. He took over the department Jan. 1, 2020, right before the coronavirus pandemic.
Varso knelt with Black Lives Matter supporters on June 3 of that year, a little more than a week after Minneapolis police officers killed George Floyd. Varso said what those officers did “was wrong” and that he was glad they were being held accountable.
“What happened to Mr. George Floyd was awful, and it was even that much more despicable because it was an act carried out by police officers,” Varso said at the time. “I don't represent that and my entire police department doesn't represent that, and I'm standing here on behalf of my department to make sure the community understands that we are all together in this, we all condemn what happened to Mr. Floyd.”
Varso oversaw the creation of a standalone de-escalation policy that was implemented in March 2021, saying at the time that the policy “recognizes our commitment to the reverence of human life.”
During Varso's tenure, Escondido officers have shot at least four men, three of them fatally. All three fatal shootings occurred after the de-escalation policy was implemented, including a controversial incident April 21, 2021, when Officer Chad Moore shot and killed Steven John Olson, a 59-year-old homeless man who was walking toward him with a crowbar.
In September, an officer killed a man in a gunfight at the end of a pursuit. The man killed in that shooting was suspected in a previous car-to-car shooting that injured a 20year-old driver. In December, a shootout between a murder suspect and two Escondido police officers left the suspect dead and an officer wounded.