Nick Metz will be Aurora’s first-ever African-American police chief. He was appointed by city manager Skip Noe and he’s scheduled to be approved by the city council early in February. The hope is that Metz, who previously served as assistant police chief in Seattle, will “diversify the department and connect with the city’s large minority population.” The department ducked a U.S. Department of Justice probe into its low number of minority officers in 2013, which is especially noteworthy considering the community it polices is 29 percent Latino and 16 percent black. Via the Denver Post. Photo via the Seattle Police Department
A former Rocky Ford police officer will be prosecuted for murder of a 27-year-old man, following a judge’s decision that there’s sufficient evidence to move forward with a trial. The Colorado Bureau of Investigation found that Officer James Ashby never identified himself as police before firing two shots at a man he believed intended to rob a house, which actually belonged to the man’s mother. The man wielded a bat and Ashby said he felt his own life was threatened. For a police officer to be criminally prosecuted is rare, as has become increasingly apparent since the killings by police of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in Staten Island, New York spurred national and international news coverage and dramatic protest. Via the Gazette. Ashby’s mugshot, via the Gazette.
Jon Pompia at the Pueblo Chieftain writes that the Denver Post, reporting on an audit of the Colorado State Fair, included an incorrect figure showing an operating loss of $3.3 million for the 2014 fiscal year. Fair General Manager Chris Wiseman said the audit, which was conducted by an Alamosa-based firm and released by the Legislative Audit Committee, didn’t include the successful postings by the 2014 fair this past summer in Pueblo.. “The actual cash loss, after depreciation, was $386,000 for the fiscal year,” he said, “I don’t know where they came up with that figure — I think maybe by adding up the deficits in each year.”
The latest in Colorado art crime comes out of Durango once again, as the mysterious dinosaur head sage continues. The teenage boys who stole a big metal dino head off the top of a public sculpture in downtown Durango last year just gave a tell-all interview to a secretive young reporter writing under the pseudonym “Secret Dino Agent.” The Animas High School Quill has the story (page 16,) and the Durango Herald is all salty about getting scooped.
Photo of the hardened art thieves, via the Animas Quill.