Search for new Aurora police chief to start over

The search for a new Aurora police chief is starting over, city officials said on Tuesday.

One of the two finalists in the running last week withdrew his application after three days of meeting with city staff, City Council and community members, according to the announcement, and the second finalist did not have enough City Council support to move forward, spokesperson Ryan Luby said.

City Council members held a closed-door meeting on Monday night to discuss the recruitment process that had yielded only two finalists after a third withdrew. The process was widely criticized by people in the community who said they were left out of the process and council members who questioned their lack of choices.

Community members had worried neither candidate could lead the department and deal with the issues created over the past three tumultuous years, and they noted both candidates chosen to lead the police department in the state’s most diverse city — 44% of the population identifies as white — were white men. City officials reported that the initial pool of 21 applicants included seven people who were women or people of color and two were chosen for semi-finalist interviews.

“I greatly appreciate the time the finalists spent with our community,” City Manager Jim Twombly said in a statement. “Over the last week, I listened to a lot of feedback from community members and City Council members who want us to continue the search for a variety of reasons, and I support that.”

The two finalists named were men who had risen through the ranks in their respective agencies, Scott Ebner, a retired lieutenant colonel and deputy superintendent of administration for New Jersey State Police, and David Franklin, the chief of staff at the Albuquerque Police Department in Albuquerque.

Franklin removed himself from consideration, and Ebner, who is named as a defendant in two ongoing lawsuits alleging unfair and discriminatory promotional practices at the New Jersey State Police, did not get the support he needed to remain in the running, according to city officials.

The city manager is charged with selecting the new police chief, per the city charter, and a majority of the City Council would have to approve the selection before a person is hired. In his statement, Twombly said the city will be assessing what the next steps will look like.

“People across the community may have differing preferences of who they want to lead the Aurora Police Department, but we will make sure that whoever is chosen will be held to serving every member of our community equally,” he said.

The city paid a national firm to lead the recruitment process for a new police chief after Twombly fired former chief Vanessa Wilson. A new chief would be tasked with overseeing the implementation of a consent decree following a finding of racially-biased policing within the department as well as deal with issues of chronic understaffing, rising crime and fallout from multiple high-profile excessive-force cases.