Heather Morris was sworn in as Aurora’s new interim police chief this week, taking over the department’s top position after former chief Art Acevedo resigned earlier this month.

As interim chief, Morris said she is proud to lead the team and excited to continue to reduce crime and make progress with the consent decree the Aurora Police Department entered with the Colorado Attorney General’s Office in 2021 to implement changes to policing — notably in the use of force and how officers engage with residents.

She would “consider that a privilege” if she were offered the opportunity to take on the position permanently.

“It’s something that has to be earned,” she said. “The interim position is the position that I currently have, and I’m just going to do everything I can to be successful.”

The consent decree was prompted by the death of 23-year-old Elijah McClain, who died after an encounter with officers in 2019 as he walked home from a convenience store.

With the city under the consent decree with the attorney general, Acevedo left Aurora in a crucial time with the department in the middle of implementing sweeping changes to its policing and still reeling from recent court rulings that found its paramedics and a police officer guilty of several charges over the death of McClain.

Morris called McClain’s death “a really really tragic situation” and added the department is taking steps — including through the consent decree — to make changes.

“I think that the consent decree was a good thing for the department and for this community and for the city,” Morris said. “Everything that’s in the consent decree is stuff that we would be doing anyways and that law enforcement should be doing.”

The department has made “great strides” in the decree, Morris said, but it still has work to do before they go into the monitoring phase.

Morris said that bias training is one of the key pieces of that progress. The city had a training program, but decided it wasn’t “quite right.” That led to a search for a better program that would be best suited in Aurora, hoping the city has found the right one. The department will roll the training out to the team in the next few months. The department also has plans to do outreach to see what the community wants to see in its transparency portal, Morris said.

Morris brings 22 years of policing experience to the department. Most of that was served at the Houston Police Department, dating back to 1998 when she was hired after graduating from the University of Houston with a Bachelor of Science in criminal justice. She also earned a Master of Arts degree in criminology.

By the time she retired from the Houston department in 2021, Morris had worked through the ranks to become assistant chief. Throughout her career, Morris worked in patrol, field training, a driving while impaired task force, and criminal and internal affairs investigations. She has led the South Central Patrol, Robbery, and Internal Affairs Divisions at HPD.

Working in the Aurora Police Department as interim deputy chief over the last nine months, Morris told The Denver Gazette Tuesday that her years working in patrol prepared her best for her new leadership role.

“That time I spent on patrol prepared me more for being in this position today than anything else I’ve ever done,” Morris said. “When I get promoted, I always try to never forget what it’s like for the officer on the street.”

The Aurora Police Department has worked a lot in the past year on reducing crime and has been “really successful,” Morris said — an effort that she plans to carry forward as interim chief.

“If we need to make some tweaks, we’ll make some tweaks,” Morris said. “We’re data driven, so we’ll use data to determine where we need to be in terms of crime and crime response.”

The Aurora department has also successfully recruited over the past year, she said. Basic classes are full, and Morris plans to continue building on recruiting efforts.

In addition to recruiting, the department needs to focus on retention, she said.

Stressing that she will lead with a different style than Acevedo, Morris said she wants to focus on improving communication and building relationships.

“No police chief can do the work by themselves,” she said. “I’ve got a really great leadership team and a lot of great men and women on this department, so we’re all going to be successful together.”

Recruiting, hiring and retaining a police chief has proven difficult in Aurora over the last few years. Morris is the latest in a list of many.

Acevedo was named interim chief in late 2022 following the firing of former chief Vanessa Wilson. Between Acevedo and Wilson, former city chief Dan Oates — who held the position from 2005 to 2014 — came out of retirement to serve as interim chief.

In the search for a permanent chief, the city selected four finalists for the job. It relaunched the search over in the fall after some residents complained about the lack of diversity among finalists, and all but one finalist withdrew from consideration.

Morris said she’s here to “do a job, not keep a job,” adding the role she stepped into isn’t easy and it’s even harder if her focus is on keeping the job.

“Doing the right things for the right reasons, being fair to employees, making sure we’re taking care of our people, and taking care of our people doesn’t mean covering things up,” she said. “What it means is making sure the officers have the tools and the training to do their job, making sure that we’re giving them the guidance that they need.”