AURORA, Colo. — Todd Chamberlain is Aurora's sixth police chief in the last five years. After some disastrous public feedback sessions during prior searches, the city decided to hire him without community input.
Some in the community have been critical of his private hiring.
"Trust has to be built over time," Chamberlain told 9NEWS on Tuesday during a one-on-one conversation. "The only way I can prove that is through a relationship with them, is through conversations with them, is through building trust. Like any relationship, it's based on trust. If you don't have trust, you don't have anything."
In 2022, the department faced criticism for announcing three white men as finalists to lead the department in Colorado’s most diverse city. This time around, no community meetings, forums or conversations were held with community leaders who have been asking for transparency for years.
During a press conference in August, Aurora City Manager Jason Batchelor and Chief Chamberlain defended the process of appointing him.
After city council voted in favor of Chamberlain, protestors erupted in chants. Councilmembers continued the meeting online, away from the public.
"Those council members who are here that I spent many, many days with this has been a long process," he said. "This is not a, a telephone call and you got the job. This has been processes over many, many months."
In August, Aurora City Councilmember Francoise Bergan said she met with Chamberlain a month earlier, not in a public meeting, and came away impressed. She also defended a hiring process that was not public.
Chamberlain said his top priority is stability within the department. He's the first full-time police chief in Aurora in more than two years.
"I'm not an interim," he said. "I'm not here just for a matter of six months or three months or whatever it is. And during that period, I hope to let [officers] understand how much I appreciate what they do, what role they play and how important they are towards how Aurora PD is looked at as an organization."
Like many departments across the country, the Aurora Police Department is struggling with recruiting and retaining police officers. As of August 2024, the department was down 67 sworn staff. Chamberlain said transparency is key.
"Taking the veil away from this department, making sure that we are incredibly open," he said. "Making sure that our message is getting out that we are looking for officers who have a desire to serve. We have a desire to change somebody's life and do it in a major metropolitan city."
The department has faced allegations of racism and biased policing. After the death of Elijah McClain, it's now under a consent decree to monitor how APD uses force and interacts with communities of color.
"Those are the best practices in law enforcement across the nation," Chamberlain said. "We complete it in a way that's going to be sustainable long after I'm out of the chair, after the majority of officers are out of the chair, but it's going to be the best practices of this organization."
Chamberlain is a former Los Angeles Police Department officer and commander who was with the department from 1984 to 2018. He later served as police chief for the Los Angeles Unified School District, and more recently as a public safety consultant and university lecturer at California State University Los Angeles.