Doug Abraham said he’s destined to be a the kind of cop who misses the job when all is said and done.
“Just about 42 years is a long career,” Abraham said as he relaxed in a conference room chair inside police headquarters at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora. “I’m incredibly proud of this organization and how far it’s come, but I know I’ll still think about it all the time after I leave.”
Abraham, 64, has been chief of police for the CU Anschutz Medical Campus Police Department since the school was still located off East 9th Avenue and Colorado Boulevard in Denver.
In Colorado, most large public institutions like campuses and hospitals have their own sanctioned police departments. Abraham took the helm of the campus police department in August 2004 and will be leaving it for retirement May 2.
“The department itself was created back in the late 1970s, early 1980s,” Abraham said. “And when they came to Anschutz and Aurora from Denver, it evolved to that next level of being a police department.”
Abraham started his career in 1975 with the Aurora Police Department and retired in 2004 as a division chief. He has a master’s degree in executive leadership in policing and criminal justice from the University of Colorado Denver’s School of Public Affairs.
And he took the police chief job with CU just in time to orchestrate the big move to Aurora. CU shut the 9th Avenue campus down, turned the key and locked it for the last time in December 2008.
“And then they blew it up and knocked it all down,” he said. “That ended up being very good for the campus (police) though.”
It was good because in Denver, Abraham’s department was under the Denver Police Department’s jurisdiction, and Denver didn’t let the campus police do very much.
“We were a department that was allowed to arrest people but not take them to jail or file our own charges. Basically we would hand them to another police department,” Abraham said. “So when the campus police department moved out of Denver, it was a big transition because Aurora essentially said: ‘Why would you turn them over to us? You arrested them, you file it, and you take them to jail.’ And that’s the way the department has grown over the past 12 years.”
Abraham said his tenure as campus police chief is largely characterized by the transition work that he did to not only integrate the campus police department in Aurora, but to ensure that it thrived.
“At the time that Doug came on, the department really needed a person who was a change,” said Terri Carrothers, senior vice-chancellor for administration and finance for CU Anschutz. “We needed someone who would come in and really shake things up because the department simply didn’t have the reputation that it does now, and Doug was that person. He is a dream as chief of police.”
The campus department increased its size to 68 people, including 29 officers in Aurora. They moved into an old hotel at 12454 E. 19th Place that was built on the Anschutz Medical Campus as a temporary building in the 1940s, when the site was still the Fitzsimmons Army Base.
Today, campus police use the Aurora Police Department’s jail and court system to detain and prosecute their own suspects. They train with Aurora police officers and share resources like radio channels. Aurora Fire serves as the campus’ first medical responders.
“Aurora has been absolutely phenomenal in fostering that relationship and truly becoming sister agencies supporting each other,” Abraham said. “The city actually changed its ‘Aurora Police’ ordinance to (include campus police) as Aurora peace officers. We write tickets into their courts, we use their jail, which is just two miles away, and they keep all the revenue for the tickets.”
The campus police department is funded by the CU Anschutz Medical Campus.
Randy Repola, who currently serves as deputy chief of police at the University of Colorado at Boulder, is taking over for Abraham. Repola was also the police chief in Estes Park before joining CU Boulder in 2012. He begins April 17.
“I’m very fortunate to have about two weeks with Chief Abraham before he’s done on campus,” Repola said. “I’m excited to come on board with the organization that he has built into a very well-respected department.”
And right off the bat, Repola will be handling a rapidly growing campus police department at the beginning of a development project to demolish and rebuild the campus police station.
“That’s a wonderful opportunity to take what is a very functional and effective department and determine how it can now be complemented with different facilities and infrastructure improvements to make it that much more effective and approachable for the community,” Repola said.
That new station is the next step in the evolution of the campus police, Abraham said.
“Right now, we’re in three different buildings on the campus because we can’t fit everyone here,” Abraham said. “Electronic security is over in the old firehouse on Montview, and we do our training in the bay of an old firehouse, too. There’s another old building on campus that’s been condemned that we use for storage because we don’t have storage space here.”
He said: “I joke that they got me a new police (station) that I’ll never get to use for my retirement.”
Abraham will serve on an advisory committee to build the station over the next few years. But for now, he’s off to greener pastures.
“My wife and I bought a house that needs a lot of love on 10 acres out in the country, and we’re looking forward to being able to do the things we want to do,” Abraham said. “We’ve got grandkids I see once a week, but I’d love to see them more than that.”