After a long and arduous search, the City of Denton has a new chief of police.
Doug Shoemaker, the new chief of police for the Denton Police Department, was sworn in Monday afternoon at the department’s public safety training center.
Shoemaker previously served as chief of police in Grand Junction, Colorado, before coming to North Texas, as reported by The Dallas Express.
He was selected for the position from a pool of 35 applicants and will lead a department of over 200 men and women in uniform.
Before he left Colorado, he worked in Jefferson City, Missouri, where he participated in community outreach efforts following the police shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson.
In his first speech to the Denton public, Shoemaker relayed the importance of building trust within the community.
“I’m sometimes asked what the role of policing is in society,” Shoemaker told the crowd. “It’s to protect the vulnerable from harm. That’s it. That’s our role, to protect the vulnerable from harm. You’ll notice no mention of gender, race, ethnicity, annual income, or any other qualifiers for that statement. It’s because our duties are all beyond that. We swore an oath to protect everyone equally.”
Frank Dixon, the previous chief of police for the city, was in attendance to witness Shoemaker being sworn in at Monday’s ceremony.
Dixon is now the city’s assistant city manager and director of public safety.
During his tenure with the department, Dixon helped launch a new crisis intervention team that consisted of four officers who partnered with clinicians to respond to tense encounters involving people suffering from mental health problems.
The effort came in the wake of the 2020 officer-involved shooting death of UNT student Darius Tarver.
Last week, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit against the city of Denton in Tarver’s death.
