Sterling police chief retiring after nearly 30 years in blue

STERLING – Police Chief Tim Morgan is going to miss putting on his uniform every morning.

It's a uniform he has put on for 27 years, and it followed in the footsteps of the Army uniform he wore before that.

But after July 30, he's going dress casual. The chief is retiring.

Morgan joined the Sterling Police Department in 1993. He had his choice then, testing with both the police and fire departments, but since he was an Army MP, the police department was a more natural fit.

That choice worked out pretty well.

"I was one of those guys, when I left in 1983 or '84, it's your hometown, leave and vow to never come back, but I got out of the Army and came back and really haven't left since," Morgan said. "My family, at the time my dad was still here, and I wanted to spend some time with him."

He came back from the military to find a city that hadn't changed all that much from the one in which he grew up. On the job, he would run into people he had known growing up.

"The town is great," he said. "I love Sterling. I'm a huge cheerleader for the city. I think we have a lot to offer, and I think having a good quality police department plays into that. I'd like to think I played a small role in that, in making our city very livable and safe."

When Morgan joined the force, his first sergeant was another officer with a military background, Ed Hart.

"He was a Marine Corps veteran, so we had the military in common," Morgan said. "I learned a lot from him."

He also was able to learn from officers like Kevin George and then-Chief Cadet T. Thorp, who died Dec, 4, 2013, at the age of 73. Thorp's jacket and hat still hang in Morgan's office.

"He didn't say a lot, but his actions spoke volumes," Morgan said. "I really respected him, and still do.

"He was only chief a couple of years when I was here, I was a young patrolman. When I graduated from Northwestern, I had won the Kreml Award, an award selected by your peers in the class and the faculty, and we had officers from nine or ten different states, and Chief Thorp was retired at the time, in Arizona, and he wrote me a letter telling me how proud he was of me.

"I still have the letter. That meant a lot to me."

In his nearly three decades in the blue uniform, Morgan has seen the nature of policing itself change. Now, in the wake of protests about the nature of police work and the relationship officers have with their community, Morgan senses police work is on the verge of evolving again.

"How we police has changed a lot," he said. "I think we've evolved as law enforcement. More has been put on us on the social work aspect of things, which is a big thing going on now and a lot of talk about that, and we've had to adapt to that. We've had to adapt to how people treat us, and how we respond to that treatment."

A big part of the job of the chief is keeping up with those changes and training officers for the new ways of doing things.

"Training is key," Morgan said. "Keeping up with the training, the trends in policing, what's expected of us, what our public expects and needs. We spend a lot of time, not just me but my deputy chiefs, making sure our patrol officers, guys out there every day, have everything they need, both in equipment and knowledge, to do a good job."

He has been the chief for four and a half years, and in that time one of the things he is most proud of is the improvement in community policing.

"One of the things I talked about, even when I was a sergeant, was customer service," he said. "I like to refer to our citizens as customers, because we provide a service. It's no different than going to McDonald's and getting a cheeseburger. If the person at the counter treats you right, you remember that.

"As a police department, it's the same thing. We need to treat our citizens, our customers with the respect that they deserve."

He won't be running a police department, but retiring won't mean slowing down, with his side gig, Large Marge catering, to run.

"It's going to keep me busy," he said.