7-05-2023 12:56am

Alamogordo Police Chief Denton Retires

Chris Edwards Editor

This past Friday, June 30th, Chief Richard Denton retired from the Alamogordo Police Department after 23 years of dedicated service to the department and in service to the Alamogordo Community.

Chief Denton began his law enforcement career with Alamogordo Police Department on July 24, 2000, as a Public Safety Officer and graduated from the New Mexico Law Enforcement Academy in April of 2001. He eventually learned the job well enough to be able to teach new officers and became a Field Training Officer. In about ten years' time, he was promoted to Sergeant after which, he continued to climb the ladder and held the roles of Lieutenant, Captain, and finally Chief of Police.

During his three years as Chief, he was able to lead the way in accomplishing many goals and projects. In addition to several capital improvement projects, his accomplishments include:

The continuation of the very valuable and successful Mobile Crisis Response Team (MCRT) program as a resource to assist those community members that may be in a mental health crisis.

The Police Service Aide program allows us to hire employees to assist our officers with calls for service that may not require an officer response so that officers are able to focus on other more urgent calls. Additionally, this position is a great opportunity for persons that are aspiring to begin a law enforcement career.

Chief Denton and Sheriff Black successfully negotiated a joint interagency agreement to implement a Public Safety Answering Point (A.K.A. PSAP) or consolidated dispatch. As a PSAP, there will be one dispatch center operating in the same space for almost all emergency agencies within Otero County including APD and AFD. Having a consolidated dispatch center not only improves communication between agencies but also improves response times and many more positive benefits to the entire population of Otero County.

The community of Alamogordo, it citizens, KALHRadio.org, the AlamogordoTownNews.com team and the APD would like to thank Chief Denton for his years of dedicated and honorable service to our community.

We wish you the very best for you in the future in retirement or in whatever the future holds for you and your family.