Zach Ardis liked the idea that the path he was starting on in Longmont was already paved.
Ardis, last August, succeeded longtime Public Safety Chief Mike Butler who retired in 2020 after 26 years as head of Longmont’s police and fire divisions.
During his tenure, Butler began two programs considered groundbreaking in law enforcement circles. The Crisis Outreach Response and Engagement team, or CORE, teams a police officer, paramedic and mental health clinician to assess whether an individual needs diversion to a mental health care facility.
The other effort is LEAD, or Public Safety Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion, which allows police officers the discretion to divert people into intensive community-based services who otherwise would be arrested and sent to jail.
Both strategies are aimed at getting people who are low-level offenders the help they need to become productive citizens as opposed to tossing them into an already clogged prison system, say proponents.
Ardis said Butler’s approach to bring in help from medical and clinical professionals appealed to his desire to build a more comprehensive public safety department.
“I liked the progressiveness of it,” Ardis said. “Really just bringing in community health in public safety sparked an interest for me. On the east coast, these approaches are slowly tickling in and we already had that in Longmont, Colorado.”
Ardis, who worked for 19 years in law enforcement, served as chief of police at the city of Commerce, Ga. since 2016, and in August 2020 was appointed Executive Director of Policy, Planning and Public Safety. He oversaw the police department, fire department, planning and zoning, building department, code enforcement, animal control and the city vehicle maintenance shop.
The soft-spoken Ardis said he did not have to look far to carry out his plans to make Longmont's Public Safety Department more responsive to residents and the people they serve.
“We already had great people with a great vision,” Ardis said.
On that note, Ardis promoted longtime public safety veterans Dan Higgins and Jeff Satur to the fire chief and police chief slots, respectively. “Before they were deputy chiefs and basically doing the job as chiefs,” Ardis said. “They were making chief decisions without the rank.”
Ardis also reshuffled the command structure of the police division. He added three commanders for upper level supervision while taking administrative work off the division’s sargeants. They do more on-the-ground direct supervision of patrol officers, many of whom have only about five years experience, Ardis said.
The fire division expanded its services to include one paramedic on every engine to respond to emergency calls, Higgins said. “We can get there with medical help a lot quicker this way,” he said.
Longmont Fire also emphasizes regional cooperation that has helped get crews to life-threatening situations as well as the ever- growing threat of wildland fires, Higgins said. “Wildland fires have become the big one now,” he said. “That’s something we didn’t have to worry about when a lot of us were hired.”
The city is also getting two new fire stations built, including one in northwest Longmont, Ardis said. “That will help service in growing areas of the city,” he said.
Medics have also been added to SWAT crews, at least one firefighter to the bomb squad and fire investigators to the city’s hazmat team, Satur said.
Under Ardis, both police and fire personnel have continued a theme of cooperation not seen in other communities, Satur said. “Even before, the two departments have had a great relationship as opposed to places where police and fire are at odds,” he said.
New technologies are also on the horizon for public safety, Ardis said. The city will soon begin experimenting with specialized cameras to monitor traffic for noise violations.
The cameras can be placed on certain spots in the city to monitor traffic noise and provide video and audio evidence of an infraction. The cameras capture the license plate of an alleged offender and then a civil fine or warning can be mailed to the registered owner of the vehicle, according to police officials.
Ardis said the cameras can help cover areas of the city where police officers cannot get to because of other calls. Noise complaints are a persistent problem in Longmont that the cameras can help address, he said.
“This is our opportunity to address the concerns of the community,” Ardis said. “We can’t be everywhere but this helps.”
Recruitment of women and minorities are also a top priority, Ardis said, as people are leaving both fire and police through retirements or burnout. “There is a lot of physical and mental strain that comes with both jobs,” he said.
Police hired 23 people in 2021 which nearly broke even with retirements, Satur said.
Artis recently dropped the requirement that two years of college were needed to apply to be a Longmont Police Officer. Instead, new recruits agree to pursue their two-year education through the police academy or the Fraternal Order Of Police, Artis said.
“We have seen an increase in the number of applicants,” he said. “We recognize that not everyone gets an opportunity to go to college. Our goal is to get a more diverse applicant pool.”
This year to date, 52 employees have been hired for Public Safety jobs with 13 identified as Latinos, Robin Ericson, Public Safety spokeswoman said via email.
The department also hired two American Indians, one African American and 34 white people. One hire did not identify with a racial group, Ericson said.
Twenty-two women have also been hired and one did not identify with a gender, she said.
City Councilor Marcia Martin generally gives Ardis high marks for his work, especially for embracing new technology to tackle noise and traffic problems in a department stretched thin.
“Zach is a kind and dedicated man who has made significant operational improvements during his first year,” Martin said. “He joined us at a challenging time, not just for public safety in Longmont but also for the whole country.”
Martin said via email that both Ardis and Satur took the time to discuss her belief that “that internet-of-things automation needed to be part of the solution to Longmont's need to get speeders, street racers, and drivers with modified exhaust systems under control.”
“That was over a year ago,” Martin said. “I can't take all the credit, but I am very gratified that Longmont now has an updated noise ordinance and will be deploying exactly the kind of automation we need for detecting and citing petty traffic violations without costly intervention involving patrol cars.”
Ardis’s next challenge is to confront the number of people who have committed minor offenses but don’t expect repercussions, she said.
“We have become something of a nation of scofflaws during the pandemic,” Martin said.
“Because of reluctance to imprison minor offenders, especially in pre-vaccine days, people learned that they could ignore safety patrol cars, drive with expired plates, and otherwise act out their frustration with their quality of life using their automobiles and through vandalism and such,” Martin said. “ We need to reverse that trend and restore people's respect for the law and for our community-oriented, fair, and approachable officers.”
