Departing Colorado Springs Police Chief Vince Niski is favoring one of his deputy chiefs as his successor, he told The Gazette in an interview, out of a current pool of applicants he said is roughly two-thirds the size of the pool that applied for his job three years ago.

While not naming who applied for the position, Niski said in an interview that one of his deputy chiefs had applied to be police chief, adding he was “very confident he can do the job” and that he was “excited to see where he’s going to take the organization.”

The application process, he said, closed last week.

The Gazette previously reported that a national search drummed up 64 applicants before Niski was chosen by Mayor John Suthers.

Niski noted the department recently pivoted from a past recruiting strategy to “sell the department” to a new one to “sell the city,” but said he was “really disappointed” the new strategy didn’t turn out more applicants.

Niski said the low turnout for the chief job was emblematic of issues the department has recently had in recruiting new personnel.

“That just shows you not only are our recruiting efforts down in the rank and file, they’re down in the chief jobs, because I think people are looking at it going, ‘Why would I want to be chief anywhere?’” he said.

Niski estimated that when he joined the department in 1989 the department saw roughly 2,200 to 2,400 applicants per year. In 2019, he estimated the department saw roughly 1,300 to 1,350.

“After George Floyd, we dropped down to 850,” he said.

Niski attributed the department’s personnel troubles not to budget issues, but to problems including hiring, retention, and a national apprehensiveness about policing jobs.

“It’s not the money. It’s the retention and the hiring,” he said. “Some of it’s just people don’t want to go into policing.”

For 2022, city leaders allocated more than $388,000 in additional funds for the addition of 17 new sworn positions in the police department as part of a promise made to gradually provide enough money for an additional 120 officers over five years.

But recruiting numbers have lagged behind the number of positions the department has funding for, The Gazette previously reported, with some police academy classes seeing significant numbers of cadets drop out before graduating. A class originally of around 80 that began in September and is set to graduate in March is now down to 67, Niski said.

The department’s three deputy chiefs, according to its command staff webpage, are Operations Support Bureau Deputy Chief Adrian Vasquez, Patrol Bureau Deputy Chief Jeff Jensen, and Investigative & Special Operations Bureau Deputy Chief Pat Rigdon. One applied for the chief job, Niski said, without naming who it was.

Vasquez was appointed as Niski’s deputy chief one month into his tenure as police chief. Vasquez joined the department in 1995, and headed the task force into the cause of the Waldo Canyon fire, which included Federal Bureau of Investigation agents and El Paso County investigators, The Gazette previously reported.

Rigdon also joined the department in 1995 after serving as a police officer in Laramie, Wyo. He headed the program beginning in 2016 that equipped all police officers with body-worn cameras, The Gazette reported. He was promoted to deputy chief in 2019.

Jensen began in 1996. He was promoted to deputy chief in 2020. He was also the supervisor of the department’s downtown substation, where its Homeless Outreach Team is based, when the department began a “say no” campaign encouraging pedestrians to decline requests for cash from panhandlers. Instead residents were encouraged to give money to nonprofit organizations that serve people experiencing homelessness and low-income populations in the city.

His brother, Det. Jared Jensen, was shot and killed in 2006 by a man he was trying to arrest on suspicion of attempted murder.

Niski is expected to continue in his role as chief until March 4. 

The Gazette’s editor Vince Bzdek contributed the interview for this report.

Vince Niski is set to retire from his position as chief March 4.