A week after the town of Morrison dissolved its police force, Georgetown’s mountain police department is also disbanding.

The Clear Creek County Board of Commissioners on Tuesday approved an intergovernmental agreement for the Clear Creek County Sheriff’s Office to provide law enforcement to Georgetown to fill the gap.

The sheriff’s office has agreed to patrol for 18 hours per week, fill out incident reports, maintain evidence, file sex offender registrations, and fulfill requests for body cam footage.

The Georgetown police department has not been staffed for at least six weeks.

Law enforcement in Georgetown, the Clear Creek County seat an hour west of Denver, has been, in part, devastated by resignations in connection to the fallout of the Christian Glass murder in 2022.

Last February, Georgetown’s small force was whittled to one sworn officer when two-thirds of its force left within one week of one another. Marshall Randy Williams and Officer Tim Collins were involved in the death of Glass the night of June 10-11, 2022, each charged with failing to step in and stop it.

The abrupt exits of Williams, a 22-year veteran of the Georgetown police department, and Collins, left Jon Gaskins alone as acting marshall to rebuild Georgetown’s force.

Gaskins’ reign lasted eight months. He resigned when the town selected an officer from Manhattan, Kansas from four finalists to head the police department. Daniel Trechter was welcomed as Georgetown’s new marshall in October, but he resigned shortly after that.

On the Georgetown Colorado Community Group Facebook page, some residents wanted to invite Gaskins back as interim marshall, but he took a job across the street as an investigator with the district attorney’s office.  

Weeks later, the town administrator was put on leave and then resigned. 

Clear Creek County Sheriff Matt Harris said “when we have a local community that needs our help, we will also be there to deliver public safety services for its residents and visitors. Right now, that community is Georgetown.”

On Tuesday afternoon, Georgetown’s town website still listed a police department. Acting Town Administrator Lynette Kelsey said that Clear Creek County Sheriff’s deputies started patrolling last weekend to help with the annual holiday market. 

Money problems for Morrison police

Jefferson County will provide law enforcement duties for the town of Morrison, which is half an hour outside Denver. It disbanded its nine-person police department last week. 

Town trustees voted to dissolve the tiny town’s police department during a board meeting on Dec. 3 due to “various financial concerns,” according to a news release from the Town of Morrison.

During the meeting, the town was working to create its 2025 budget, with the police department looking at a proposed budget of $1.67 million in the new year — over 40% of the town’s overall budget for the year, according to city documents. 

According to the documents, the part-time department cost $1.47 million in 2023 and an estimated $1.73 million in 2024, despite the town only budgeting $1.57 million for the department last year.

Besides Morrison and Georgetown, the town of Nederland also disbanded its police department in 2023 after multiple resignations left residents with a depleted force.

The Boulder County Sheriff’s Office has taken over law enforcement duties for Nederland.

In addition, when the Central City police department disbanded in 2016, the Gilpin County Sheriff’s Office filled in that gap with extra patrols and continues to do so.

Concerned that a strip club is in the works for Main Street Central City, the Gilpin County Commissioners recently funded a study that found that bringing adult entertainment to downtown would increase police calls by nearly 200 per year for $135,430.

Gilpin County will continue to provide patrols for Central City, one of three of Colorado’s mountain gambling towns. 

Harris said the current trend in rural towns opting to scrap their police departments is a “combination of national policy climate and the difficulty with retention and recruitment.”

Harris spent nearly 30 years in federal law enforcement but took the job in Clear Creek County because he “knew he could fix it” after the Glass situation. 

He added that it’s hard to keep deputies in rural Clear Creek County when they can do the same job for $15,000 more along Denver’s Front Range.

“We’re doing our best to create a really good police environment,” he said. 

This story was written with the help of Denver Gazette Breaking News Reporter Sage Kelley.