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Miami Beach may have found its new police chief. CBS Miami confirms that Aurora, Colorado police chief Dan Oates has been selected by Miami Beach City Manager Jimmy Morales to take over for retiring chief Raymond Martinez. However, the city commission must vote on the matter before Oates officially takes the job.
Oates is best known for leading the response to the 2012 Dark Knight theater shooting and is credited with lowering crime in Aurora, but has also been criticized for taking a tough stance against medical marijuana and botching a bunch of sexual assault investigations.
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Oates, interestingly, got his start as a court reporter for the Atlantic City Press, where he became interested in becoming a cop. First, however, he earned a master’s degree at New York University as well as a JD at New York Law School. He’s still licensed to practice law in three states.
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Oates got his start in law enforcement with the New York Police Department and eventually became the force’s head of intelligence. In 2001, he was chosen to take over the Ann Arbor Police Department in Michigan, and in 2005, he was hired in Aurora.
There, he was charged with investigating the Aurora theater shooting. Though, our sister paper Westword reported that in 2013, his department accidentally destroyed 48 DNA tests that had been taken as evidence in rape investigations.
“We certainly screwed up in this case,” Oates said.
In 2010, his department was criticized for taking a tough stance against the medical marijuana industry — which is certainly interesting as Florida heads to the polls in November to possibly legalize medical marijuana.
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