He served as Aurora's chief of police for 21 years and is credited with creating a modern police department for the city. That's why there is a Spencer Garrett Park bounded by 16 th and 17 th avenues and Joliet and Kingston streets in original Aurora and why the Aurora Police Department's first history published in 1984 was dedicated to him.

Born on Aug. 31, 1911, the son of James and Elizabeth Garrett, Spencer grew up on a Virginia tobacco farm. His formal education apparently ended in 1923 when he was 12 because he claimed he left home at that early age to work coal mines. That skimpy schooling probably wouldn't qualify him for the Aurora police academy today.

Garrett apparently didn't find coal mining much to his liking because he managed to join the United States Army in 1925 and he remained a member of the peacetime army until 1939.

His army duty took him to Fort Bragg in North Carolina, China, Hawaii, the U.S. Military Academy at West Point where he served as a military policeman and finally to Aurora's Fitzsimons Medical Center where he continued to serve as a military policeman.

During World War II, he served as a security chief at the Denver Ordinance Depot for the Remington Arms plant. Garrett supervised 600 guards. When the war ended in 1945, he changed careers again and became the owner-operator of the Kay Motor Lodge in Aurora.

Aurora's police department was in turmoil in September 1949 when the city council unanimously fired Chief E. M. Hopps for allegedly ordering a drunk driving charge deleted from a traffic ticket issued by officer John Benison.

When Mayor C.E. Tupps approached Garrett about taking over the department, he was reportedly told by Garrett that he would take over the department on a temporary basis until a replacement could be found only if he were in absolute control with no council interference. That temporary job lasted for 21 years.

As soon as Garrett was introduced as the new Aurora chief of police and outlined the changes he planned three of his five officers resigned and one more left within a month. Garrett has insisted that promotions be based on results of written examinations, that two-way radio communications be established and the department would be organized on the strict police lines of the Denver Police Department and FBI training would be introduced.

By the time Garrett retired in 1970, Aurora's incorporated area had increased from four to 40 square miles and the police department personnel had grown from seven to 97. The Garrett years were tumultuous years for the Aurora Police Department as it tried to keep pace with Aurora's rapid post-World War II growth. There were riots, hippies, drug scenes, murders, far-reaching Supreme Court decisions, rapid turnover of personnel and new equipment and techniques to deal with.

In 1954, Aurora adopted the city manager and not directly to the policy-making city council. Another major change was the replacement of the old, cramped storefront police station on Dallas Street with a new city hall at 16 th Avenue and Elmira Street that included larger and modern quarters for the police.

The new police facility, dedicated on July 30, 1955, included a crime detection laboratory, a photography dark room and a pistol range. The new jail facility consisted of four cells replacing the single cell cage in the old police station. The capacity of the new jail was supposed to be 16 prisoners but often as many as 30 were held in the four cells.

Modern radio communication was probably the biggest change that the Garrett years brought to the Aurora Police Department but radar to control speeding automobiles was important, too. The Aurora Advocate reported on Feb. 2, 1960 that Aurora police officers had issued 86 summonses for speeding in four days with the use of the department's new "Speed-O-Meter" the name given to its radar gun in those early years.

Aurora was becoming a city between 1949 and 1970 and the work of its police department changed with the times.

Garrett always claimed that his most difficult case involved 9-year-old Paula Sue Steinbach, who disappeared from her Aurora home on June 3, 1966. Twenty-six days later, the girls body was found under the floorboards of a neighbor's shed. A 14-year-old boy later confessed to her murder.

"When you get into heavy crime, such as murder or kidnapping, everything moves into high-pitch - you work under tremendous strain, the chief particularly because he must answer to the public and to the news media," Garrett said.

Chief Garrett was widely recognized for his 40 years of service in law enforcement. He was vice-president of the Colorado Sheriffs Association and active in the Colorado Chiefs of Police, the International Association of Chiefs of Police and others.