CU Buffs often describe themselves as family, but in this case, two members of the CU Boulder Police Department (CUPD) sworn to serve and protect really are family.

Officer Cathy Chestnut and her son, Officer Matt Dillon, were sworn in together in October. Their shared passion for public service led them both to CUPD, where Chestnut was already serving as a police dispatcher when the pull to go back on the beat became too strong to ignore.

At the same time, Dillon was graduating from the police academy. His decision to become a police officer was influenced by his five years of service in the United States Marine Corps. Applying his service mindset closer to home meant mother and son’s paths converged.

“I am incredibly proud of Matt,” said Chestnut. “I am excited to be serving with him and looking forward to sharing my knowledge of the job to help him grow and learn.”

“It’s a privilege to be able to work here,” said Dillon. “The ability to serve this campus feels like protecting the future.” 

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Photo by Matthew Jonas/Daily Camera

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Growing up in Aurora, Colorado, CU Boulder law school student Jemil Kassahun (IntlAf, PolSci, Soc’21; Law’24) was proud to be part of a diverse community with many cultural influences.

“Aurora is the most diverse city in the state of Colorado,” said Kassahun, 24. “I was involved in the African Student Association and Muslim Student Association [in high school], where I would work to help express our cultures and values to the rest of the community.”

Despite having a deep pride for his community — especially after witnessing city residents unite after the 2012 Aurora movie theater shooting — Kassahun also saw disparities in the treatment of his friends of color versus white friends at the hands of police officers and within the justice system.

The , an unarmed Black man who died days after Aurora police put him in a now-banned carotid hold and injected him with ketamine in 2019, helped ignite Kassahun’s decision to pursue an education that would allow him to provide support for historically marginalized communities.

“It was shocking for all of us in Aurora when it happened, because this is the same police force that took in James Holmes unharmed,” said Kassahun, referencing the white man convicted of murdering 12 people in the Aurora theater. 

Kassahun, who earned an international baccalaureate diploma in high school and arrived at CU Boulder flush with academic credit, recognized that higher education could be used as a vehicle to help his community. 

“I remember reflecting on why I hope to do what I hope to do,” he said. “The stories of Elijah and so many others drive me.” 

He joined the CU Police Department (CUPD) in 2019 as an administrative assistant, and quickly began organizing community outreach events. By 2020, Kassahun was serving on CUPD hiring committees and supporting the department’s de-escalation training.

In the summer of 2020, after the in Minneapolis, Kassahun helped galvanize campus conversations focused on police reform. He assisted in organizing a Boulder Black Lives Matter march and invited CU Boulder police chief Doreen Jokerst and Boulder police chief Maris Herold, who attended along with Boulder County district attorney Michael Dougherty.

“I think a lot of people were uplifted that members of law enforcement chose to come in solidarity and attend the march with us,” Kassahun said.

A monthslong collaboration among CUPD, student and campus leaders, and representatives of the campus’s shared governance groups — along with a hefty dose of reassurance to students of color that university police leaders would listen to their concerns and be open to change — led to more open dialogue. As a result, the CU Boulder Community Safety Task Force began, which evaluated campus policing policies, practices and training and recommended ways to ensure public safety on campus. One of the group’s key recommendations was to establish the Community Oversight Review Board, on which Kassahun was asked to serve. 

“Working at CUPD has put me in a position to drive change in our campus community and the broader Boulder community,” he said.

Kassahun also has worked for state and regional offices, including serving as a law clerk in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Colorado, interning with the Denver District Attorney’s Restorative Justice and Diversion Unit and taking part in Colorado Law’s immigration defense clinic. He also works with to serve incarcerated people with claims of innocence.

When the grind of law school leaves Kassahun in need of motivation to reach his goal of working within the U.S. Department of Justice, he reflects on the origins of his passion for public service. 

“I always acknowledge the barriers that people in my community face,” he said. “I feel an obligation to find a way to give back. That empowers me.” 

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Photos by Matt Tyrie

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Former and present CU student athletes led a Buffs March on Friday, June 5, in support of Black Lives Matter and police reforms. As similar protests swept the nation, football players including KD Nixon (StComm'21), Laviska Shenault (EthnSt'21) and Chris Miller (StComm'21), and basketball player McKinley Wright IV (EthnSt'21), helped organize the peaceful protest. More than 500 people attended. The march culminated with the crowd taking a knee for an 8 minute, 46 second moment of silence in honor of George Floyd. 

“I felt it was important to do this because this is something that’s not just happening because of George Floyd,” Miller told the Boulder Daily Camera. “We’re doing this for all 400 years of slavery, the oppression, Jim Crow, you know, next thing after next thing. It’s sad to say this, but this stuff is regular."

Read more at .

Photo courtesy Bo Savage/CU Athletics

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Sizing up and relating to people are must-have skills for Boulder County Sheriff Sergeant Vinnie Montez (�ʴDZ�������’15).

His sideline as a standup comic also helps.

“I believe the essence of a good cop is being a great performer,” said Montez, who knows the pressures of hostage negotiation and the bright lights of the comedy club stage.

The dramatic aspects of law enforcement can make for tense moments. A way with jokes helps diffuse stress during arrests, investigations and in the squad car.

“Laughter breaks barriers,” said Montez, 41. “Police officers are regular people.”

He came to law enforcement early, initially as a fan of CHiPs, the TV drama of the 1970s and 1980s about a pair of California Highway Patrol motorcycle officers.

“They were always doing what was right,” Montez said of the fictional duo. “There was always a lesson in the show. They talked to people and resolved problems.”

At 14, after a ride-along with the Lafayette Police Department, he became an explorer cadet — kind of like a junior apprentice without law enforcement powers — first with Lafayette, then with Boulder County. In 1994, after high school, he was hired as a sheriff’s dispatcher, and he’s been in law enforcement ever since, rising through the ranks.

Along the way, he attended CU Boulder, doing most of his degree in the 1990s and finishing later, in 2015, while working full-time as a detective sergeant.

“I didn’t sleep much,” he said.

In 2007, as a counterweight to the stresses of his day job, Montez turned to comedy, making a two-minute “newbie” debut at Comedy Works in Denver.

“I like to tell stories involving my mom, my Mexican heritage and cops,” he said. “I’m still perfecting my law enforcement routine.”

The shtick has been working. Since 2013, Montez has been promoted to Comedy Works’ “almost-famous list,” as he called it, a role in which he opens for bigger-name comedians when they come to Denver, folks like Caroline Rhea, Chris D’Elia, Bobcat Goldthwait and John Crist.

Whatever natural talent Montez has, he attributes to his late father, a hardworking, genial man who could “talk to anybody in any situation.”

At any sort of social gathering, “It would take him 15 minutes to make an exit,” Montez said. “That rubbed off on my brother and me.”

Still, comedy takes work.

“I never think, ‘I’m just a hilarious guy,’” said Montez, who does as many as six shows a week, always aiming for a laugh within the first 30 seconds. “It’s trial and error.”

When not performing at comedy clubs, he often takes the stage at benefits for fellow officers and at law enforcement conferences.

“Comedy has kept me from becoming jaded and overly cynical in a profession which has a tendency to drive officers in that direction,” he said.

Photo courtesy Vinnie Montez

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�������� four years ago, Det. Mark Johnson (Engl’74) found himself in a crawl space getting shot at by a man who’d minutes earlier fatally stabbed a police officer.

Johnson never contemplated this situation in his previous job as executive director of the United Way of Southwest Alabama, which often involved hobnobbing with Mobile’s well-to-do.

But nagged by the feeling that the work wasn’t his calling, he’d become, at the age of 50, a policeman.

“I realized that if I ever wanted to be a cop, I could afford to at this point, having savings from a good career and both my kids having been through college,” he said from his home in Fairhope, Ala. “And I knew if I didn’t do it soon, I’d be too old.”

The change didn’t come easy, as Johnson details in his recent memoir, Apprehensions and Convictions: Adventures of a 50-Year-Old Rookie Cop (Quill Driver Books).

Easing the concerns of his wife, Nancy Hecht Johnson (Jour’74), whom he’d met at freshmen orientation at CU, was one obstacle. Later he suffered the jibes of “old man” and “papa” from fellow police academy recruits.

But perseverance led to a 12-year career with the Mobile police force, ultimately as a detective.

“I thought I had the wisdom to be a new kind of cop,” said Johnson, now retired. “I’d be tough but compassionate. I would enlighten law enforcement and be the best cop they ever had. I was disabused of that fantasy in short order.”

He quickly reconsidered his practice of providing brochures about social services to suspects: “People looked at me like I was from another planet!”

Johnson honed his street smarts and tempered his idealism without abandoning it.

“Sometimes people took my advice and later thanked me for it,” he said. “I’d refer them to agencies or rehab centers, and their lives turned around. That was one of the most gratifying parts of being a cop — helping people make significant changes in their lives.”

Johnson grew up in Louisiana and St. Louis and majored in English at CU, “hoping to write the Great American Novel.”

After some post-graduation fits and starts, he joined United Way, initiallyin its public relations department. The work promised a steadier paycheck than a fledgling novelist’s. He and Nancy married and started a family. Johnson rose to executive director, first in Wisconsin, then in Alabama.

It was a safe life, a good life and ultimately not the right life for him.

That brings us back to those tense moments in the crawl space. The cop killer did not escape, or survive. Johnson took a gunshot wound to his arm.

He still has bad dreams about that day, but never regrets changing careers.

“The only reason I quit is I’m too old for this job,” said Johnson, now 64 and a grandfather of five. “Two decades of United Way work was very satisfying, but police work was even more satisfying. It was the best job I ever had.” 

Photos courtesy Mark Johnson

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In June a Boulder jury found Diego Olmos Alcalde guilty of first-degree murder, felony murder, first-degree sexual assault and second-degree kidnapping of CU-Boulder senior Susannah Chase on Dec. 21, 1997. He was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole.

Chase was walking home from downtown alone when she was beaten across the street from her Spruce Street house, dragged to a car, raped and left in an alley to die. Her murder rocked the community and led to a number of campus safety initiatives symbolized by the logo on the right, including the addition of dozens of emergency phones and expansion of the NightRide/NightWalk organization that pairs students with volunteers to accompany them home after dark.

For years police were unable to link a suspect to Chase’s murder, but DNA recovered from her body was preserved as evidence and finally matched with Alcade’s DNA.

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