After nearly 18 years leading the Harvard Police Department, Chief Ed Denmark has given notice that he is retiring. The decision, he said, came sooner than he had planned and was much more difficult than he had expected: “After 31 years [in policing], it becomes part of who you are.
Chief Denmark salutes the flag at a previous July 4 celebration. (Photo by Tyler Mitchell)
Denmark gave his official 30-days’ notice in a June 11 letter to Town Administrator Tim Bragan, saying he expects his last day in the office to be July 11, although accrued leave time will push his official retirement date into September.
Denmark began his policing career in his hometown of Ayer and rose to police chief, first in Sterling and then in Harvard. “These are my roots,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere.”
And yet, Denmark has gone far and wide in his professional career, both in the United States and beyond. He has been a consultant for police departments in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Louisville, Kentucky, on matters of police reform after police shot Black residents in those cities. He has been asked to reform police training in the city of Chicago—a project he will tackle after his retirement. He has traveled internationally for the U.S. State Department’s Global Anti-Terrorism Assistance program. In August, a contract with that program will take Denmark first to Tunisia and then to Bahrain.
Closer to home, Denmark has taught classes in Fitchburg State University’s criminal justice program, where he earned his own master’s degree before becoming a police chief. FSU has asked him to be an assistant visiting professor in criminal justice, working on program development and mentoring. He has also helped George Mason University in Virginia develop a pilot program to train future police officers on minimizing conflict during potentially violent encounters.
Minimizing conflict has been central to Denmark’s approach to policing. When anti-coal protesters put up a makeshift tower of scaffolding to block a coal train passing through Harvard in January 2020, Denmark went out at 2 a.m. and spent more than two cold, damp hours talking with them. Although police eventually removed the passively resisting protestors, the situation was resolved without violence.
‘No choice’
It was Denmark’s desire to continue his anti-terrorism work for the State Department that led him to retire. He asked the town administrator and the Select Board to allow him to use his accrued leave for his August training assignments in the Middle East. But his request was denied. The decision, Denmark wrote in his letter to Bragan, “has left me no choice but to retire.” Denmark later told the Press he had planned to remain another two years, but he believed turning down these training assignments would have led the State Department to drop him from future programs.
“It was decision time,” Denmark said. And the decision was a financial one, with his children at or approaching college age. “As you know,” he wrote to Bragan, “after nearly 18 years of service to the town, I am still at the 65th percentile within my pay grade. I use these outside training and consulting opportunities to close the gap between my salary and the top pay within my pay grade. … I share this with you in the hopes that moving forward, the town will re-evaluate its compensation system to ensure that good employees always receive their fair market value.”
Denmark said he had not heard from anyone on the Select Board since sending his letter. He called the silence “just another signal that it’s probably time to go.”
Still, the decision remained a difficult and emotional one, Denmark told the Press. A police department becomes “a little family,” he said—not just because its members work together every day, but because they depend on one another for safety and support. “It felt like I’m deserting my family,” he said.
