MORRISON, Colo. — Former Morrison Chief of Police George Mumma is now officially retired. Although, his retirement comes a little sooner than the 64-year-old may have liked.
"I think I would have probably done a few more years here. That was the original plan," he said.
Mumma spent the last two and a half years as chief of police for Morrison, a small town of about 400 people with a big reputation.
"Speed trap, the officers only wrote tickets. Quite frankly, that was pretty much the truth," Mumma said of the town's reputation.
Since taking over, Mumma worked to turn that reputation around. That meant less tickets and in turn, less town revenue.
"I've never worked with an agency until now where writing traffic tickets is the entire police department. My bad going in and thinking we could change that," Mumma said.
Mumma said he had conversations in the past with the town manager to write more speeding tickets.
He said he blames COVID-19 in part for the lack of tickets written this year.
"COVID hit and there was no traffic. If there’s no traffic, there are no tickets," Mumma said.
Denver7 reached out to Town Manager Kara Winters about why he was let go. She told us, "the town of Morrison doesn't comment on personnel matters."
However, Denver7 did obtained a memo to the Morrison Police Department. In it, Winters wrote: "Over the past several months, Chief and I found that we disagreed on some important issues. Some of those issues related to directives I received from the Town Board. Among the most important was the requirement that all Town employees - including our Police officers - consistently wear face masks while in public places. We also were not aligned with respect to the Board's mandate that the Department more effectively control traffic speeds and vehicle noise throughout the Town."