Boulder City hires new police chief

The “Home of Hoover Dam” has picked a new police chief.

Timothy J. Shea, a former Las Vegas Justice Court supervising marshal, will lead the force charged with looking after the city of about 15,000, according to a city press release. The release says Shea has more than 40 years of experience in law enforcement.

It’s a post that has been tinged with scandal in recent years. The last person to oversee the department literally pleaded guilty to the crime of not doing his job, “failure to perform a duty,” a misdemeanor. The chief before that was sacked after tensions mounted between him and city officials over how he had handled the Mongols motorcycle club’s national gathering.

City Manager David Fraser has been the city’s top official during both controversies and has been silent since it came out that his last pick for police chief had been charged by the Clark County district attorney’s office.

Former Police Chief Bill Conger resigned abruptly in January following a Review-Journal investigation into how Conger had dropped a criminal case against his employee in favor of letting her retire. A detective’s investigation had found Mary Jo Frazier, the city’s former animal control supervisor, had been needlessly killing animals for years. The city reopened the case due to public outrage. A grand jury indicted Frazier on two counts of felony animal cruelty, and a prosecutor has said that although there are only two cruelty charges, Frazier is suspected of having killed many animals.

Frazier’s attorney has said she is “adamant about her innocence.”

Boulder City police officers testified that Conger knew about allegations against Frazier a full year before he acted and that he told detectives he wanted to use the criminal case against her as a “poker chip” to keep the situation quiet.

After the grand jury transcripts became public in March, the Review-Journal asked the city if Conger was also being investigated.

Fraser, through spokesman JC Davis, said Boulder City police had conducted three separate investigations related to the shelter and had not “presented any information or evidence implicating the former chief of police administration in criminal wrongdoing.”

The district attorney’s office charged Conger the next month.

At that time, Davis said the charge was news to him and he would get back to the Review-Journal. He didn’t, and multiple emails to Fraser have been ignored.

In January, the city had also previously told the Review-Journal that Conger acted as soon as he became aware of allegations against Frazier, a claim that was then undercut by police staff. The Review-Journal asked to speak directly to staff with knowledge of the shelter scandal, but the city denied the request then and has continued to deny repeated requests.

Conger was a contractual employee with the city, and it’s unclear if the city will use the same agreement it had with Conger for Shea. The press release also did not say what Shea will be paid, and a request for such information and to interview Shea went unanswered.

Shea’s first day is June 1.

Contact Bethany Barnes at bbarnes@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3861. Find @betsbarnes on Twitter.