El Paso police Chief Greg Allen dies after leading department for nearly 15 years

Longtime El Paso police Chief Greg Allen died Tuesday after overseeing a period during which El Paso was ranked among the safest large cities in the nation during his nearly 15 years at the helm of the Police Department.

Allen's death was announced Tuesday afternoon by the city of El Paso. He was 71. A cause of death was not disclosed.

“We lost a great leader today," El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser said in a statement. "El Paso Chief of Police Greg Allen was not only an incredible Chief of Police, but he was an incredible son, husband, father, and friend.

"He earned the respect of every officer on his force, and I was proud to call him my friend. He will be greatly missed, and the City of El Paso will be forever indebted to him for his leadership. Our heart goes out to his wife Rosanne and his entire family at this difficult and painful time. He was an esteemed member of our City family and we mourn alongside them.”

City Manager Tommy Gonzalez also mourned Allen in a statement.

"This is a terrible loss for Chief Allen’s family, and it is heartbreaking for us, his City family as he meant so much to our organization and to our community," Gonzalez said. "We send our deepest condolences to his wife, Rosanne, and his entire family."

Allen was appointed the first African American police chief in El Paso in March 2008 after previously serving as interim chief following the retirement of former Chief Richard Wiles, who now is El Paso County sheriff.

In 1978, Allen joined the El Paso Police Department, starting off patrolling Central and the West Side. Throughout the decades, he moved up to the rank of deputy chief in charge of the Central and Pebble Hills regional command centers. He oversaw the department during a period of continued growth and challenges for El Paso.

Beloved, controversial chief

Allen was respected by other law enforcement leaders and beloved by many residents and his officers. He was a cop’s cop even if his hard-line law-and-order stances and his straightforward demeanor sometimes rattled some of El Paso’s more progressive residents, activists and political leaders.

Allen was police chief during an era in which El Paso was ranked among the safest large cities in the United States even as neighboring Juárez was turned into one of the deadliest cities in the world during the drug cartel war years a decade ago. The rampant bloodshed in Mexico never spread to the El Paso side of the border.

Allen also was chief during possibly El Paso's darkest hour when an Anglo out-of-town gunman killed 23 people and wounded dozens of others in a racially motivated mass shooting targeting Latinos in the Walmart store near Cielo Vista Mall on Aug. 3, 2019.

President Donald Trump called Allen "one of the most respected men in law enforcement" during Trump's visit to El Paso following the Walmart attack.

The Walmart mass killing case is pending in state and federal court. Federal prosecutors on Tuesday said they will not seek the death penalty against the defendant.

The deaths of police officers in the line of duty were an especially painful and difficult part of his job as chief, Allen once commented.

Over the decades, Allen dealt with several controversies as chief and survived attempts to remove him.

In 2016, the highest-profile controversy occurred when Allen called Black Lives Matter "a radical hate group," blaming them for the deaths of five officers who were ambushed in Dallas.

Allen later defended his comments, saying they came at an "emotional time" with the deaths of the Dallas officers and he remained critical of the Black Lives Matter movement, which he said created a negative portrayal of police officers.

In 2020 amid the national reckoning following the death of George Floyd in Minnesota, El Paso activists, community groups and other protesters called on Allen to be fired over various allegations of excessive force and the fatal shootings of mentally ill people in El Paso over the years.

Last year, the city of El Paso settled a $1.2 million civil-rights lawsuit with the family of Erik Emmanuel Salas-Sanchez, 22, who was fatally shot in 2015 in what civil rights lawyers claimed was a part of a pattern of excessive force used against mentally ill residents.

Allen would survive the controversies as a police chief respected by the men and women of law enforcement and supported by many El Pasoans.

"Our hearts and thoughts are with the family and friends of Chief Allen and with our brothers and sisters of the El Paso Police Department," the El Paso Fire Department said in a tweet. "Thank you for dedicating your life to our community and for so many years of wisdom and camaraderie. May you rest in peace, Sir."

'Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to be a cop'

Allen’s interest in police work began as a child watching television police shows.

"Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to be a cop. I used to watch a TV show starring Jack Webb – 'Dragnet.' There were others like 'Highway Patrol' and 'Adam 12,'" Allen said in a 2008 interview with the El Paso Times.

Allen was born at William Beaumont Army Medical Center and grew up as one of three children in a military family. His father was a Fort Bliss soldier and his mother a homemaker.

He spent part of his childhood in El Paso and the rest relocating to other cities in the United States and Germany. The family returned to El Paso when his father retired from the military.

Allen graduated from Bel Air High School in 1969, where he took part in Junior ROTC. Immediately after high school, he went to work as a martial arts instructor at the YMCA before earning a bachelor’s degree in sociology from the University of Texas at El Paso.

Allen studied martial arts for decades and was inducted into the El Paso Boxing and Martial Arts Hall of Fame in 1995.

After graduating from college, he worked for a time for the West Texas Council on Alcoholism before joining the El Paso Police Department in 1978. He was named police academy class president and earned the class’ top award for physical fitness.

“For me, the patrol officer is the most important person (in the department) because that’s the day-to-day contact that the people have with the department,” Allen told the El Paso Times when he was appointed police chief in 2008.

No information on services was immediately available.

This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: El Paso police Chief Greg Allen dies, led department nearly 15 years