By Neil Doyle
BLOOMINGTON – Bloomington City Manager Tim Gleason on Thursday announced that the city’s police chief will retire next month.
Dan Donath, who was selected for the position in August of 2019 by Gleason, will retire September 1.
“This was unexpected,” said Gleason. “Dan reached out to me last week and wanted to meet and that was the first I heard of it. Dan shared a number of personal reasons that I’ll let him share if he wants, but I support the decision and yes it was unexpected.”
Donath, who started his career with BPD in 1994, said he made the choice after careful consideration and said it’s time to close this chapter of his life.
“It really is a totality of circumstances, some personal, but it’s time to do something different,” said Donath. “Everybody has their last day at a career or job, this just happens to be the time for me.”
Amid the coronavirus pandemic, civil unrest, and a BPD officer who died earlier this year, Donath said those things did not influence his decision.
“None of those things led me to think about retiring,” he said. “When those situations occurred I just thought to myself that it’s my time to lead and I just attacked the job the best I could and made the decisions that I thought were the best based on the circumstances. But I didn’t even think about retiring then, it really wasn’t on my radar.”
“As far as some of the community who might have an opinion, I get it,” Gleason said. “But honestly, even though I would’ve liked to have had Dan for three to five years, what the original plan was, I squeezed out an excellent one year and I’ll take that and don’t regret the decision.”
Gleason said current assistant chief Greg Scott will take over as interim chief starting September 1. Scott will serve as interim chief for a longer period of time because the city won’t start a search for its next police chief until the start of the new year, according to Gleason.
The city held a national search after Clay Wheeler retired in June of 2019. Donath was a finalist along with Parkland College Chief William Colbrook.
Neil Doyle can be reached at [email protected]
