In one of her first interviews as the new official Chief of the Aurora Police Department, Vanessa Wilson said she is "looking for all the help I can get to try and move us forward and actually have legitimacy again with our community." The problem with that statement is that she served as interim chief for a long time, never did anything meaningful enough to earn legitimacy with her community, and officially making her Chief is just a formality that does not change the power structure that has remained the same since she became interim Chief.
As interim Chief, Vanessa Wilson failed to take action against the officers that murdered Elijah McClain (https://copblaster.com/blast/25811/family-wants-nathan-woodyard-jason-rosenblatt-randy-roedema-charged), only fired one of them (Jason Rosenblatt) when he was caught on camera mocking the murder (https://copblaster.com/blast/25826/jason-rosenblatt-erica-marrero-jaron-jones-and-kyle-dittrich-fired), and did nothing more than apologize when several small black children were wrongfully detained by officers last week (https://copblaster.com/blast/25890/who-are-the-aurora-pd-officers-that-tortured-traumatized-black-kids). Before becoming interim Chief back in January, Wilson was with the same department for over 20 years. She is a company woman whose appointment as Chief is a slap in the face for everyone calling for change in Aurora.
Wilson claims that she understands adversity due to being an openly butch lesbian, but she obviously does not understand it well enough or she would not allow her officers to continue to get away with abusing other minority groups. Her appointment is bad news for all other lesbians that actually do want to help effect change in their communities because she shows that being a lesbian did not help her understand adversity well enough. We have zero faith that her appointment as Chief will serve anything but the status quo. She is basically the APD's token lesbian whose face they are putting forward hoping that by using a minority people might think they support diversity. For being a place where a butch lesbian can make it to Chief they do show that they are a place where some minorities can succeed, but another way of looking at it is that at a time when the department is under fire for abusing black people, they couldn't even find a token black guy to take the job.