Midlands city’s first police chief since public safety shakeup is leaving the job
The person who has presided over the Cayce Police since the dissolution of the city’s unified public safety department is stepping away.
The city of about 14,000 across the Congaree River from Columbia announced Wednesday afternoon the departure of Police Chief Chris Cowan, hired in October 2021 ahead of the formal split of Cayce’s public safety department into separate police and fire departments in January 2022. The city’s fire and police services were merged into a single department in the 1980s.
According to a news release, the appointment of an interim chief will be announced soon by the city manager.
Cowan is leaving Cayce to join the staff at the University of South Carolina’s Joseph F. Rice School of Law, where he will be involved with a grant-funded program to support law enforcement agencies with professional development and leadership training.
“It’s really humbling,” Cowan said of the new job. “It’s an exciting opportunity for what we have going in South Carolina.”
In his nearly three years as chief, Cowan led Cayce police through an eventful time, re-establishing the department as a separate entity within the city government and helping establish new initiatives, including the “Si Se Puede” program to connect with the area’s Hispanic population, a program aimed at supporting and educating local senior citizens, and a citizen advisory committee.
“Cayce has a long history of public safety, there’s been generations of police officers and firefighters that have so much for the city,” Cowan said. “The goal was to create a professional police agency that would follow in the footsteps of some of that excellence that has gone on in previous years with public safety. ... We wanted to make sure that we had the best equipment that we possibly could for the for the officers that were here, but also make ourselves more more accessible and more visible in the community.”
With his backing, the city passed a hate crime ordinance earlier this year, becoming the first municipality in Lexington County to do so.
Cowan also led the department through tragedy and grief after K9 officer Drew Barr was shot and killed in the line of duty in April 2022.
“When Drew was killed in the line of duty, we found the outpouring of love and support that we got from the community,” Cowan said. “And we had to make sure that we were doing right by the community and we were following the desires of the community. And the only way you can do that is to make sure that you have those connections with the community.”
Cayce Mayor Elise Partin sees his departure as inevitable.
“We all knew Chief Cowan would only be with us in Cayce for a short time,” Partin is quoted in the city’s release. “We are thankful for the impact he made while he was with us: Helping us transition from the Public Safety model to an individual Police Department, all while working with citizens to create safe driving initiatives, furthering dialogues, and connections we have built and creating successes and systems that have an average two minute, nine second response time for emergencies. We look forward to continuing to support the women and men of our Police Department as we build upon these successes.”
Cayce Mayor Pro Tem Tim James, who previously served as the head of the city’s public safety department, also praised the outgoing chief.
“Chief Cowan set various initiatives that were both personal and professional, with the goal of setting a benchmark for detecting, investigating, and preventing crime,” James said in the release. “This goal has been well achieved, and the decrease in crime rates prove it.”
Beyond continuing to build relationships with the community, Cowan said keeping up with technology will be a key challenge for his successor to keep in mind.
“Technology in law enforcement is advancing so rapidly,” he said. “But technology can also help us provide better services for our citizens. And one of the things we’re proud of here is that we have put new body cameras on our officers, new in-car cameras on our officers, license plate readers in every police car, providing more community cameras around the community, in our parks and on our street corners. We’re using technology to benefit the community. And letting the bad guys and gals know that there’s no place for them.”
This story was originally published July 3, 2024 at 3:40 PM.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated the history of the Cayce Police Department. Cayce police previously existed as a separate department led by a police chief before the 1980s, when it merged with fire services to form a unified public safety department.
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