Seaside police chief announces retirement.

Seaside Police Chief Vicki Myers announced Monday she will retire next spring, after a 31-year career in law enforcement.

Myers was sworn in as Seaside’s top cop on Dec. 31, 2010 and her retirement date is set for May 12, 2017.

This fall, city officials will search for a successor with the hope of having a new chief hired by January; Myers would then serve as a consultant until May, guiding the transition. Myers could not be immediately reached for comment.

Myers' time as chief paralleled increases in shootings, property thefts and drug crimes, as well as the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement and major changes to sentencing in California including Proposition 47, which makes many drug possession crimes misdemeanors, rather than felonies.

In 2013, Myers began invoking the Drug Nuisance Abatement Act to seize "drug houses" for up to a year, resulting in 11 evictions in 2014 in Seaside.  

In 2014, thanks to a $100,000 donation, Seaside Police installed eight Spacio-Temporal Event Management Architecture cameras (more commonly called STEMA cameras) around the city, part of a trend toward more police-gathered surveillance footage. 

Last year, Seaside police solved a cold case when they arrested 22-year-old Martin Lopez, who was charged with murdering Erick Curiel two years earlier.

In two shootings by Seaside cops—one of which left a man injured, another dead—police officers involved were never charged, and the District Attorney's office determined they had acted appropriately. 

Also during Myers' tenure as chief, tensions ran high internally as she locked horns with police officers in both Seaside and Pacific Grove, where she served as chief from 2012-2015. (Her time as chief of both cities was part of a larger trend for small cities to share services, like police and fire departments, in an effort to reduce duplicative spending on costly personnel and administrative functions.)

Both unions took votes of no confidence against Myers and called for her removal.