{"id":21875,"date":"2025-06-11T19:58:28","date_gmt":"2025-06-12T01:58:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-police-department-welcomes-new-officers-announces-staff-changes\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T22:10:17","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:10:17","slug":"cortez-police-department-welcomes-new-officers-announces-staff-changes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-police-department-welcomes-new-officers-announces-staff-changes\/","title":{"rendered":"Cortez Police Department welcomes new officers, announces staff changes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Trevor
Trevor Horton (left) and Kiernan Korthank (right) are the newest hires to the Cortez Police Department. (Cortez Police Department\/Courtesy photos)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

The Cortez Police Department has added two new officers to its ranks, and both of the officers are graduates from Montezuma-Cortez High School.<\/p>\n

Trevor Horton and Kiernan Korthank, both born and raised in Cortez and graduates of MCHS, were sworn in as officers on June 6, after their graduation from the Southwest Regional Law Enforcement Academy at Pueblo Community College Southwest on June 1.<\/p>\n

At this ceremony, Cortez\u2019s Detective Kristin Cannon was recognized as the outstanding trainer at the academy.<\/p>\n

Horton was previousl`y employed at the Montezuma County Sheriff\u2019s Office jail and is the son of longtime sheriff\u2019s office employee Nathan Horton. He also received special honors as the top driver in the academy. Korthank was formerly employed with Belt Salvage.<\/p>\n

Both officers were sponsored by the Cortez Police Department, which covered their academy costs and provided salaries during the five-month training program. They will begin field training next week.<\/p>\n

The department has extended offers to two additional hires set to attend the academy in August, with more details to be released later.<\/p>\n

The hiring process, which includes academy training and subsequent field training. The police department shared that applications are always welcome, with job listings and salary information available online<\/a> at www.cortezco.gov\/jobs.<\/p>\n

The Cortez Police Department also shared that Sgt. Traci Mueller has left the department to relocate to Tennessee, Tyler Smith has been promoted to sergeant and officer Jason Giacchino will soon depart for a position on the Front Range.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

officer Tyler Smith was promoted to sergeant<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21876,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,28,60,29,51],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-21875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-headlines","tag-montezuma-county","tag-newsletter","tag-police"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21875"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21875\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77495,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21875\/revisions\/77495"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21875"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=21875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}