Robert C. White

The Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) conducted the national search that led to White's hiring from the Louisville police department by Hancock. White was a member of PERF when he was hired by Hancock. During the fall of 2015, White became a member of PERF's Board of Directors.

National attention was again drawn when the Denver Police Protective Association (representing Denver police officers) and the Colorado Fraternal Order of Police (representing law enforcement officers in the state) called for White's resignation after a police memorial was allowed to be vandalized on February 15, 2015.

Soon after the gun bills were signed, the White House began to communicate with Chief White, via Mayor Michael Hancock's office, concerning an upcoming trip to Denver, by President Obama, to advocate for national gun-control laws (by spotlighting Colorado's recent gun-control legislation). President Obama desired to address 300 – 400 Denver metro-area law enforcement officers at the Denver Police Academy. Chief White authorized both on and off-duty Denver police officers to attend in uniform.

In 2011, newly elected Denver mayor Michael Hancock appointed White as the new Denver police chief, one of his first high-profile appointments. Hancock, elected in 2010, had promised during his campaign to bring new leadership to the Denver Police Department, after a number of complaints of excessive force, and allegations of lax discipline for those officers found to have acted improperly.

White graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in Public Administration from the University of the District of Columbia in 1993. He earned an M.S. in Applied Behavioral Science in 1996 from Johns Hopkins University.

White started as a policeman in 1972 with the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia, Washington, D.C.. He rose to the position of assistant chief before retiring after 23 years in 1995. He was then director of the District of Columbia Housing Authority Office of Public Safety from 1995 until 1997, when he returned to the D.C. police department as assistant chief overseeing patrol operations. He left D.C. in 1998 to become chief of police at the Greensboro, North Carolina Police Department. In 2003 he became the chief of police of the newly formed Louisville Metro Police Department, Louisville, Kentucky.

Robert C. White (born 1953) is a career police officer and the former chief of police of the Denver Police Department, Denver, Colorado. He was appointed in 2011 by Mayor Michael Hancock, he retired in 2018.