The Canton Police Department, a prominent focal point of the ongoing Karen Read murder trial, will soon have a new chief, as its leader intends to retire at the end of this fiscal year.

Helena Rafferty, who took over the department in June 2022, is set to retire on June 30, town officials said earlier this week. She became chief months after the death of Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe.

In a statement, Select Board Chairman Michael Loughran called Rafferty a “trailblazer” who has “earned the respect of her colleagues, town officials and residents alike,” for serving as the department’s first female chief.

Residents applauded at the start of Tuesday’s Select Board meeting, when they learned about Rafferty’s decision to retire.

“Folks, calm down,” Loughran told those attending. “It’s a business meeting, not a pep rally.”

Rafferty’s tenure as chief has been mired in turmoil as the department has dealt with sharp backlash for how it handled investigations into the deaths of O’Keefe and resident Sandra Birchmore.

Rafferty succeeded Kenneth Berkowitz, who was the chief at the time of O’Keefe’s death and the subsequent investigation. Some in town had called for Rafferty to resign last year.

Loughran stated that the town will be appointing an “interim police chief to ensure a smooth transition,” and it intends to “engage a professional consulting firm to assist with a comprehensive, nationwide search for our next police chief.”

An independent firm that conducted a months-long $198,000 audit of the department praised Rafferty’s “leadership style and found her approach and decision-making abilities to be effective.”

The firm, 5 Stones intelligence, Inc., reported that it “did not find any indication of conspiracies, coverups or corruption” in the audit, which it released on the day that jury selection began in Read’s second trial.

Read is accused of backing her SUV into O’Keefe, her boyfriend of two years and a 16-year Boston Police veteran, leaving him to die in a snowstorm the morning of Jan. 29, 2022.

The handling of the crime scene by the local police in those crucial early hours has been widely criticized, with the Read defense seizing on investigative and protocol failures that they argue point to their client being framed.

Rafferty, who earned $212,524.54 in total pay in 2023, is listed as a witness for the prosecution and defense in the second trial. She did not testify in the first trial, which ended in a hung jury last year.

Rafferty, who joined the department in 1989, oversees roughly 50 employees in the department, including 42 sworn officers, the 5 Stones audit states.

“Chief Rafferty, a 35-year veteran of the department and an FBI National Academy graduate, ascended through the department’s ranks to her current position,” the firm stated in its report.

Last June, the Select Board approved a one-year contract, instead of three, for Rafferty, with members emphasizing that the dust needed to settle from the Read case.

Rafferty found herself in hot water after she crashed into and injured a Wrentham resident with her SUV in February 2024. In a letter to the community weeks later, she apologized and stated that her blood alcohol content “read 0.0%.”

“This was an unfortunate accident,” Rafferty wrote. “Upon further reflection and considering the amount of attention that has been focused on Canton, I should have issued a statement sooner.”