By DREW LAWSON
Staff Reporter 

New Day dawns for EWU police department

Former football player takes over as police chief

 

Last updated 9/17/2020 at 11:06am



CHENEY—Jay Day spent the early 1990’s trying to shut down opposing receivers on the Eastern Washington University football team as a defensive back. Nearly 30 years later, he’s taking over for retiring EWU Police Department Chief Tim Walters.

But being a cop wasn’t even on his radar coming out of college.

“It was just kind of one of those lucks of the draw,” Day said. “I didn’t even know, at the time, that it would grab hold of me like it did.”

Day originally enrolled at EWU in 1991, where he quickly met his now wife, Esperanza. The two have three children: Xavier, 27, Janessa, 26 and Sofia, a senior at Cheney High School.

He was drawn to Cheney because, as he put it, “it was the first place I had been as an adult where I didn’t have to worry about anything.”

“Growing up in high school in Tacoma, that’s when gangs were really big, so you had to watch where you went and what you wore,” Day said. “I didn’t have to worry about that here.”

When Day’s playing days were over, he had yet to have finished his degree. Instead he left and worked for Blumenthal Uniforms in Spokane, now a Galls, LLC company.

After a few years, he got a call from a representative at EWU, who noticed he hadn’t completed his degree.

“They asked if I was interested in coming back and completing that; I said absolutely,” Day said. “So I came back to school in ’98 and started studying therapeutic recreation. I got my degree in 2001.”

Day spent the next seven years as a rec therapist at a nursing home in Spokane Valley. In 2008, he was looking to change career paths. He saw an opening within the EWU Police Department, which at the time he assumed would be a glorified security job.

“On a whim, I just kind of applied,” Day said. “I came out and tested, and the rest, as they say, is history.”

He realized he had found his calling when he began interacting with the campus community.

“Being able to impact young people and make a difference is what really drew it to me,” Day said, likening the opportunity to help people to his years spent as a football coach at Cheney High School under Tom Oswald starting in 1998, where he served various roles as defensive backs coach, linebackers coach and eventually defensive coordinator before stopping in 2015.

When Walters interviewed Day for a position in 2008, Day told him he wanted his job someday, but Day said that was mostly to impress him. However, that left a mark in Walters’ mind.

“I think I believed it, but I didn’t really own it and believe it,” Day said. “(But) he never forgot that. One of my first days here, (now retired) Sgt. Lorraine Hill told me, ‘you’re going to run this organization someday.’”

In late 2015, Walters told Day to grab a calendar and follow him. He detailed his plans to retire in the next five years and what Day needed to do to get ready to replace him. Day then enrolled at American Military University and got his master’s degree in organizational leadership.

He was then promoted to lieutenant in 2017 and took responsibility of the patrol operation. He became deputy chief in 2018 and became chief in late August 2020.

“I was afforded an opportunity to learn and grow,” Day said. “It’s unique, because very rarely do you see a person start as an officer and work their way up through the ranks to become the head of that organization.”

Day acknowledged the civil unrest facing the country currently and the current stigma surrounding law enforcement. He said the way his department conducts itself can help mend some of that unrest on a local level, which hopefully can spread outside of the community.

“We can make a difference here, because the students that are here, the majority of them are from somewhere else,” Day said. “The way we interact with them and police them here; they can take that back to their respective communities. Hopefully, what they’ve experienced here will help them have a voice there, saying, ‘hey, there’s a different way to do it. The police treat people differently at Eastern than they do here.’”

“Hopefully, whatever officers are there hear that and make a decision to do things differently,” he continued. “I want us to be the model police agency, period. We are a community-oriented police department. I would like to see our field, overall, move back in that direction…we want our community to trust us, and interact with us and engage with us.”

One of Walters’ emphases was having a diverse staff, which Day plans to carry into his role as chief.

“Our campus consists of so many races and cultures and dialects,” Day said. “Coming to college and being away from home is stressful … I remember walking on campus the first time and not really knowing what to do, where to go, who I am. When you see somebody tasked with the safety and security of the campus that looks like you, even though you don’t necessarily know them it gives you some degree of comfort.”

Day considers himself “humbled” to be in his position as a man of color.

“To be a person doing (my job), especially now, I think it’s important that we remember who we are and we pay the proper amount of respect to the authority and responsibility we face as police officers,” Day said. “As long as we don’t have emotional responses to the things we deal with … we will always act in an appropriate manner.”

Drew Lawson can be reached at drew@cheneyfreepress.com.

 

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