After spending nearly 8 years with the Larimer County Sheriff’s Office, Yuma county native Chad Day has returned home to raise his family and seek the office of Yuma County Sheriff.

Chad was born in Wray and lived in rural Yuma County until he graduated from Yuma High School in 1994.  He graduated from Colorado State University in 1999 and went on to own and operate three different businesses. In 2002 he felt called into law enforcement and joined the Larimer County Sheriff’s Office.  His first 2 years were spent developing his skills in the detention center followed by 6 more years on enforcement, leadership and administrative roles in the patrol division, including the SWAT team. In just 3 years on patrol Day had earned the rank of Corporal.

During his time with the Larimer County Sheriff’s Office, Day received an average of 100 hours of scheduled in-service training each year as well as approximately 350 hours of additional training per year for his peripheral duties.  Day was an Arrest Control and Self Defense Instructor for 7 years. After 2 years as a SWAT sniper, Day became a Sniper Instructor with training through the Rocky Mountain Sniper Association.  Many of his Law Enforcement Supervision courses were conducted through Aims Community College and County Sheriff’s of Colorado.  Chad has even been published in the County Sheriff’s of Colorado magazine.

As a patrol officer, Day responded to and was involved with the investigations of many high profile cases including SWAT situations, serious assaults, riots, missing endangered persons, sex assaults, homicide, and various types of illicit drug-related crimes.

Chad’s law enforcement philosophy is to identify those crimes that pose the biggest threat to the people of Yuma County and their property, and aggressively and creatively fight against them.  Illicit drug crimes (including theft, burglary, and criminal mischief committed by those supporting their drug activities), driving under the influence, and domestic violence all fall under that category and will be his biggest priority.  It has been Chad’s experience that tackling those crimes generally reduces the calls for service and the overall crime rates. 

Chad knows that law enforcement is not about having all of the answers.  No amount of experience or training courses will equip a person to “do it all alone”.  Both enforcing and the administration of the law enforcement process, as well as almost every other area of life is most successfully managed if one has access to quality resources and knows when and how to use them. Chad knows the most important and valuable resource in the successful administration of the law is the people that are charged with enforcement.  The right people have unmatched integrity, are thoroughly competent, and therefore, can be most successful in reducing and preventing dangerous risks to our community.

Yuma County will have limited funds to allocate to the Sheriff’s Office and those fiscal challenges will continue to grow.  It is the Sheriff’s responsibility to use the available allocation of funds efficiently, and to aggressively and creatively seek additional funds from other sources such as government and private grants which are certainly available.

The Sheriff should be humble enough to seek input from the community about their law enforcement concerns, and address them appropriately.  The Sheriff should facilitate ongoing community education where citizens are given information to help themselves and each other become safer and more informed about how to assist in crime prevention.

Another responsibility of the Sheriff that Chad will pursue further is to maintain close working relationships with our local legislators, so that they know what is important to their communities, and he will be in a position to quickly know when laws change.

Day also understands the responsability of the Sheriff to operate the Yuma County Jail and believes detention should not be a comfortable experience.  It should be safe, secure, and should provide opportunities for detainees to better themselves and rehabilitate, but also deter them from choices that result in future detention or incarceration.

As part of his campaign launch, Chad will be hosting meet and greet events in both Yuma, at Quintech from 9 to 11 am, and in Wray at the WRAC from 2 to 4 pm, on February 27th.  For more information, including support options and the latest updates, visit Chad’s website at www.chaddayforsheriff.com.

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