Jerry Day was drinking and facing marital problems in 2009 when he instigated a car chase, brandished his gun during a tense standoff with police, then aimed it at his own head.
He survived the pursuit and is lucky to have a boss who’s standing by him.
Day was a detective for the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office, which by law had to remove his badge after he was charged with felonies. Still, Sheriff Terry Maketa gave him a job working the front desk of the county jail, at least until his trial next month. The department is intent on keeping Day on its payroll as long as he hasn’t been convicted.
“He felt he had nothing to live for. We felt that here’s an opportunity to do something good for somebody and give him hope,” Maketa says.
“Our feeling was that if Jerry was struggling or having a difficult time, it was our responsibility to give him the benefit of the doubt and help him overcome,” adds department spokeswoman Lt. Lari Sevene. “We needed to look at the whole picture.”
As the department tells it, Day — who declines comment — was bearing a heavy caseload, facing financial problems and possible divorce, arguing with a girlfriend, struggling with alcohol and suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder in the winter of 2009 when a Douglas County sheriff’s deputy tried to pull him over in his pickup.
Other officers joined the chase and eventually stopped him near Franktown, where he pointed a pistol at them and refused to surrender. After being shot with a nonlethal round, he continued ignoring orders until a police dog bit him.
On one hand, I feel for Day and for his agency. The department’s compassion for a distraught employee makes me warm and fuzzy, almost — as if he’s actually innocent until proven guilty, or there really is such a thing as a second chance.
On the other hand, I’m frustrated by the hypocrisy of law enforcers who so often ignore such complexities with civilians.
We’re supposed to empathize with Day because of the wholeness of his picture. But when it comes to the teenage runaway trading sex for meals in El Paso County, or the homeless meth addict taking refuge in a local housing tract, the picture seems far less whole. The law’s the law, after all, and defense attorneys in both cases said the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office showed no such concern for their clients’ emotional complexities.
Maketa is facing criticism for protecting one of his top detectives. I give him credit for having some backbone.
“The easy way out would be to fire him because I didn’t want to take the chance of ridicule,” he tells me.
Still, I’m struck by his department’s unabashed double standards — especially by these comments by spokeswoman Sevene: “Obviously, if it’s an employee, we have a different degree of consideration. Law enforcement is very much a family.”
So let’s get this straight: When a cop drinks and drives, provokes a chase and points a gun at other cops, it’s called having personal problems. Never mind that a civilian picked up under the same circumstances no doubt would be labeled a danger to society.
District Attorney Carol Chambers’ office didn’t return phone calls about Day’s prosecution or his trial, scheduled for Aug. 17.
If he’s convicted of a felony, his $37,332-a-year salary could be in jeopardy as a “security technician” for the county.
Susan Greene writes Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Reach her at 303-954-1989 or greene@denverpost.com.
