Abigail Salas:
Can you tell us about how your background has prepared you to serve as sheriff?
Jon Day:
Well, my background is 100% within the Doña Ana County Sheriff's Department. My professional background. I spent the last 22 years working for the sheriff's office as a sheriff's deputy. I worked my way and promoted through every attainable rank in the sheriff's office. I've sat there and did the trainings. I've gone through multiple different trainings. I went to college, got a bachelor's degree in criminal justice, from the community out by Anthony. I went to Gadsden High School. I've spent my entire adult life working in the profession of law enforcement, and that's been a nice foundation for going to run for sheriff.
Abigail Salas:
Why are you running for sheriff?
Jon Day:
I'm running for sheriff because I believe that Doña Ana County Sheriff's Department should be the number one department in the state of New Mexico. That the sheriff's office needs to restore back to the public the safety that they deserve. I've seen too many things on the news of violent events happening in communities and things getting stolen from people's property and just a sense in the community when you walk through it and talk to folks that they don't feel as safe as they used to be. And I think that's wrong. It needs to be restored. Several short years ago, used to not feel that way around here. And now it seems to be that everything's unraveling. It needs to come back to the center.
Abigail Salas:
What are the top issues in the county and how would you successfully address those issues?
Jon Day:
That's a complex question. There's a lot of issues in the county. I think #1 is public safety. People want to feel safe and want to be safe in their communities, and law enforcement needs to do their jobs. And so, an approach is restoring public safety and trust in the department by having reallocating resources where deputies are more relevant and prevalent in their communities has more of a greater impact. Investigating crimes, trying to reduce crimes and violence through proper and thorough investigations. And also following up on the little investigations that the missing theft events and stuff of that nature seems to be lacking. And I think that will help seriously reduce our crime stats in this county, and people will feel safer and know that they're safe in their communities. Another thing I do is increase communication with the public as well as with the county commission. For too long, under different administrations, we've had a lack of communication with the county and then a lack of true transparency with the public. And since the public is, you know, they're the bosses, they're the taxpayers, they're the ones that are flipping the bill for this. We need to be more responsive to their needs and to provide back to them the information that they want. The third thing I want to do for the sheriff's office is to increase our technological usage. I'd like to put in like a first responder program on the firehouse stations. That way, we can have real life coverage of events. The calls come in to have quicker response times of having eyes on scene so we can know what resources we need to send to a location before we swarm that area with too many resources. So, as well as the increasing amount of flock camels that we have, I think that would significantly put a larger safety net on this county.
Abigail Salas:
Technology is rapidly advancing the footprint of law enforcement. What technology that exists now in DASO would you expand upon, and what new areas would you develop?
Jon Day:
First of all, I'd sit there and rejoin back with the Las Cruces Police Department and the real-time crime center. So, we have a regional real-time crime center that would cover the entire county. Increasing the amount of flock cameras that we have because we currently have, I believe, 60 that should be out there. I know for sure before I retired, there was about 40 of them. There's 20 of them still being purchased. And those camera systems are excellent for being all passive surveillance of roadways to find storm vehicles or people that are wanted with warrants. They just, they measure vehicles. And that's been a very significant impact in recovery of stolen vehicles, especially in Chaparral , that's where we had most of them recovered. But I would increase their numbers just have that on every roadway, major roadway in the county. And then on top of that, install more drones. Drones as a first responder program, which I briefly talked about earlier. That would allow for supervisors and deputies before they arrive on scene for whatever incident they've been called to, have eyes on that area and see what they're getting into. It can allow supervisors to manage resources better and send appropriate amount of resources to wherever that call is going to be. And we can share it with the fire department. And so, we split the cost between the two of us and they can assist the fire office as well. And the third thing is, again, drones and actually fully man our drone unit, a drone, a mobile drone unit with enough staff that it could be 24-7 coverage because technology is going to be here for, you know, It's not going away. And we need to better integrate it into the organization.
Abigail Salas:
The training budget for DASO is about $100,000 a year. Would you expand or contract it and why?
Jon Day:
I would expand it, but I would reduce the travel budgets because what I would want to do is bring, there's three different budget items for training. There's training for like registrations, and then there's the travel portion of it, which is for hotels, restaurants, and food. And so, what I would want to do is increase the travel or increase the training budget but bring instructors here to the department. That way they will teach the whole department, all 200 plus employees, 180 plus law enforcement people. Instead of just sending a couple people to training in another state, we get more bang for our buck by bringing the instructors here to Doña Ana County and teaching there. So, And increase the training amount, or increase more training, because training's very important in law enforcement, because the world of law enforcement changes so quickly and rapidly evolves and changes with different case laws and changes with different scenarios. Law enforcement in 2015 is incredibly different than law enforcement in 2025. So, I would want to make sure that the deputies are up to date on the latest and greatest in teaching styles and de-escalation techniques, as well as things have changed in technologies on how responsive people are to different types of less lethals and things of that nature. So, we definitely want to maintain training for the deputies, that's for sure.
Abigail Salas:
What role in budget, preparation, presentation, and monitoring do you see yourself in at DASO?
Jon Day:
Well, you're the, that's your number one job almost as a sheriff is making sure that the budget is balanced and that you're maintaining true to your budget, and you don't go outside of your budget. From being the major and being somewhat responsible in that area with the current administration on budget, it does take up a lot of your time because it's important to make sure that you don't overspend, number one. Number two, that you have enough money to cover every project you want to do. Over 85% of your budget goes to employee salary and benefits. And so, you have a really small amount of that large $30 plus million budget that you actually can use for operational purposes. So, we definitely want to make sure that we're responsible to the county taxpayer that we're not misusing their funds on ridiculous things and that we're using it to better the public safety and the public.
Abigail Salas:
What else do you think is important for voters to know about your campaign?
Jon Day:
I'm the only candidate there that's just recently retired honorably from the sheriff's office up to 22 years. I know that department better than any other candidate that's running of all other 11 of them, or 10 of them. I built their policy manuals. I was able to take a team and get them nationally accredited in CALEA, updated their technologies from the Stone Age to at least 2000. increase their staffing, increase their training repertoires. I just truly believe in the Doña Ana County Sheriff's Office and I put my entire heart and soul into it to make sure that it's the best place possible. And I'm the only one of the candidates that can sit down and tell you almost verbatim what the, how that place works and what relationships work and what don't.
