She had always wanted to be a police officer, but now she was finally doing something to make it happen.

She paid her way through the academy herself and then took what was essentially a volunteer position with the Harrisville Police Department in 2014 to get her foot in the door.

At the same time, she worked as a manager at Ruby River.

Twelve years after starting in Harrisville, Davis has bounced like a ping-pong ball from patrol, to investigations, back to patrol and now back to investigations, all the while taking jumps up the ladder.

She’s now the sergeant over an investigations division that she was tasked with building when she received her most recent promotion, and her successes have resulted in her being named the 2026 Utah Chiefs of Police Officer of the Year for small and midsize agencies.

“I came back from vacation and chief and assistant chief walked into my office, and they’re like, ‘You got a letter,'” she said. “And I was like, ‘Oh no, what did I do?’ You know? And I looked at it, and I was like, ‘Are you kidding me?'”

Davis couldn’t help but be caught off guard. For 20 years before last year, Harrisville hadn’t had an officer of the year. Davis nominated investigations detective Jason Keller last year and he won, and this year, Keller nominated Davis.

“He let me read his letter,” she said. “And I was like, ‘You know, I just do my job.’ … I’m not over the top, you know?

“And then I read the thing, and I’m like, ‘OK, well I do that. I do that. OK. OK. OK,’ You know? Like, it was just unexpected.”

Law enforcement beginnings

Davis grew up in Idaho before moving to Utah when she was 15. She went to Viewmont High School in Bountiful.

From when she was young, she was interested in law enforcement.

“You know, and it’s career day, and they’re like, ‘Oh, well, what do you want to be?’ And I was like, ‘Well, I don’t know. A cop sounds cool,’ you know? I don’t know any better. (It’s) junior high. Like, I haven’t even thought about it. That sounds kind of cool,” she said.

“And then I went to high school, and my senior year, I did an internship. It was a 10-week police academy. So you got to see, like, 10 different aspects of law enforcement. And so during my senior year, I did that and then I was hooked.”

Davis wanted to go through the academy much earlier, but it didn’t happen.

“And then, you know, you turn 21 and find life and have fun and motorcycles and get married and all the things, and it got to a point where I was like, I just always thought about it. I want to do it. I want to do it. I want to do it,” she said. “And then at 30, I just, ‘If I’m going to do it, I have to do it now. And I’m in a position where I can do it.’ So I saved up money and paid for the academy myself and was able to do it full-time and got it out of the way.”

There were 40 people in Davis’ academy class and she was one of the two oldest.

Coming to Harrisville

Davis started in Harrisville in May 2014 as an unpaid reserve officer because a full-time spot wasn’t open.

“As a reserve officer, they hold your certification through POST, and you pretty much learn the job, kind of like field training, and you get to be a cop, but you don’t get paid for it,” she said. “So you still get the experience and the time and the hours and everything like that, but you do it more volunteer.”

In September 2014, she got hired full-time.

Davis did patrol for a while, then moved into investigations. Originally, she was less than thrilled with the move.

“I told the chief, ‘No. I’m not done playing.’ Like, you know, ‘I’m a beat cop.’ You know, ‘I’m not done playing. This is fun. I still enjoy it. I don’t want to do it,'” she said. “And he’s like, ‘Hmm, but you have a knack for it.’ And so I was like, ‘Fine.'”

Looking back, Davis said that’s just how things are.

“I mean, you do a job and you get really good at it, and you love it,” she said. “And then they’re like, ‘Oh, hey, maybe try this.’ It’s out of your comfort zone. It’s something new. And so I was like, ‘OK, I’ll try it.’

“And then you get in there, and by the time you get your feet wet and start learning and all the training that comes with investigations and everything there, and then you start loving it, then they’re like, ‘Oh, hey, well, what do you think about this?’ And you’re like, ‘No.’ And once I was in investigations, I didn’t want to go back to patrol. Like, ‘No. No, thanks.’ And they’re like, ‘Uh, but it’s better for your résumé and it’s better experience. Now everything you learn in investigations, you can bring out to the patrol guys.'”

Eventually, Davis became a patrol sergeant. She then got transferred back to investigations as investigation sergeant, where she’s been for about two and a half years.

When she became the investigation sergeant, she had a clear task: build

“It was kind of a challenge, because we’ve had a detective, but we haven’t had an investigations division,” she said. “And so my job was to come in and pretty much come up with the program for, you know, case flow and working cases and screening everything to the county attorney’s office and tracking cases and just everything – to come up with a process that actually flows.

“Plus, when we get a new detective, to come up with like a training program…

“And so now we have, you know, a program that helps transition better. So you’re not just walking in blind. You know, you have guidelines and resources and all the things that, you know, 10 years ago, we didn’t have, or we did have, just nobody wrote it down.”

Davis said she’s been told she has a “Rain Man” memory because she remembers “names and pictures and just about everything.”

Accreditation

The Harrisville Police Department recently became the second agency in Weber County to receive accreditation, the Ogden Police Department being the other, according to Assistant Chief Nick Taylor.

“It’s an in-depth process of going over our policies and procedures to make sure they’re lining up with best practices and national standards,” Taylor explained. “So the DOJ has set in place what they’ve deemed is the best policy and practices for police departments, and there’s police departments all across the country that had their own policies and things that they followed. That accreditation process verifies that we’ve updated our policies to be in line with those best practices, and they do that through independent review and something they call proofs.

“So it could be easy for somebody to update their policies on paper and say, ‘Yeah, we’re doing all those things.’

“The process requires an agency to give documentation and proof that we’re actually abiding by those policies and procedures. So, for example, if there’s a policy in there for officer safety when responding to traffic accidents, and it says officers should wear a visible vest whenever they’re out in traffic conducting an accident investigation or anything of that, we actually have to upload – it could be body camera images, it could be video from our cop cars that actually show officers in an active investigation with their vests on – and then the accreditation body accepts that as OK, that’s a proof standard that you’re doing.”

Taylor said the department received the accreditation in January and is really proud of it.

Keller lauded Davis for her efforts throughout that process.

“Val Shupe (executive director of the Utah Chiefs of Police Association) … goes out and does all the audits for those agencies that are wanting to be accredited, and he was in charge of ensuring each section of the department and all that,” Keller said. “And he sat down with her, and she just laid out the laundry list of things that she’s in charge of… And so with that and everything else she does in this department for the 11 years she’s been here … she was a shoo-in to be at least nominated.”

Davis brought the award back to the agency as a whole, highlighting that Harrisville Chief of Police Mark Wilson won 2025 Administrator of the Year by the Weber Fraternal Order of Police.

“So … we’re just coming out blazing,” she said.

Contact Standard-Examiner editor Ryan Comer at rcomer@standard.net.