Young discusses his three decades with Ogden Police Department, time as chief
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- Ogden Police Chief Eric Young stands outside the Francom Public Safety Building in Ogden on Thursday, Feb. 4, 2021. Young took over from Randy Watt as chief on Jan. 12, 2021.
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- Ogden Police Chief Eric Young comforts fallen Officer Nate Lyday’s widow, Ashley Lyday, and father, Andrew Lyday, on Thursday, May 6, 2021, at the Utah Law Enforcement Memorial on the west grounds of the Utah Capitol.
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- Ogden police chief Eric Young is presented with the Chief of the Year at a Large Agency award during the Utah Chiefs of Police Association’s annual Utah Chiefs Of Police Conference in St. George.
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- Eric Young, seen here in 2018 at the Francom Public Safety Building in Ogden, was named chief of the Ogden Police Department on Tuesday, Dec. 29, 2020. He will replace the retiring Randy Watt.
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- Ogden Police Chief Eric Young addresses an Aug. 28, 2023, meeting of the Utah Administrative Rules Review and General Oversight Committee. He was addressing a provision of the department’s officer-evaluation policy related to ticketing for traffic citations. Ogden Mayor Mike Caldwell is seated to his left.
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- Ogden Police Chief Eric Young helps plant daffodil bulbs Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2021, at the Ogden Botanical Gardens in memory of the 429 people who died by gun violence in Utah in 2020.
OGDEN — Eric Young’s days as Ogden’s chief of police are coming to a close.
On Thursday, Young will step down from the position he’s held for three years and from a 32-year career in law enforcement.
Recently, he sat down with the Standard-Examiner to discuss the great changes he’s seen in local law enforcement and the strides he’s seen Ogden — both the police department and the city itself — take in that span.
Young hadn’t always planned on going into law enforcement. In fact, it took a full two years of attending Weber State University for him to have an epiphany.
“I wasn’t sure what I was going to do,” he said. “I took a criminal justice class and found it really intriguing. I had a couple of friends of my family or other relatives in my hometown who were police officers in Ogden. I took a field experience class and went out and did a ride-along with the Ogden Police Department with some of those people that I know that had already been working there a few years. And after those ride-alongs, I was hooked. I knew that was what’s for me. I declared my major as criminal justice.”
Young said he was hopeful that he would end up with the Ogden Police Department and, upon graduation, he applied.
“Back in that time, it was a very, very competitive environment,” he said. “It was an uphill battle.”
Young said there have been huge shifts in the three decades since he came aboard.
“There’s been a drastic change in the culture,” he said. “Not just in the Ogden Police Department, but in Ogden City as a whole. I came in the early-’90s and Ogden was stuck in a rut it had been stuck in for years and years. To be fair, our police department’s always done great things and done great work. But when Mayor (Matthew) Godfrey and Chief (Jon) Greiner came in, a real drastic change happened for Ogden and for the culture in the police department. We’ve just carried on that culture of excellence of recognition for those who work hard and do the right things and holding people accountable from that day forward.”
One of the places that this shift has been clear has been along Historic 25th Street downtown.
“Both sides of the street were nothing but trouble,” Young said. “You didn’t go into a call for a fight on 25th Street, when I was hired, without several officers with you, and a lot of them were putting on their motor helmets before they went in because bottles were flying and it was dangerous back then. Now you look at what 25th Street is and some of our surrounding communities and how far they’ve come and WonderBlock coming online and adding to that. The change over my career has been unbelievable.”
In addition to changes in culture, Young witnessed several leaps in technology benefitting the Ogden Police Department.
“Technology had very little, if any, impact on my career as a young police officer,” he said. “I wrote all of my reports by hand, had an old piece of junk police car. I’ve still got a callous on one of my fingers from writing all of those reports by hand and correcting them when lieutenants would red-line out your stuff and you had to start from scratch. … There was no technology other than a radio at that time. That’s all you had. Now you have computers in our cars, we have a crime center — one of the most robust crime centers in the country — and really the city as a whole, not just the police department, has embraced technology.”
Young would serve for several years in different roles before becoming chief of police in 2021.
“The department was given to me in great condition and we’ve been able, as a team, to build on that,” he said. “We’d been struggling significantly. When I took over as chief, we’d been as many as 20 officers understaffed. In the last year, we’ve had two months where we were fully staffed. We’re back down a few position now, but we have been able to not only increase the staffing but maintain the staffing with great people.”
But one of the biggest metrics of his time as chief has been where the crime rate has gone.
“The crime rate’s been reduced over 50% since 2016 for our Part I crimes,” he said, referencing a widely used term that encompasses the most serious offenses. “We’ll be down in crime again this year.”
During his time as chief, Young even was recognized as the Utah State Chief’s Association’s 2022 chief of the year and the 2023 Fraternal Order of Police Association’s 2023 chief of the year.
However, Young notes that there have been some great challenges during his time in law enforcement — especially when he and the department have had to deal with the loss of officers in the line of duty.
“Losing Nate Lyday and Jared Francom were the two largest challenges of my career by far,” he said. “I’ve never been so crushed.”
He added that while there have been challenges being in a leadership position, he’s ultimately come across many great people over the last three decades.
“I’ve been involved with so many great people doing so many great things,” he said. “Not only the employees at the police department, but the employees at the city and the people in the Ogden community have been so gracious.”
Young is set to become the United States Business Development Manager for Australia-based Dekko Secure. Deputy Chief Jake Sube will take over the position of chief on an interim basis.
