Longtime Cheyenne Cop Hangs Up His Badge After 28+ Years
After nearly three decades of service with the Cheyenne Police Department, Detective Jim Harper has hung up his badge.
Harper, whose last day was on Halloween, began his career with the department in 1994 and joined the detective bureau in 2010.
In his 28-plus years on the job, he did everything from working with domestic violence victims to conducting hundreds of active shooter trainings to serving on the SWAT team (something he did for 20 years).
Harper's work earned him numerous awards, including a Lifesaving Award in 2009 for bounding after a man who was threatening to end his own life and attempting to jump off of the viaduct downtown, and the Chief's Award in 2016 for his work on the Phillip Sam murder case.
Harper doesn’t measure his career in the number of arrests or convictions he’s secured but in the number of people who have told him that he’s changed their lives.
His most treasured work memento is a letter written by a defendant who credits her sobriety to him and the things he said to her while arresting her and investigating her case.
"There isn’t anything that Jim wouldn’t do for this community," his wife Caitlin Harper told KGAB Radio.
"It’s a joy to walk around with him at the farmers' market or the grocery store and watch people come up to him and thank him for various things he’s done for them over the years," she added.
The Harpers welcomed their son Finn (arguably one of the cutest babies ever) on July 25, 2022, and Caitlin says Jim is excited to be home with him.
"He wants to be a stay-at-home dad and really invest in Finn," she said.
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