Always educating: WSU Police Chief Dawn Daniels

Dawn Daniels was appointed as Washington State University’s police chief in August 2025. Daniels shares her journey from WSU student to leading the university’s police department. 

Over the years, she has served in various WSU roles including community policing officer, sergeant, and firearms instructor. With nearly three decades of service, she reflects on her career, the evolving role of campus policing, and her commitment to student success and community collaboration.

“I’ve always viewed policing as teaching—just in a different way,” Daniels says.

She talks with Washington State Magazine editor Larry Clark about her unexpected path into law enforcement, the importance of community policing and student engagement, and memorable moments in her career.

Transcript

Washington State Magazine podcast – Episode 41

Always educating: WSU Police Chief Dawn Daniels

Dawn Daniels:

Our goal is for students, like the entire university, for students to be successful here. So safety is a huge part of that. But at the same time, we want to make sure they're successful, so if we're able to get them engaged with resources that are available, that's a big part of what we do. 

Larry Clark:

Dawn Daniels was sworn in as Washington State University's police chief in August 2025, but she's been around the university for quite a while. She started as a student, and after graduating, she joined the WSU Police Department over twenty years ago. Now she's leading the way as chief. 

[music]

Welcome to the Washington State Magazine podcast, where we meet with fascinating WSU alums and tell stories of the university. I'm Larry Clark, editor of the magazine. 

I talked with Chief Daniels about her time at WSU, how she got into law enforcement, and the role of university police.

[music] 

Dawn Daniels:

Well. Good morning. My name is Dawn Daniels, and I just took over as chief of police at Washington State University Police Department, Pullman campus. 

Larry Clark: 

On August fifteenth, I believe was when you were sworn in. 

Dawn Daniels:

That was my swearing in ceremony. Yeah. With the president. And along with my new assistant chief Harry Smith. And so, yeah, we've kind of hit the ground running, and off we go. 

Larry Clark:

That's great. And you start at the same time as we have our new president, Elizabeth Cantwell. 

Dawn Daniels:

Yep, yep. So she came in back in April, and so, yeah, it's been great meeting her and working with her and having the support that she's provided. 

Larry Clark:

That's great. And you've been with the WSU Police Department for quite a while. 

Dawn Daniels:

Quite a while. So this is the twenty-eighth year that I'm with the department. I started in July of ninety-eight. So I've been here for a few years. 

Larry Clark:

That's great. But if I understand correctly, you were here even before you were with the WSU Police Department. 

Dawn Daniels:

I was. I started in 1991 as a student here at WSU. I came to be an architect student. I did three years of architecture and realized that I hated architecture and so decided I wanted to do something different. And I looked at teaching as an option and pretty much started my college career over at that point, because a lot of the credits didn't. While they gave me credits, they didn't transfer into anything. And so kind of started another four years of my career as a student. I called myself a professional student and I majored in social studies, in history, and I was getting a double degree. I ended up graduating in the fall of ninety-seven with my social studies bachelor's. Um, kind of got burned out in the spring of ninety-eight. I was a student. I was coaching at the high school, softball JV coach, and I was working a couple other jobs on top of that, and so I was a little burned out. Somebody in the spring said, hey, you should apply to be a cop. It was right after the riots in ninety-eight, and they were hiring community police officers, or they had a grant for community policing. And so they were hiring officers. And so myself and another officer got hired at the same time, and we started our careers back then together and went to the academy and got out. And yeah, the rest is history. 

Larry Clark: 

Wow. That's exciting. So you've been around, you've seen a lot at WSU. And tell me a little bit about how you ended up going into law enforcement. Who your mentors have been. 

Dawn Daniels:

Yeah. So I never really thought about being a police officer. I had at one point looked into maybe becoming a member of the fire department because they had a student fire department at the time. Right. I came in and did a tour and then just realized I didn't want to go through some of the challenges that that would create. They didn't have any female on the force at that time. And so there would have been some challenges with, not only the location of where they were at and the housing, because the students stayed in the firehouse, there were no quarters basically designated for females. There was one set of showers, that kind of stuff, although there were some of those things that I just didn't really feel like as a student, I wanted to take on.

Somebody told me about policing and I thought, well, okay, I'll try it. And then, you know, ever since I've loved it. I've always viewed it as teaching, just in a different way. And so I still get to teach. But I have law enforcement on both sides of my family that go back a couple generations. So I was kind of destined in the family to be the cop. 

Larry Clark:

And where are you from originally? 

Dawn Daniels:

I'm originally from Anchorage, Alaska. Oh, I grew up there until high school. And then my mom decided that she wanted to get out of Alaska. And so we moved to Lincoln City, Oregon, because she'd been on vacation there once and thought it was a great place to hang out. So we went down there and I started my freshman year in Lincoln City, Oregon. So I went from about 250,000 to about 3,000 as a population. [Yeah, right there on the ocean] kind of an adjustment. Yes. [I've been through there a couple of times.] A lot of people have. 

Larry Clark:

So you talked a little bit about community policing. Can you tell me a little bit about some of the other roles you've had in the police department? 

Dawn Daniels:

Yeah. So community policing was probably the biggest portion that I've had throughout my career. And so when I was originally hired, that was my position. And I was designated to a certain section of campus. It was mainly the south end of campus with Steohenson Complex and Rogers/Orton. And my job was really to do a lot of foot patrols and interactions with students, do programming, that kind of stuff. And really, for about twelve years, community policing was a huge part of that. That position, we got to a point with the budget that we couldn't maintain that separate position anymore. And so, although I was always a police officer and always on patrol doing other things, that was just my main focus. Since then I've been a corporal, I've been a sergeant. I did the administrative sergeant, which allowed me to do a lot more outreach to the community at the time. I've also been firearms instructor. I was certified in all kinds of different things to teach. As far as, like, active shooter, those kinds of things. So teaching again, still teaching, just in a different way. 

Larry Clark:

Well, and as an employee here, you know, I've taken some of the active shooter training. And I kind of know that important role that the WSU police play in the community. What are some of those other roles that WSU police play, you know, as educators and also safety?

Dawn Daniels:

Yeah. And so while our primary concern is safety, you know, when we're doing traffic stops, that kind of stuff, it's more about educating the public and what's safe. If you've got broken equipment on your car, it makes others unsafe. So a simple tail light or headlight can cause issues because people can't see you. And so while we make traffic stops for it, most of the education happens that way. You know, over my career I didn't write a lot of tickets, but I did a lot of traffic enforcement. But, you know, as we reach out with students, our role on this campus is more than just law enforcement. And so we're kind of one of those conduits that allows us to transfer information to the dean of students office, student conduct, those kinds of things. Our goal is for students, like the entire university, for students to be successful here. So safety is a huge part of that. But at the same time, we want to make sure they're successful. So if we're able to get them engaged with resources that are available, that's a big part of what we do. 

We actually meet once a week with the city of Pullman and student community centers or, excuse me, the center for Community Standards. Everybody keeps changing acronyms, and I know that one's been there a while, but I still get them all wrong. Dean of students office, that kind of stuff. And we talk about arrests that we've had throughout the week, trends that we're seeing, concerns that we have. And that's really designed to be that conduit to get everybody in the same room to see, okay, what do we need to do education wise? Do we need more peer education for students on a certain topic? Do we need to send resources to certain individuals? Do we need to send it to certain groups of individuals, that kind of stuff. And so we really look at all of that. 

Larry Clark:

I was wondering too, and that leads to another question of mine around the community. You know, Pullman's a small college town, and WSU is a big presence. Are there challenges or advantages to coordinating with the city and the community at large?

Dawn Daniels:

Well, anytime you collaborate, it makes your job easier. At least, that's always been my philosophy. And so I believe in the collaboration, whether it's with city, county, state, we all want to work together in this community. And there's some really cool changes happening right now with the changes in leadership that have occurred. And so the law enforcement community in this area has become very tight knit. We really want to help each other out and work with each other to make sure that the community is safe. But also students are successful and we're going forward with that, you know, vision and mission of the university. And so it's throughout the entire county. So, yeah, as many meetings as we go to and we all collaborate and work together, I mean, there's so many different things going on, whether it's working with the hospital and resources that they have, whether it's with the mental health providers in the area, emergency management with the county, those kinds of things. We're all trying to work together to make this community successful and great. 

Larry Clark:

Well that's excellent. It's good to hear, you know, that there's that collaboration happening. So are there some unique challenges to a college, uh, police department and working on a campus? 

Dawn Daniels:

You know, the students that we serve change every semester. And so not just every school year, but every semester. And so learning, what the next group is going to be like when we deal with students, what's important to them, what's not important to them as far as safety goes, what kinds of things? They've been through, their experiences, kind of mold how they are on our campus. And so, you know, like right now we're dealing with kids that are coming out of Covid, and some of their social interaction skills aren't the best. And so working through with them on resources of what we can do to help them be able to interact with each other on a better level is great. Some of the challenges are we have to stay on our toes. Social media, all the technology that comes out, those kinds of things, we're constantly in that growth mindset motion of making sure that we're still learning as well and we don't become stagnant. And so it keeps us on our toes and keeps us learning and working really hard to keep up with the community. 

Larry Clark:

Yeah, I hear that, you know, even in my position, you know, working in communications, I always feel like I'm learning something on campus from students and just from the environment. 

Dawn Daniels:

Absolutely. And, you know, we joke around about not every call is the same and it really isn't. And there are still days where we get surprised by what we deal with. 

Larry Clark:

Well, speaking of surprises, do you have anything from your career as a WSU police officer, now chief, that just was out of the blue. Something unexpected. 

Dawn Daniels:

Oh, wow. Um, I mean, there have been some incidences over the years, you know, the Moscow four incident, those kinds of things that have come out of the blue and hit us and impact us in such a way that we don't understand how it's going to impact us until it does. And we've had a few of those. It seems lately we've had more than we haven't. So hopefully that will kind of smooth out a little bit more as we go forward and we'll quit having some of those things. I don't have any, like, stories sticking right in my head, though, for you. There just must be some unusual things that come down the road. I mean, there have been things, you know, I've gone to calls where somebody's glued a squirrel to the elevator. Oh, you know, dead squirrel to the elevator, stuff like that. The jokes and the pranks, sometimes you're just like, wow. So we've seen some things like that where we're just scratching our heads. Over the years. 

Larry Clark:

Wow. I do remember one, and I think this came from the WSU Police Department about a cougar that was on campus. Was that police, City of Pullman or city of. 

Dawn Daniels:

City of Pullman. Pullman. 

Larry Calrk

Because I remember talking with friends and saying, well, of course there are cougars in Pullman because… 

Dawn Daniels:

Yes, you know, we've had some interesting animals come through campus. There was a black bear one year that went all the way through town, and we had to make sure we were keeping students away from it and allowing it to just travel where it needed to go. A couple of years ago, we had a moose up in Greek Row, and for whatever reason, the students thought that they needed to see it and chase it. And so we had to protect the moose from the students and then the students from themselves, essentially. You know, I grew up in Alaska. The moose are a little bigger up there. But, you know, growing up as a kid, we do fire drills, moose drills and bear drills and learn how to, you know, navigate those. And with moose, you don't want to get too close. They're very protective, especially if they have any calves. And they'll stomp you to death. 

Larry Clark:

They are big animals. I grew up in eastern Washington and we had moose drills when we went camping. So I hear it and I remember that incident. 

Dawn Daniels:

Yeah, we were actually putting out false information over the radio on purpose to steer kids away from where the moose actually was. 

Larry Clark:

I love that. So what do you enjoy most about being on campus? Being, you know, all this time at WSU? What do you enjoy doing? 

Dawn Daniels:

You know, when we talk about Cougs help Cougs and what a family is, that's really the biggest thing because it's true. All the Cougars are in for each other and making everything better. And you see that with the faculty and staff, everything they do is about the university. And so everybody truly cares here. And that's touching.

Larry Clark:

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. You know, I've seen it so many times with WSU alumni and then coming back to WSU as I did seeing it again, it is it's something that we don't see enough in our society, and I really like that. So what other messages do you have for Cougar Nation? You know, we have a lot of alumni, listeners, anything when they come back to campus. 

Dawn Daniels:

You know what I always tell parents that the parent panels for new Cougar orientation, and that is we are a fairly safe community, and we have a lot of really good times here. Don't bring the alcohol and drugs back with you. Be responsible. There's nothing worse than trying to or having to, you know, detox a parent in front of their student or having to detox the alumni who come back and think they're reliving their glory years when they were here. And really just understanding that you set the example, whether you believe it or not, students do watch what you do. And just being good citizens here. You know, just remember, it's a community, and we all need to help each other out. 

Larry Clark:

So that's a really good advice. Some really good advice. So appreciate that. And I know that all of WSU and the alumni community and everyone, students, appreciates what you and the police department do here on campus. So thank you. Again, congratulations, Chief Daniels, and thanks for talking with me today. I appreciate it. 

Dawn Daniels:

Thanks for having me. Go Cougs! 

Larry Clark:

Go Cougs! 

Thanks for listening. You can find more WSU stories at magazine.wsu.edu. You can also leave us messages, including ideas for future episodes. 

If you like the podcast, tell your friends and give us a good rating on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you listen. 

This episode is produced by me, Larry Clark. Our music is by WSU emeritus music professor and composer Greg Yasinitsky.