Helena Police Department Promotes Captain Jayson Zander to Assistant Chief

A Helena native who has worked every level of the department since 2002, Jayson Zander was promoted to assistant chief of the Helena Police Department this week, filling a senior command vacancy left when predecessor Cory Bailey retired in October 2025 after more than two decades with the agency.

The promotion places Zander, who climbed from corporal to lieutenant to captain across his 24-year career, directly beneath Chief Brett Petty in HPD's command structure. The assistant chief position carries oversight of the department's investigations arm alongside broader operational and policy responsibilities across HPD's roughly 79-member staff.

The timing is significant. In January 2026, Petty withdrew HPD from the Montana Regional Drug Task Force, citing concerns about federal border patrol involvement. The department's drug investigator was folded back into HPD's own criminal investigation division, making in-house drug enforcement coordination a more pressing internal priority. That responsibility now falls within Zander's purview as the senior commander overseeing investigations.

Zander was already a familiar face on Helena's most contested public-safety debates. As captain, he represented HPD's position on unsheltered enforcement after the Montana Legislature passed laws authorizing municipalities to prohibit camping on city property and impose $500-per-day fines. He resisted aggressive enforcement, saying at the time, "We're not putting the hammer down on these folks just simply because they've come across hard times." He was equally direct about departmental priorities: "Both the city and the police department feel like we're managing it fairly well."

Earlier in his career as a lieutenant, Zander oversaw HPD's dedicated DUI enforcement program, which generated 303 total DUI arrests in 2018, up from 218 the year before, after a single officer was assigned full-time to alcohol enforcement during high-risk evening hours.

Zander credited the department's institutional leadership culture for shaping his career. "Many of those names that I had mentioned have contacted me one way or another to congratulate me, and that means a lot," he said following the announcement. He added a note of humility about the standard he hopes to reach: "I don't know if I categorize myself with some of those at this point, but you know, I hope to get there."

The captain position vacated by Zander's promotion will require a separate internal appointment, adding one more transition to a command structure that has seen considerable turnover at the top over the past several months.