Ed Royce is no fan of lemonade, so why does he patronize the stands of East Helena’s children?
“I just like to go and support the kids,” East Helena’s new police chief said during a recent interview in his office. “And my lemonade is very expensive: while it might be 50 cents a cup, I’m dropping a five or a $10 bill in their pot.”
For the 56-year-old Royce, the sticky-sweet summer refresher is beside the point. What’s important are the moments when a mom approaches him in the grocery store to tell him her daughter still talks about the day he stopped by for a drink and a photo.
It’s about building trust and community connections, one glass of lemonade at a time.
“I want the kids to know that we’re here for them, that we’re a safe place,” Royce said. “Yes, we’re going to enforce laws and sometimes you’re going to get in trouble, but overall we want to help them.”
That sentiment surely applies to all East Helenans. But for a man who spent a quarter-century teaching and coaching in junior high, it makes sense that building trust starts with kids.
Decades ago, few would have envisioned a career of service and leadership from Royce – even including himself. Attending college at Dillon’s Western Montana University, he had little idea of his path.
“I went to college to go to college,” he admits. “I had a football scholarship so I was going to play.”
Then he took an education course and found his direction.
“I spent, you know, a week or two here and there in schools, kind of working with kids, and thought this will be a good fit because I can teach them, I can work with them,” said Royce, who tends to speak with the restrained enthusiasm of a media-trained pro athlete. “And I can still be around sports because I could be a coach.”
Royce, who spent his youth bouncing between basketball, baseball, football, and track fields, felt compelled to remain involved in sports. Some 20 years ago, as he prepared for his first season as a basketball coach, he picked up a book by legendary Duke Basketball Coach Mike Krzyzewski.
Royce had been a Duke fan since his early twenties, but reading that book set off his life long obsession. He named his dog Coach K and his chickens after former Duke stars.
“It’s actually a big problem,” Royce chuckled, sitting near a Blue Devil banner. “I pick them to win March Madness every year. So regardless of how good they are each year, I still pick them to win.”
Royce’s fandom has even rippled through the office. “Even my boys and wife now are at the point of like, ‘Hey, when is Duke playing,’” said East Helena police officer Zach Butler, joking that he knows to bring an extra muffin or coffee to the office on mornings after Duke losses.
Yet Royce’s Duke fanaticism runs deeper than mere team loyalty. He sees Coach K as an inspirational leader. “It didn’t matter who scored all the points or who got all the rebounds,” Royce said. “He was able to show me that it takes an entire team to be successful.”
After leading his Manhattan School District Junior High track team to multiple state titles, Royce was named the state’s junior high Coach of the Year by the Montana Coaching Association in 2008 and 2009.
But after 25 years of teaching and coaching, Royce began to feel restless. He couldn’t retire yet, he still had bills to pay, but he wanted to find another way to help others. “I wanted to serve in a different way,” said Royce, adding that one of his biggest regrets is not serving in the military.
A horseback riding injury that left pins and rods in his left leg denied him that opportunity. But both of his sons went into the military, one in the Air Force and one in the National Guard. Watching his boys go through their training reawakened a childhood dream.
As a kid he would visit his grandmother, a courthouse clerk at City Hall, after school. Spending time around on-duty police officers, he felt the same fascination with the badge and gun that many young boys feel. Suddenly, that childhood dream seemed a logical next step.
“I thought, this will work,” he said. “Instead of serving my country, I will serve my state and community.”
He enrolled in the Police Academy at age 50, beginning a career transition that he tends to downplay. “Being a cop’s a lot like being a junior high teacher. Really you’re dealing with kids that never grew up,” said Royce.“There’s a lot of immaturity in junior high, and we deal with a lot of immaturity.”
His City Hall colleagues attribute Royce’s success as a police officer to his decades of teaching and coaching.
“It’s just consistency with every call and the way that he goes about interacting with the public. I think that comes from his teaching career, coaching sports and stuff and just his way of interacting with people, everybody gets treated with respect,” said Butler, who trained under Royce during his year-long probationary period. “It doesn’t matter what we’re there for as long as you’re showing him respect and listening he’s going to give respect back.”
For Mayor Kelly Harris, Royce’s steady temperament made him an easy police hire in 2023 and a great chief today. “It’s that calm in all situations, the level-headedness and understanding to de-escalate those situations,” said Harris. “[His application] quickly rose to the top.”
“Watching him interact with the community, and the way that he went about doing stuff, it solidified that this is where I wanted to be, and this is the kind of department that I wanted to work for,” Butler said.
Butler reports that officers from Helena PD, who occasionally have reason to work with the EH department, expressed their enthusiasm for Royce’s selection as chief. “Everybody was like, ‘Yeah, Ed’s a great choice. He’s gonna be a great chief’,” he said.
Royce takes his job as a leader seriously. When Chief Sanders told the department he was retiring, Royce began preparing himself for the role. He took two leadership classes through Northwestern University’s School of Police Staff and Command, doing the classes online in addition to his usual duties.
“He bore that responsibility great and was still there for us when we needed him,” said Butler.“It showed his genuine care for all of us, for the community, and his desire to want to be a better leader than he already was and be set up to continue the success that this department has had for the community.”
Royce considers leadership an act of service.“Putting my guy’s needs in front of my own,” is how he explained it. “I want to make sure [my officers] are properly equipped. They are mentally and physically healthy, and if there’s anything that I can do for them to help them be successful, that’s what’s important. Because if they’re not successful, then I’m not successful.”
That respect for his officers has earned Royce the unwavering support of those around him. His leadership, and Duke superfandom, inspired Butler to arrange for new chief welcome gifts signed by Coach K himself.
The months-long effort began in August when Butler called the Duke University campus police and spoke to a “Miss Ruby”. He said he had a friend who was the world’s biggest Duke fan and would appreciate a personal message from Coach K.
Miss Ruby said she’d see what she could do. A few months later, a Coach K-signed poster and basketball arrived at City Hall. The officers gave Royce the poster at Christmas and the basketball in January, just after he was officially named East Helena’s new police chief.
The reason for the staggered roll-out is simple: scrawled across the basketball, above Coach K’s signature, are the words “Congratulations Chief Royce!”
Today the ball sits on Royce’s desk, a constant reminder of the respect he’s earned and the trust he aims to keep.
