Last week, those in Greenfield may have been curious about the drones and helicopters flying over the fairgrounds. Inside the gates were displays of police, fire, and medical response equipment, as well as demonstrations of police dogs attacking their trainers.
The event’s purpose was simple: to recruit children into law enforcement careers, and to meet other public safety employees.
The event was described as a “Fall Public Safety Festival,” which included a number of public service providers, vendors, demonstrations, live music, a police helicopter flyer-over, and a costume contest for kids.
The festival was organized by the Franklin County Police Cadet Program, a nonprofit whose executive board entirely consists of regional area police. The program’s director, Greenfield police Lt. Jason Haskins, and vice president, Sunderland police officer Benjamin Peters, founded the nonprofit, according to another executive board member.
“I think the cadet program is a youth leadership program, designed to teach kids and be an entry point for kids into their professional law enforcement,” Peters told The Shoestring.
The other members of the executive board are Sgt. Jennifer Bartak-Clark of the Deerfield Police Department, Capt. Jason Collins of the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office, Greenfield Community College police Chief Jack Vanasse, and Whatley police Chief James Sevigne.
Haskins, Peters, and Collins told The Shoestring the event was largely a fundraising and youth recruiting opportunity for the nonprofit’s youth cadet program, while also providing an opportunity for the community to meet public service providers on a good day.
“It’s not just one profession. It’s all of it coming together,” Peters said. “It’s not just police, it’s not just fire. It’s not even just EMS. It’s dispatchers. There’s mental health workers, there’s tow truck drivers, there’s electrical workers, paving crews — basically everything that could possibly be involved in keeping society going day to day.”
Uniformed student members of the cadet program greeted community members at the entrance of the festival, providing information about the program and the option to donate via a QR code link. Plastic Halloween-themed buckets with candy and other small souvenirs were on folding tables. Two sheriff’s department officers in full uniform, including flack vests, mounted on Clydesdale horses were circling the roundhouse. Attendees of the event were mostly families with elementary-age kids.
Drones flew overhead, a parent pointed them to the children she was accompanying who jumped up and down cheering, “Drones! Drones!” At one point, a state police helicopter flew overhead, circling the fair grounds and turning on a police siren.
At one end of the event, firefighters demonstrated how to use the “jaws of life” on a crushed vehicle. Another demonstration — police dogs attacking their trainers — also entertained the kids. Greenfield police officers led the K-9 demonstrations and told the kids watching them not to worry.
“Look at that tail goin’, she’s having a blast,” an officer told his audience as the dog attacked the trainer. The kids cheered on the dog.
“Ultimately, our goal is: we need to build relationships with youth. It’s really important,” Haskins said. He said the program has three core principles, the first of which is “the selection of recruitment of kids into enforcement or criminal justice as a whole.” He said the nonprofit is “big on collaboration with other agencies,” though “our first pillar is the law enforcement career and criminal justice career trajectory.” Career development and community service make up the other two pillars, he said.
Haskins said the festival was the cadets’ big community service event for the year, but that they also do things like traffic duty for parades and fairgrounds events.
While both executive board members emphasized the importance of cross-agency work and opportunities for the youth being recruited, most, if not all, of the publicly available photographs of students that The Shoestring could identify were of cadets working with police. Photographs the nonprofit has published show children training with police and using police equipment including handcuffs, rifles, and handguns, using radar equipment and police vehicles, and donning riot gear including tactical shields and running through chemical spray.
Public promotion of the event on Instagram and Facebook didn’t represent it as a fundraiser for the nonprofit. Promoted on a Mass Appeal television segment, neither Haskins nor Peters represented the event as a youth recruiting event or fundraiser.
Recruiting requirements for the program are that the children must be at least 14 and pass a “background check,” which organizers said is largely a recommendation letter from the student’s school. Haskins said the cadet program often recruits at schools by setting up tables outside the cafeteria, a practice similar to military recruiting. Haskin’s said their “focus within the schools is really recruiting for the program,” and that they aim to not interrupt the school day.
State law requires all Massachusetts public high schools to offer equal information and career-recruiting opportunities to military and non-military organizations.
Haskin’s also described the program as a spin-off of the “Boy Scouts Police Explorers,” and claimed that Connecticut is required by law to have a youth program of similar function — a nonprofit that is called the North East Regional Law Enforcement Educational Association.
Tommy Nutting, a student of the Franklin County Police Cadet Program, who also featured on the Mass Appeal segment, joined the program at the age of 15 and spoke to The Shoestring about his experience with the program. Like Haskins and Peters, he also emphasized cross-agency opportunities and education. Nutting, however, said he is focused on a military and policing career path.
“I’m interested in law enforcement. I come from a law enforcement family and those values are important to me. And I’ve just always been interested in it,” Nutting said. He also saw the program as a character and skills building opportunity.
“I’m currently enlisting in the Air National Guard, and after high school, I planned to attend Westfield State University,” he added. “Our program isn’t necessarily just for law enforcement. We prepare everybody for every career path. We have employability skills, just skills that will help you develop your future profession.”
After completing his time in the Air National Guard, Tommy said he plans to be a police officer.
Nutting said he was recruited at school by Vanasse. He said at the start of the program, he began with basic classes and then became involved in community engagement, participating in a police academy through the cadets “parent organization” at Westfield State University. He was eventually “promoted to squad leader,” and is now in somewhat of a supervising role in which he oversees and guides other cadets in recruiting for the program, fundraising, organizing events like the festival, and being a cadet liaison for the police department.
Many former military members become U.S. police officers. And when they do, they usually find themselves using some of the same equipment they were trained to use in the military through a federal program called 1033, which “recycles” military equipment into police departments on request.
The Shoestring also overheard board member Jason Collins, who was staffing the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office’s table, telling the public about the ways in which officers were working with the kids in the cadet program. He said they recently took students to use radar on Route 2. He also said that the event was a fundraiser.
“Each vendor had to give us $100 to stay here,” he explained. “And then the fairgrounds let us use this because the cadets all worked the Franklin County Fair this year.”
Collins was also seen recruiting a young man who approached the sheriff’s table alone. Collins asked why he had come to the table and then advertised open positions in the county jail. Collins said the position was largely watching the “housing units,” which have 50 to 70 people incarcerated. After some hesitation, the young man accepted an informational flyer. The material outlined the pay, benefits, bonuses, incentives, and insurance available for corrections officers.
Base salary for the positions starts at $66,230 with annual increases. Among the myriad financial benefits were attendance-based financial incentives, $2,250 in annual funding for professional development, funds for physical fitness, up to $2,500 for other education, and “longevity” payments starting after five years of up to $2,4000, plus a myriad of other financial benefits. Including bonuses, base pay, and incentives, people can enter the field with only a high school diploma or equivalent and net nearly $70,000 yearly.
In addition to the corrections officer recruiting materials, at the table there was a bucket of candy, several Franklin County Sheriff’s Office branded “swag” items including water bottles, small personal alarms, whistles, badge stickers, and badge-shaped stress foam squeezers.
When asked about the sheriff’s office’s involvement with the cadets and the event, Collins first directed The Shoestring to speak with Haskins and Peters, who he summoned via text message, before speaking more in depth.
Multiple times during interviews, law enforcement employees were directly texting members of other law enforcement agencies on personal devices, trying to locate them or other cadet students to speak with our reporter.
Collins said there was “a real need” for this program and that “kids are really interested in law enforcement careers, and there wasn’t that avenue for kids, and in conjunction with the other departments.” Those police departments, he said, include Greenfield, Sunderland, Deerfield, Greenfield Community College, and the sheriff’s office.
“My day job at the sheriff’s office is recruitment and retention, and I also do community outreach,” Collins said.
“I do the field training officer role at the sheriff’s office. The reason that ties in with the cadet program is, we actually hired one of the cadets from the program itself. One of the first kids to kind of age out of the program and ended up with the sheriff’s office. And even though it’s not specifically a tool for, just us to get correctional officers, those are opportunities for kids as well, but people are interested in a lot of work. We have opportunities for pretty young people.”
The Shoestring ended up speaking again with Haskins after representatives of the Greenfield Police Department’s Special Response Team table largely refused to answer The Shoestring’s questions about conversations they were having with the public. The SRT officers were displaying and talking about the specifics of their equipment with the public. This included white-phosphor night vision googles, ballistic shields with lights in them, drones, armored body gear, a battering ram, another door breaching tool, and the department’s mobile “command center van,” which had a side-mounted monitor playing a Fox News broadcast.
Greenfield purchased the mobile command center using $10,881 in forfeiture money to contribute to the $172,055 price tag, according to an analysis by NEPM and The Republican.
Haskins said the department had a policy “against talking to the media,” that required a lieutenant or above to speak to the media.
When asked why SRT officers could make statements to the public but not the media at a public event, he acknowledged that the policy appeared contradictory, but felt statements to the media were viewed with a “different weight” than statements made to the public.
Sgt. Megan Cloutier was called over to speak a bit about Greenfield police and did get some of Greenfield’s Special Response Team officers to answer some questions under her direction.
Justin, a Greenfield SRT member who did not give his last name, explained a bit about the displayed equipment. He said each member of the team had an “equipment kit” assigned to them, which was stored wherever it was most accessible to them.
“We try and keep it kind of wherever we think it would be best for us, so some of us have assigned cruisers that we take home with us, so their gear stays with them in their cruisers,” he said. “So it’s kind of all over the place.”
He explained that grants provided funding for a lot of the equipment, and the Department of Homeland Security has recently paid for all new vests and helmets. Firearms, he said, are assigned by the local department and kept in the possession of officers until they were reassigned to new officers.
“The point is to showcase what your department does,” Cloutier said of the department’s presence at the event and its displayed equipment. She explained that the department had a couple of “special units” at the event, including officers who are part of the Franklin County-based Special Response Team, and a drone team that included members of the Greenfield Fire Department who coordinate on issues like locating missing people. In addition, she said the Greenfield police brought their comfort dog to the festival.
“We also do a lot of community outreach, and that’s kind of the point is that we go to events like these all the time to let people know that we’re not just police officers but that we’re people,” Cloutier said. “We all have families, we have the same problems that everybody else does and that we’re humans and we want to have good interactions, not just people meeting us on their worst day.”
She also described the event as a fundraiser for the cadet program. The current plan for the next public safety festival, she said, is to be held next year at Look Park in Northampton.
Greenfield’s police tables also had department branded items mostly for children which included stuffed animals, rubber fidget toys, bracelets, police badge stickers, and frisbees.
The Northwestern District Attorney’s Office also had a table at the event, and said they were mostly there to provide information about their services, which include education and investigatory support for victims of identity theft. One of the office’s big focuses recently has been educating seniors about digital scams. Assistant District Attorney Andrew Covington told those gathered that identity theft schemes are largely being perpetrated by “people overseas who spend more time scamming people than they do working,” and “need to get a job.”
Covington told The Shoestring that while the DA’s office was mostly involved in prosecution, it also has a lot of programs that aim to provide community education and resources, like their consumer protection unit. He said the DA’s office was seeing an increase in scams via email, text message, cryptocurrency scams, other online scams, and phone calls.
“We want to make sure that we can try to prevent these crimes from even happening in the first place,” he said. “So we’ve seen that the best way to do that is just get out there, educate our community, go to public events like this, have engagements with the community to make sure that they are aware of all these types of scams that are going on.”
Non-law enforcement agencies present included fire and medical response from surrounding towns and cities AT&T, the Franklin County Opioid Task Force, Valley Health Regional Collaborative, the Massachusetts Department of Health, Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency, Grass Roots for Gun Violence Prevention, All States Materials Group, and Bikers Against Child Abuse.
Many of the health organisations and departments were also handing out items for children like boxes of crayons, branded stress balls, tooth brushes, tick pullers, and had additional information for health resources. The Opioid Task Force was also providing Narcan for those who wanted it.
Amherst’s Community Responders for Equity, Safety, and Service also had a table at the event. CRESS is a department of unarmed public safety responders that aims to be “rooted in trauma-informed and anti-racist frameworks,” and is currently directed by former Holyoke Fire Lt. Camille Theriaque.
People staffing the CRESS table were not able to speak to reporters or answer questions, including how they became involved in the event, if they had any direct involvement with the cadet program, and what they hoped to see from their participation in the event. They directed The Shoestring to Amherst’s town office.
Theriaque responded to The Shoestring’s inquiry saying CRESS was glad to participate in the festival for the second time, and that it “was a truly great evening.” She said CRESS was accompanied by Amherst police, Fire Department, and the Emergency Operations Center at the festival.
She said the department often tables at similar events. At this year’s festival, she said CRESS “provided hand and foot warmers, health and wellness bags, and other items that aim to help keep neighbors safe and healthy,” as well as other informational resources.
CRESS participation in this year’s festival happened by “a chance encounter at the First Responder Luncheon hosted by the Amherst Area Chamber of Commerce,” where Theriaque was invited by Peters.
Theriaque said there was currently no relationship between CRESS and the cadet program.
“As the 3rd branch of Public Safety for the town of Amherst, we are often called upon to speak to the effectiveness of Alternative Response,” Theriaque said. “Though we have not been invited to date to speak to the Franklin County Police cadets, I do feel this is an excellent idea. CRESS would welcome the opportunity if it presents itself.”
Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation spoke to their unique public service role and how that role intersects with other public service providers.
Standing near Smokey the Bear in front of a brush truck, Bettie Nolan said DCR was there to provide public education specifically around DCR and the jobs that they do, as well as providing some Smokey-themed goodies.
Nolan said DCR typically does some prescribed burns in the spring, forest fire control, and this time of year they are staffing the fire towers. “We all communicate via radio and we look for smoke and if we see smoke, we use a really old-fashioned but really effective system where we get what’s called a line.”
Nolan then described a human-ran system involving a compass, a viewfinder, and map with strings and tacks, that relied on coordination between two staffed fire towers. Where the two towers’ “lines” cross on the map, Nolan said, “is pretty accurately exactly where that fire is.” DCR will then call the local town or city where the smoke is located to check it out and will provide assistance if needed. Some of the fires are hard to reach due to the rocky terrain, and DCR’s dedicated brush trucks provide a critical tool for reaching those.
DCR, like the other non-law enforcement agencies there, did not seem to have a direct relationship to the cadet program or regular education of the cadet students. The interview ended when questions were asked about their staffing and capacity in relation to the somewhat unusually long fall fire seasons the area has been experiencing.
Tommy Lee is a writer, investigative journalist, and audio video producer for community television based in Western Massachusetts.
