WATERVILLE — An innovative program to allow police officers to bridge the gap between the city’s children and themselves has been adopted in Waterville.

Using $60,000 in federal COPS grant funds, Waterville Police Chief John Morris was given the go-ahead by city councilors Tuesday night to implement community policing strategies in the city’s school systems.

“Cops in the School” would place a full-time police officer in the schools to assist with a wide variety of issues, said Morris, including the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program, teaching students how to solve disputes in a nonviolent manner, as well as providing a role model for students.

“Young people need to have day-to-day contact with a police officer they can learn to like and trust,” said Morris.

Spending pleasant time with school-age children is nothing new for Waterville cops.

Deputy Chief John Massey said police officers now join elementary school children for lunch. “We sit with them, eat lunch, and just talk,” said Massey. “Often the officers go right outside and play on the playground at recess, too.” In addition, police officers conduct a reading program, attending the city’s elementary schools and reading to the youngsters.

This relationship builds confidence, said Massey. A friendship begins that hopefully results in a level of trust between children and police.

“You can see the results already,” he said. “In the elementary schools, we are accepted fairly easily. But when we try to go into the high school, they are apprehensive. We aren’t received as well as we want to be received. We are in hopes that what we’ve started in the younger grades will carry through and so we are concentrating the new officer’s work in the junior high and high school setting.”

“We also hope that the program will be so successful, that the school and city officials will keep it going after the three years,” Massey said.

“We thought it would be a very good way to use the crime bill money. As much as we would like to have an extra officer in the field, we felt the community would be best served by filling a position in the school system. The officer’s priorities will be speaking with the kids, talking about peer pressure, drugs and alcohol.”

The Waterville grant will be distributed over three years, matched by the school at 25 percent the first year, then 50 percent and 75 percent each following year. The money is part of President Bill Clinton’s $32 million crime bill.