Lincoln names school liaison officer

LINCOLN – Nelson Grant remembers how during his teenage years a cousin, Trooper Matt Grant, used to let him ride along in his state police cruiser while on patrol. The elder Grant would allow him to ask about anything he wanted to know about life or about being an officer.

“I always wanted to be a police officer,” Nelson Grant said Thursday, “but [the conversations] helped me to form my ideas about being in law enforcement, about the reality of being an officer. I hope to do the same kind of thing for other people in my new job.”

That new, part-time job for the Lincoln patrolman is as a school liaison officer, Police Chief Hank Dusenberry said.

Grant should do well in the newly created position, Dusenberry said, not least because the 23-year-old still remembers what it’s like to wonder which of life’s many paths to take.

“He has had involvement with youth in the past and he is fairly young himself,” Dusenberry said. “He has good communication skills. He carries a conversation well. He is easy to talk to.”

Dusenberry, Grant and school officials who first discussed Dusenberry’s idea several weeks ago view the position as akin to a school resource officer, except that Grant won’t be in plainclothes and won’t be posted to the schools full time.

Grant’s liaison duties will supplement his work as a patrolman. He will stop by the schools – primarily Mattanawcook Academy – two or three times a week and answer any questions school officials or students might have about law enforcement, ongoing investigations or other school-police matters.

“We want to break down the walls between students and police,” Grant said.

He will be available to consult informally with students and will try to encourage those interested in law enforcement, Grant and Dusenberry said.

The liaison position “will help to get a better rapport with kids in school, the young adults, and garner a little more mutual respect between police and students,” Dusenberry said.

One of Grant’s goals, Dusenberry said, will be to help students understand that police are more than people to turn to when a crime is committed.

“It doesn’t have to be that way,” Dusenberry said. “If students have questions, problems or concerns they can come talk to him. They don’t have to wait until they are in hot water over something.”

Grant isn’t far removed from his own student days. He graduated from Foxcroft Academy in 2000 and Pensacola Christian College in Pensacola, Fla., in 2004 with a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice.

He worked in Old Orchard Beach and Lincoln as a reserve officer before Lincoln hired him full-time in October 2004.

A Lincoln resident, Grant just finished the state police academy 18-week basic law enforcement program in mid-December and started his new assignment on Dec. 19.