Westbrook High School is finally getting a new school resource officer after spending half the school year without one.
Beginning Jan. 2, Westbrook patrolman James Farrenkopf will take over the full-time school resource officer position. Westbrook school officials are pleased to have the position filled, which has been vacant since former school resource officer Dan Violette moved to the detective division in the summer.
“We’re very pleased that Officer Farrenkopf has applied for the position,” said School Superintendent Stan Sawyer. “We think he’ll do a great job working with the students and helping the school administration with day-to-day operations.”
Westbrook Police Capt. Tom Roth said the department originally had on-duty officers stopping by the school on a part-time basis to establish a presence. However, those officers would often get called off to other business in the city. “It wasn’t a good situation for either of the entities involved,” said Roth.
Roth said the department then began to shuffle officers into the high school outside of their regular work schedule, the school department paying for their services from the money set aside for the junior high school resource officer’s salary, said Roth.
According to Assistant Superintendent Jan Breton, the city normally pays for the high school officer, while the school department pays for the junior high officer. However, at the moment a vacancy exists at the junior high position, so money already earmarked for that position was sitting idle and could, therefore, be used to pay for part-time help.
It was while working in this capacity as a part-time school resource officer that Farrenkopf discovered an interest in the position, said Roth. Farrenkopf has worked for Westbrook as a traffic accident reconstructionist for the last two years. Before that, he was an officer in Kennebunk for a couple of years.
“It was a good match for him,” said Roth of Farrenkopf and the school resource officer position. “It was a good match for the school.”
Next summer, Roth said Farrenkopf will work with the detective division on street crime enforcement, in particular juvenile crime. Roth said the department has had success having its school resource officers work the streets during the summers.
In the meantime, the department will continue its search for a replacement at the junior high, which has not had a regular police presence since last school year.
The Westbrook Police Department has advertised to fill both positions since the summer but has had difficulty finding a replacement. According to Police Chief Paul McCarthy, the department has been short officers since January of this year. It has also struggled to find a replacement for the school resource officer at Wescott Junior High following the departure of Officer Brian Dell Isola in the summer.
The department is still looking to fill the junior high position as well as another field position in the department. McCarthy said in a previous interview that the department has had trouble finding new recruits in recent years for a variety of reasons.
Westbrook, along with communities all over the United States, has seen a severe drop in the number of new recruits to the police department in the last 20 years. At the same time, the job is becoming more challenging and dangerous because criminals are becoming more aggressive, hard drugs are more prevalent and the general public doesn’t respect police officers the way they used to.
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