WESTFIELD – The city’s police force was augmented Monday evening when the Police Commission appointed seven new officers to the reserve force.
The reserve officers provide a pool of candidates for full-time police positions while they both continue their structured training and learn about the job by doing it.
As reserve officers, the new officers get to experience the job before they commit to it as a career and their reserve service also allows the department to see how they measure up before they are offered full-time jobs as police officers.
In October, 15 candidates – Jonathan Cabrera, Joseph Cabana, Justin Duplaise, Anthony Martone, Fabricio Ochoa, Joshua Krassler, Matthew Pacinella, David Therrien, Scott Schuster, Jon Bahre, Christopher Krutka, Tyler Richtie, Zachary Florek, Jared Hague and Edward Tosada – on the civil service appointment list appeared at a commission meeting and were interviewed.
On Monday, the commission met again and appointed seven of the candidates, – Cabana, Dauplaise, Martone, Ochoa, Krassler, Pacinella and Therrien – to be reserve officers.
The commissioners chose, with one exception, to appoint the officers in order of their ranking on the civil service list.
The exception was the applicant at the top of the list, Cabrera.
When the candidates were interviewed by the commission, the first question each candidate asked by commission chairman Karl Hupfer was “Have you ever been arrested or been the subject of a criminal investigation?”
The top ranked candidate, Cabrera, was the only applicant who answered affirmatively.
He told the commission that he had been arrested in Springfield on a warrant he had not known about stemming from a “misunderstanding” three years previously when he was living in Tennessee after his honorable discharge from the Army.
He said that he was released an hour after he spoke, by phone, with the detective investigating an allegation of rape brought by a woman he had known briefly.
He told the commissioners that he had also been arrested, again in Tennessee, on a charge of aggravated assault because he had threatened to break a window of his former wife’s car with a crowbar.
That charge was also dismissed.
Cabrera told the commission that he is collecting a ten percent disability pension from the military for post-traumatic stress disorder but has not had any symptomatic incidents since the first year after his return from combat.
At the commission’s meeting Monday, Commissioner Felix Otero made a motion to bypass Cabrera and it carried unanimously.
With the first person on the list bypassed, the commissioners than followed the recommendation of Police Chief John Camerota and voted, unanimously, to appoint the next seven ranking candidates to the available positions.
Cabana grew up in the Hampton Ponds section of the city and joined the army after his 2004 high school graduation where he became a military police officer. After discharge, he joined the National Guard and was repeatedly deployed. He said he currently works as a police officer at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Leeds.
Dauplaise graduated from Westfield High School in 2009 and joined the Air Force the next year. Upon discharge, he joined the Air National Guard and is currently working on an associate’s degree in criminal justice at Springfield Technical Community College.
Martone graduated from Westfield Vocational-Technical High school in 2006 and joined the Army National Guard and was deployed to Afghanistan while working at the newly opened Home Depot store in the city. He said he is currently living in Springfield and working for the Western Massachusetts Electric Company in Hadley.
Ochoa graduated high school in 2003 and joined the Air National Guard. He said that he is a full-time member of the 104th Fighter Group at Barnes Airport working as a military technician. He said that he and his family bought a house in the city and said he is “ready to serve my community on a local level” in order to “provide a great community for my family, my kids, their kids and so forth.”
Krassler said that he is an Army National Guard veteran and has served as a military police officer. He said that he remains a ‘weekend warrior’ with a unit in Reading while living in Easthampton.
Pacinella graduated Westfield High School in 2001 and moved to Florida for college where he studied criminal justice. He said that he worked as a police officer in Cocoa Beach, Florida, until 2005 when he returned to the city and joined the Air National Guard. After a deployment to Iraq, he was appointed to the Westfield Fire Department where he continues to work.
Therrien said that he graduated from Springfield Vocational High School in 2001 and worked odd jobs while he cared for his ailing mother until she died in 2005. He said he then joined the U.S. Marine Corps and, after his discharge, attempted an auto detailing business in North Carolina which failed in 2011 before he returned to Springfield area. He said that he currently serves as a volunteer with the Huntington Fire Department while he works for the Brinks armored car service.
The seven new officers will be available for duty upon completion of required training and physical and psychological testing, Camerota said.
