WESTFIELD – The city’s police force grew Monday evening when the Police Commission selected three officers from the reserve list for appointment as full-time officers.
The commission, acting with a quorum of two members in the absence of commissioner Leonard Osowski, interviewed the seven reserve officers at the top of the civil service list – Elijah Wolfe, Andrew Vega, Steven Clement, Zachary Demers, Kenneth LaFontaine, Kyle Racicot and Jamie Campbell – to fill three slots in the department’s roster.
The openings were caused by the recent retirement of Officer James Fournier, the impending retirement of Sgt. Paul Beebe and the resolution of a civil service appeal by former officer Michael Puza.
The seven candidates, who had been interviewed by the commission previously when they were appointed to the reserve force, were re-interviewed and after a brief executive session. Wolfe, Racicot and Campbell were appointed to fill the vacancies.
Although the appointments were not made strictly in accordance with the candidates’ positions on the civil service list, the appointments were in accord with the amount of time each reserve officer had worked since his or her appointment.
Reserve officers, upon appointment, are required to complete in-house field training after which they are available to fill vacancies on the patrol schedule.
Commission chairman Karl Hupfer asked each candidate if he or she knew how many hours the candidate had worked and had the answers in a list in front of him.
Wolfe had worked 990 hours, Racicot 778 and Campbell had logged 331 hours.
All the others had worked fewer hours, ranging from 91 hours for Vega to 196 hours worked by Demers.
Wolfe was a 2004 graduate of Westfield Vocational-Technical High School and had worked as a automotive collision repair technical but said that he wanted “a career that’s going to challenge me, challenge me mentally, physically, make me think.” He said that, while working as a reserve officer, senior officers have told him that he does a good job.
He also said that, in his observations of senior officer “a lot of them are happy to come to work. A lot of people can’t say that about their jobs.” He went on to say, from his experiences on the force, he,too, enjoys going to work at the police department.
Racicot is the son of a serving city officer, David Racicot, and said he started college at Holyoke Community College after his 2007 high school graduation and transferred to Westfield State University to finish a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice. He said that he went on to earn a master’s degree with a 3.9 grade point average. Since then, he said, “I work at the station when I can. I sign up (for patrol shifts) every day and then I work at Phipps (liquor store) when I have time” while waiting for a full-time appointment.
Because of his family history in law enforcement, he said, “I’ve been around it my whole life. I enjoy the aspects of policing. I like times when I’m helping people that need help and then you’re putting people in jail who need to be put in jail.” He went on to say “I also like the job, too, because you essentially wear a different hat every day.”
Campbell said that she earned an associate’s degree in criminal justice from Holyoke Community College and then went on to get a bachelor’s degree, again in criminal justice, at Westfield State University.
She said that, starting while she was at HCC, she working in the campus police force at Mount Holyoke College. She said she started as a dispatcher at Mount Holyoke in 2007 and that department sent her to the reserve and intermittent police academy. After completing the academy, in 2009, she became a campus police officer and continues to work there.
She said that she likes police work because “You don’t have to do the same thing every single day. You’re dealing with people, you’re helping them when they need help.”
