Jessica Godfroy, the school resource officer at PHS, was introduced to the Police Advisory Commission on Monday.

PITTSFIELD, Mass. — Police officer Jessica Godfroy remembers sitting in on a suicide prevention lecture at Pittsfield High School after she became the school resource officer there.

A student was using the her phone and the teacher told her to put it away. She refused.

The police officer didn't like that response and told the girl again to put her phone away. Again, the girl swore and refused.

 

Eventually, the teacher and Godfroy just let her continue to use it and gave her a flunking grade.

 

Sometimes students don't necessarily need another authority figure.

 

Godfroy and the student had some disputes over the following couple of months. But Godfroy wasn't just an authority figure anymore, she was someone who would listen and try to understand the girl's issues.

 

The other day, the student gave Godfroy a card and gift basket thanking her for her efforts. It is those types of relationships Godfroy is trying to form with the city's youth.

 

"They're great kids. They just need guidance and somebody to talk to," she told the Police Advisory Commission on last week. 

 

Godfroy had to force her way into congregating students when she first took the post months ago. Now, the students surround her at Third Thursday or stroll in and out of her office. While she is still seen as police, she's also someone they can talk to about a variety of issues.

 

Currently, she is working with the health class to address drinking and driving. It isn't so much teaching that drinking and driving is wrong, but she's fielding questions about how to handle various situations — like peer pressure or how to avoid getting into a car with someone who's been drinking.

 

She says she wants to show teens how to act when they come into contact with police. She said many parents come from a generation of fighting or running from police and the students don't know any different. 

 

"It is a different generation and a different time," Godfroy said. "It is a generational issue."

 

Another generational issue is sexting, she said, and she is trying to make a stronger push toward stopping it. In the age of technology, it is easy to send illicit pictures to a girlfriend or boyfriend. And the students trust who they are sending the photos to at the time.

 

But, when the relationship ends and the gloves come off, those pictures could end up anywhere.

 

"At least once a week, I have a girl crying in my office," she said. "It is human nature to want to trust somebody."

 

Godfroy says it might sound odd to the older generations who wouldn't think to send such photos. But for the youth surrounded by various photo apps and ways to contact each other, "it's kind of the socially accepted thing" to do. Chief Michael Wynn added that recently an area police department cracked a case involving illicit pictures with elementary schoolchildren.

Board member Donald Bercury has been working on getting a fence on the median to help keep students in the crosswalk. But, an estimate put the cost at $63,000 for a "nice looking" fence and $33,000 for chain link.

 

"I think they are both too high," he said. 

 

Bercury said he has tried to find some donors to help but with no luck. The next step is to put in a petition to get funds through the City Council. 

 

Wynn also reported that the budget proposal from the mayor has an "incremental increase." He said he's just glad that the overall budget wasn't cut. The increase is mostly for contractual obligations. There is a small increase in overtime, he said. 

 

In the wake of two teenage missing persons cases, the committee also wanted to know why it took days before the images were disseminated to the public. In one case, a student runaway on a Thursday and it wasn't until following Tuesday when police sent a release to the media and posted images on Facebook.

 

The chief said it wasn't that the officer in charge wasn't working on the case for those four days but rather the officer worked the case and hit a dead end.

 

"We have to get rid of all of the other leads first," Wynn said.

 

Typically when someone goes missing, it takes just hours to find them. The investigator talks to the people who know the missing person best, goes to known locations, and uses a number of other tools to find the person. When the police go public with a call for help, Wynn said it generates thousands of false leads. He said officers get reports of the missing person in other states but usually find the person only one town over.

 

Wynn said asking for public help is a hope to shake something else loose and not the primary way to locate somebody.

 

"It is a tool but it is not 'the' tool," Wynn said.