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A recent Carroll School of Management graduate and a former municipal police dispatcher are the two newest members of the Boston College Police Department.
Robert Connor, who earned a marketing degree from CSOM last May after also serving four years as a student intern for BCPD’s Detective Bureau, and Jennifer Scanlon, a 911 operator and police dispatcher in the town of Natick since 2005, have joined the University’s police force as patrol officers on the midnight to 8 a.m. shift.
University Director of Public Safety and Chief of Police John King says the two new officers were hired after a series of interviews with campus police officials and a panel of Student Affairs administrators and student leaders. “We wanted to reinforce the importance of who we serve,” King said of the second tier of interviews. “We ask ‘Are these candidates the right fit for a campus environment?’ In the case of both Bobby and Jen, we felt that this was the case.
“We watched Bobby develop over a period of years,” said King. “He’s a very mature young man and he certainly understands the mission of the department with regard to community service.
“Jen is someone with experience and knowledge of how to deal with the public, with crisis-type situations, and who impressed us as a mature individual who would serve well in a community policing role in a campus environment. Her commitment to community service and community policing are the benchmarks that we really look for.”
Connor, a Needham native, says his desire to go into law enforcement reaches back to his childhood. “Even when I was a kid playing ‘Cops and Robbers’ I always wanted to be the ‘Cop.’ It’s something that has always been a passion of mine. I’m a person who likes to help other people. I have to be out and about, doing something active, something that is constantly changing. I have done a lot of service trips and a lot of community service in my life, and found that I really like it.
“I also like solving problems,” Connor adds, “and law enforcement encompasses all of that.”
As one of five children in a Natick family, Scanlon says she got an early taste of her future career: “We always had to make sure that there was order in the house,” she laughs. After taking classes at Massachusetts Bay Community College and Regis College and assisting with the Regis campus police force, Scanlon was hired by the Natick Police to handle incoming emergency calls.
“I got a lot of interesting calls over the years,” she says. “But I always wanted to be on the ‘other side’ of those calls – the one who was going out and helping people. When you are just on the phone, the help you can offer may be pretty limited. I like the fact that BC is really like a town or small city. You have lots of different types of people all in one place.”
The two new officers were among 63 candidates who completed an intense 24-week training program that covered all aspects of police work, from legal issues to defense tactics to first aid. New police officers from Cambridge, Lowell, Salem, Beverly, Newburyport and Salem State University were among the graduates.
Connor and Scanlon will spend their first few months on the BC force working with experienced officers, says Sgt. Laurene Spiess, who heads up the department’s training program. “Each week they will get more responsibility. It started off very basic – acclimation, policies, paperwork and getting acquainted with department members.
“Towards the end, they will handle calls themselves with the field training officer just assisting,” Spiess says. “They never work by themselves at this point. A senior officer will respond to each call with them in case they need guidance. That’s just to help them – you don’t want to set them up to fail.”
Scanlon says she is excited at the prospect of reaching her goal. “The academy was just a foundation – it’s nothing compared to what you will learn by doing it. There are certain things that you are mandated to do [as a police officer], but there are certain things you are allowed to make decisions on. I think one of the biggest things they can teach you is how to make those decisions.”
Adds Connor: “They told us that learning does not stop when you graduate from the academy. In law enforcement, you are always learning something new.”