October 14, 2016
By KEITH RYAN CARTWRIGHT
Rutherford County Schools
Sgt. Kerry Nelson towers over most kindergarteners by at least three feet.
He’s a hulking, even foreboding figure at first sight.
Nelson is big. He’s strong.
And he’s typically dressed in a standard-issued Rutherford County Sheriff’s Office uniform.
Yet the youngest students at Stewarts Creek Elementary School inherently see Nelson for the outgoing, friendly person that he’s become during the past 17 years he’s worked as a School Resource Officer for Rutherford County Schools.
All the students at Stewarts Creek have taught Nelson, a former undercover narcotics officer, a valuable lesson.
“I’m not a touchy person and I had to learn to like hugs,” said Nelson, who figures he gets anywhere from 50 to 100 of them from his “little angels,” while walking the halls and visiting classrooms on any given school day.
He joked, “I can measure my day in hugs.”
Nelson’s fellow SRO and longtime friend Sgt. Bill West said, “They’re kids. They starve for attention and affection and we’re willing to give it. Teachers do it, so why not us? We give a lot of hugs, high-fives and fist bumps.”
The SRO program in Rutherford County is just over two decades old. While their primary purpose is public safety and law enforcement, a majority of Nelson, West and other uniformed officers’ time is spent building life-long relationships with students, faculty and families.
Nelson, 56, started his law enforcement career, at 19, as a campus police officer at Middle Tennessee State University and he’s now been with the sheriff’s office for 31 years.
In addition to being a patrol officer, he spent seven-and-a-half years in narcotics.
Leaving little to the imagination, he referred to his undercover experience as a “soul-sucking” time. Looking back, Nelson said the experience not only took a lot out of him physically and emotionally, but it also challenged him morally and socially.
Much like the big screen detectives in films like Donnie Brasco (1997; Johnny Deep and Al Pacino) and American Gangster(2007; Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe), Nelson infiltrated an unwelcoming group of dealers, users and other undesirables.
But the unimaginable experience didn’t take place on a movie set.
It was real life.
More specifically, it was a way of life for Nelson.
“You lose trust in everything and everybody,” said Nelson, pictures of whom are virtually unrecognizable in comparison to the person he is today. “You lose trust in the average police officer. I saw photographs of police officers I knew committing illegal acts. We arrested a couple.
“Then everyone else you deal with is an informant or a drug dealer, and informants generally are not deacons of the church. You just get so caught up in that culture that it’s debilitating to an effective life.”
His work as an SRO officer is in stark contrast to his previous role with the department.
He went from a world of little or no trust as a narcotics officer to working as a school resource officer at Blackman High School and later Stewarts Creek Elementary, where he’s in his 11th school year of interacting with the innocence of elementary school children.
“I’m convinced this job has been my salvation,” Nelson confided.
He added, “I just felt like that was my calling.”
The SRO program is just over two decades old in Rutherford County.
It’s grown from five officers to 57 of them today, which includes two officers for each of the 10 high schools. One of the five sergeants is not assigned to any of the 46 schools in the district. The department has grown every year and, until the Sandy Hook Elementary tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012, there was only one SRO for every four elementary schools.
Since then, West said the County Commission and the community have understood the importance of budgeting for additional elementary SRO positions and with the opening of each new school in Rutherford County.
The program is modeled after England’s Sir Robert Peel’s principals of modern day policing in which West explained police are the community and the community are the police.
Again building relationships has been the key to a successful program.
West, a 32-year veteran of the sheriff’s office who is assigned to Brown’s Chapel Elementary School, said officers wouldn’t have a long-term interest in the SRO program if it were only police work.
He and Nelson, who also teach workshops nationwide as members the National Association of School Resource Officers, emphasized a successful SRO spends little time doing what some would consider traditional police work.
Instead they’re in classrooms teaching students.
“We’re part of that school,” said West, who is the NASRO 1st V.P. “We’re part of the team. … Without being a teacher, we’re tied into being part of the faculty.
“I work at Brown’s Chapel, so I’m a Buck.”
West estimates 90 to 95 percent of their time is teaching or counseling to build a rapport with students.
At the elementary level, lesson topics include kindness and bullying. As students get older those lessons – which come from a curriculum developed by fellow officer Angela Hall and Nelson – become more age-appropriate.
West said he and his fellow SROs realized that anything can happen anywhere at any time. However, he’s confident in their overall preparedness.
“We’re officers in a uniform,” said West, who made it a point to indicate they are prepared to take action as police officers, “and we have that presence in a school.”
Most situations involving conflict resolution take place in high schools.
Nelson described arresting a student as a failure on everyone’s part.
“I didn’t provide them with enough to make a better decision,” said Nelson, who works every day to teach young kids to simply do what’s right. “My babies know what’s right and what’s wrong. I just have to teach them to avoid the immediate gratification or temptation that goes on.”
Nelson added, “I spend a lot of time with my babies because if I can win their hearts and mind at five, I never have to raise my voice with them.”
Nelson explained that in and out of the classroom elementary students clearly see the difference between right and wrong. It’s a black and white world to them, he said.
But that eventually changes.
“By the time my babies get in 10th grade,” Nelson continued, “there’s a world of gray my babies have been subject to.”
Their greatest reward comes years after the student has graduated.
West recalled a time when he and his wife Lynn, whom he’s been married to for 30 years, were grocery shopping and they passed a former student in one of the aisles. Now in his mid-30s, the man introduced his daughter to West.
“I want to introduce you to my SRO from middle school,” he began, before adding, “and I want to tell you how much he did for your daddy when I was having some trouble.”
West said, “You just never think about that stuff.”
It meant a lot to him for his wife to hear that.
Lynn got teary-eyed.
West was taken aback by the unexpected realization of the impact he and other SROs have on the kids they befriend on a daily basis. It’s an especially influential relationship at a time when trust between the community and those in uniform gets lost in the widespread violence that has played out in the news.
“We have a huge responsibility,” West concluded.
“Everywhere I go I’m welcome,” Nelson added. “They’re excited I’m there—even in the high schools.”
PHOTO CREDITS: KEITH RYAN CARTWRIGHT / (Top Photo) Sgt. Kerry Nelson leans in for one of many hugs he receives on any given day, while working as an SRO at Stewarts Creek Elementary School. (Second Photo) Sgt. Bill West high-fives students as they arrive at Brown's Chapel Elementary School.