Highland Resource Officer Serves School As Well As Community

The job of a high school resource officer may not be easy, and certainly not as an accompaniment to raising a family. When the obligation lies between supporting a family at home and contributing to the one at school, Highland’s resource officer Andrew Pederson goes both ways. Immediately after working at Highland as a policeman, Pederson switches roles to father as he rushes to pick up his kids. Police work, he said, is to support his family.

After graduating from Utah State University, Pederson worked in the military, in charge of logistics such as supply of food and ammunition. With his intentions set on becoming a Green Beret, Pederson had to make a change of plans as his wife felt that this field of work would be too dangerous.

Aside from providing for his family, the most important part of being a policeman for Pederson is the element of giving back to the community. Considering all that the military and other policemen have done very important to the community, he feels that by working as a cop, he is paying homage to those who helped previously build the community.

“I love being an American. I love the freedoms that we have, and I know that those freedoms aren’t free, but they’ve come from a lot of blood, sweat, and tears from soldiers in the past, and I want to be part of that, part of the solution instead of part of the problem,” Pederson said about his desire to be a Green Beret after college. Although he did not become a Green Beret, Pederson made it in the Army, and later on police work, both fields in which he still felt active in improving our country’s safety.

“Every job’s important, but doing police work helps me feel like my job means something. I could help someone get their property back or make an arrest on someone who victimized somebody else,” Pederson said.

Safety is a cop’s number one priority, as seems to have been forgotten by much of the country’s population; safety, that is, both on the cop’s end and on the end of the person being accused. More often than not, a policeman is just doing his job. It is merely the position of authority held that can make a cop seem intimidating, Pederson realized.

As a high school resource officer, Pederson has the chance to get to know young adults on a deeper level than most cops who might only come across them in their worst moments. Describing how, after arrests are made, many students treat him with more respect, Pederson explained that actually listening to students prevents any grudges from being held.

“When I have someone in here, we usually talk about personal things, possibly them getting in trouble, and they’re in a vulnerable spot, I guess, but I’m not the type of cop that does police work like, the ‘good cop, bad cop’ guy. I just treat people with respect, like I would want to be treated,” he said.

At Highland, it may be that the “bad cop” stigma has mostly been erased, but elsewhere in the United States, not as much. A cop doing what a cop does is now feared and viewed as threatening in many cases, and although police brutality is a legitimate issue, the issue also lies in the reverse: policemen themselves are being brutalized by random citizens who believe that all cops are culprits of power abuse.

Becoming a Green Beret is not the only risky job out there; Pederson’s wife was worried for her husband’s safety when he first became a cop, but over the years that have passed without any consequences from danger, the worrying has eased.

“I’ve been a cop now for 10 years, and I’ve shared with [my wife] some of the experiences that I’ve had, and she sees that as long as I do what I’m trained to do and I make sure that I’m safe, that I have a good chance of coming home every night,” Pederson said.

The combination of ordinary police work and the stigma held by the general public about cops makes for a perilous situation for any cop. Crime against cops has taken its toll on many workers in the police force across the country, which is something that Pederson and his family are well aware of.

“Just the other day in Missouri, as a fallout from Ferguson, two cops were just out doing their own thing and some random guy came up and shot [the] two cops. You live with that knowledge in your mind that people don’t like us a lot, I understand that, and to be aware of the possible threats. And that’s why a lot of the cops get this bad rap. We don’t trust anyone until they’ve earned our trust,” he said.

“We always like to keep our head on a swivel, be aware of our surroundings,” Pederson said.

As aware of his surroundings as a cop has to be, Officer Pederson hasn’t always worked alone.

“Well, I know him as Andrew, but I think everybody else knows him as Detective Pederson,” Kory Olsen, Pederson’s former partner in fighting crime, said.

“The first thing that comes to mind when I think of Andrew is exercise. He’s very physically fit, and he really enjoys doing cross fit exercises. He’s very easy to get along with. [We] always had a great time together, and even though we investigated some crazy stuff, it was always good to know that you have a guy like Andrew, who’s going to back you up and always be there for you. He’s always going to be a stable partner; he’s not going to do anything to undermine you in front of people, or anything like that,” Olsen said.

As high school resource officers, Olsen and Pederson worked together for about a year and a half, answering complaints made about troublemakers and dealing with kids who needed help.

Work in general has its ups and downs, but police work is one specific that rests at a medial high.

“The one that sticks out the most with [us] was last summer. It was the last day of school, and we heard a call for service at one of the schools in our area, and there was a parent who refused to leave, and ended up causing a lot of problems for us… We tried to take the parent into custody, and then the parent ended up fighting with us, trying to bite Officer Pederson, kicking him, and it got really ugly there. That was one of the circumstances that I remember with Andrew,” Olsen said, reminiscing of his days working as a partner with Pederson.

As long as Highland has a resource officer as efficient and willing as Pederson, Highland High is in good hands. It takes risking one’s own personal safety to guarantee the safety of others, a risk that Pederson takes deliberately every day, to ensure that he provides for the community and country as much as they provide for him.

“It’s always in the back of my mind, every day you go to work as a cop, you always wonder, ‘is today my day?’, ” he said.

It was a personal goal of Pederson’s to take risks in order to protect and serve his country, which this point in his career, he has done well, and as long as he patrols the halls of Highland High, he will continue his brave contributions.