Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Superintendent Patrick Malley sits down with students, staff, and community members for honest conversations about learning, leadership, and what makes Haslett Public Schools strong. Real stories from real people who call Haslett home.
I'm Patrick Malley, superintendent of Haslett Public Schools, and you're listening to Haslett Voices. In this episode, I get to sit down with officer Colby Cassidy. He's our school resource officer from the Meridian Township Police Department. Something special about Colby is that he graduated from Haslett High School. In fact, so did his father and his grandfather before him.
Speaker 1:That makes Kolby a third generation Haslett graduate, and according to him, his kids will make four. That history shows up in Kolby's work. He knows this community because he grew up in it, and those relationships are the foundation of everything he does here. He'll tell you plainly that without relationship, nothing else will work. What I appreciate most about Kolby is how he thinks about the job.
Speaker 1:His first priority is always student safety, and he takes that seriously in ways that most people never get to see. But he's just as focused on being someone kids know and can trust, whether that's teaching dare to our fifth graders or just eating lunch in the cafeteria. He talks about our students as my kids, and he means it. In our conversation, we talk about what a liaison officer does day to day, how he navigates the line between school discipline matters and criminal ones, and what the DARE program looks like now compared to when most of us went through it. We talk about school safety, what the police department learns from drills and from false alarms, and what he wishes families understood about how much happens behind the scenes.
Speaker 1:Kolby Cassidy, thank you so much for doing this. I would just want to start with a little bit of background before we we go on. And just full disclosure for anybody listening, this is our second time recording the start of this. We we had some technical difficulties. So, thank you for your patience with me, Officer Cassidy.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. So, I just wanna start with the fact that you graduated from Haslett High School. I think that you've got a really interesting story with your connection to our school and our community. What do you remember most about your time as a student here, and did you ever imagine yourself back in these hallways in this role?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Graduated in class of 2012. Haslett was it was great. Being in the halls, it it would never felt like anybody was out to get you. Always felt like you had support when you needed it.
Speaker 2:You know, you I trusted everybody, all my principals and teachers. And it it kinda unique for me because some of the teachers went to school and grew up with my parents. It it it felt like kind of an extension of the household. And, yeah, that was, you know, when I got into law enforcement, when I got hired by Meridian, this was like, if I can do it, I'm gonna be the school officer at some point in my career.
Speaker 1:You had said to me before, third generation Haslett graduate and your kids will be the fourth. Right? My kids will be the fourth. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's pretty cool.
Speaker 2:It's Has has deep roots. It they they sink in, definitely.
Speaker 1:What drew you to law enforcement as a career? Was there any particular person, moment that influenced the decision along your way?
Speaker 2:The the real answer, if you ask any police officer, it's, you know, to to carry a gun and drive fast and fight crime. Right?
Speaker 1:But The fight crime part is important in that list.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That's right. Any officer, I I think, has that sense of a helper and wanting to help people.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:And most people will run away from danger. And I think for law enforcement officers, it's it's just in you that you're gonna run towards it, you know, even at a young age. So how did
Speaker 1:you end up a liaison officer? That's a very specific job path. Is it something you sought out or did you find it?
Speaker 2:So when our last liaison officer stepped down, even at a as a young younger officer five years on, I was like, this is the opportunity for my career. Like, this is this was my full circle moment, I wanted to do it. And so, yeah, I I sought it out.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I just think it's such a neat opportunity to have somebody as our liaison officer who has such deep roots with the community. It's been great to get to know you and and to be able to ask you questions things that you have some history on or your family does, so that's great.
Speaker 2:It's helped out in the schools too, right? Yeah. It helps me connect with the kids. I've you know, can tell them, listen, I walked these halls. I remember middle school.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's definitely helpful.
Speaker 1:One of the things I wanna talk about today for anybody that's that's listening, I don't think that people outside of schools necessarily have a sense of what liaison officers do. And so I thought it'd be helpful if you could kinda describe your role as a liaison officer. What does your day to day look like? What does the what does the work look like?
Speaker 2:First and foremost, number one priority in this job is student safety, keeping the kids safe and protected.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Day to day is bouncing through schools, walking, checking doors, smiling, saying hi to the kids, sometimes eating lunch with them. I I like to start my day out at the high school. I start it and end it there because, unfortunately, in today's world, that's statistically, most of the time, that's where it's happening. So I like the kids to know when they get to school. Officer Casaday's here To feel safe.
Speaker 2:Right? And and then, like I said, bouncing around to schools, all our principals have my cell phone number. You say day to day, yeah, I work eight hours, but my phone's always on. I'm always available for our our staff and students. The calls I'll get from them are anywhere from, you know, a student in crisis, a mental health crisis, or a medical crisis, all the way, unfortunately, to, you know, so and so brought a vape into school today, and we need to have a conversation and help them with that.
Speaker 2:So it's it's a wide range of things that that I do, but number one priority is just the student safety.
Speaker 1:Because you mentioned it it it is important to just talk a little bit about that line between, you know, school discipline matters, things that kids do in schools, you know, versus what the threshold is for like a criminal offense or or doing something. Talk a little bit about, like, how
Speaker 2:you navigate that. You hear a lot about the school to prison pipeline. Mhmm. And if I can do one thing in my time as an SRO, it's to, you know, change that narrative and let folks realize that I'm not sitting in the parking lot waiting for people to peel out and pull them over and write them a ticket. I I hate it when I have to do enforcement, but unfortunately, sometimes you do.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:It's definitely a a give and take. There are things that unfortunately do have to be dealt with in a criminal matter, but for the most part, I don't want to. And and I'll tell kids that, please don't do this again. Don't force my hand. I I hate it.
Speaker 2:I absolutely hate it.
Speaker 1:I wanna talk about another part of your job I know you love, and that is teaching our dare classes to our fifth graders. As somebody who went through the dare program in the nineteen eighties, I know it it looks a little different today than than it once did, so I just thought it might be helpful for people in our community to hear what that program's about now. What what do you teach?
Speaker 2:It's changed even since 2004 when I took it. Mhmm. It's it's not all about drugs and alcohol now. There is one lesson where we talk about drugs and alcohol Mhmm. And, you know, that's to inform these kids, and it's right at the start of the curriculum, to inform them, you know, these are the risks and consequences of drugs and alcohol, the facts and health effects.
Speaker 2:But but it's so much more than that. We we go through, you know, stress and stress management, ways to resist peer pressure called the resistance techniques. Mhmm. That's a fun one. Kids get to act out their resistance techniques in the in the lesson, so they love that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. More about like emotional response to like to temptations, and I mean, it could be bullying situations
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 1:Or, you know, just other life risk decisions. Right?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Risk and consequence. And and then our last lesson's about help networks and just knowing it's important for the kids to know who they have and who they can go to. Mhmm. I always enjoy that one because I usually get put on their help network, and it's a little badge of pride for me.
Speaker 2:That's cool.
Speaker 1:Them adding your name to that list is a sign that they see you as a person that they can trust. And like, there's a huge part of this relationship with Meridian Township Police and the school system to just let people know that they're our helpers, right?
Speaker 2:For sure.
Speaker 1:So I mean, doing that in fifth grade and starting that out is is really helpful.
Speaker 2:Yeah. This is my first year at the middle school that all three grades, I had them as dare kids. Oh. And it's taken time, but I can see the benefit. Like, me being around here for three years in a row now, I I see the benefits.
Speaker 2:Kids are way more comfortable coming up to me, especially since
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:In the middle school, they all had me as a teacher. So yeah, it's it's great to be able to establish those relationships. Funny story, during one DARE graduation, afterwards, student came up to me and reported something, and they didn't realize I was a real police officer. After they told me, they were like, we thought you were just our our school officer. You're a real police officer?
Speaker 2:You're gonna actually do something about this? And I'm like, yeah, guys. I am a real I'm a real cop.
Speaker 1:So Yeah. I mean, it it is much as that might be a little hit to the pride, it means you're doing your job. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right. Yeah. Yeah. It was it was great.
Speaker 1:Right. Like, they see you as a human. See you as an educator. They see you as a person and like that's that's what you're intentionally trying to do and I I appreciate that. I want to talk a little bit about your relationships with the community because, you know, I've heard you joke and and other people joke about how it seems that you know everyone in Haslett.
Speaker 1:And a part of that is just your your personality. I know you you you just inherit some of it, but how intentional are you about building relationships? How important is relationships in your day to day work?
Speaker 2:Utmost importance. Without the relationships Mhmm. You're not gonna get anywhere. Without relationships, you're not gonna have kids come up to you and say, hey, I need help, and and I trust you to help me. Being a, like I said, third generation and being around for a while, yeah, I do.
Speaker 2:My family does know quite a lot of people, related to quite a lot of people in Haslett. Yeah. Without those relationships, you're not gonna you're not gonna get anywhere.
Speaker 1:So you work along side our teachers, counselors, administrators, support staff every day. How do you see yourself fitting in to that broader school team, being that you're wearing kinda like both hats, right? Like, you're on the school team, but yet you do serve this outside role at the police department.
Speaker 2:Our our staff, they're all great, welcomed me in with open arms. I still can't call them by their first name because they were my teachers.
Speaker 1:Right? So it it it's still, you know Fair enough.
Speaker 2:Miss Livingston, it's weird to yell at a high schooler and say, quit running in the hallway. Right? Yeah. It is kinda part of the job too. So it's Yeah.
Speaker 1:Especially hard for high school you went to. Right?
Speaker 2:Right. Yeah. Yeah. I I was the one doing that too. Right?
Speaker 2:Right. Right. Right. Yeah. But no, it's our staff is great.
Speaker 2:It was a they made it easy for me to then help and understand the role of
Speaker 1:an educator too. Can you think of a moment or student interaction or something that's happened since you became a school resource officer that reminded you of why you do the work?
Speaker 2:I I recently a student wrote me a thank you letter. Mhmm. And I won't go into too much detail, but basically, I had said something to this student during this difficult time for them, and they held onto it and wrote down the words that I told them in this thank you letter and, you know, told me I'm an inspiration to them and the life choices that they're making going forward and and what they wanna do with their future. And that was just one of those like, yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker 1:I bet road cops giving out tickets on the set of road don't get many of those letters.
Speaker 2:No. No.
Speaker 1:No. That's really cool. It is really cool. Well, because I think I think what makes that important, right, and all those investments you're making in relationships important is like this next set of questions I have are really the more serious ones, right, that that you know are part of the job, that are part of, I think, what's front and center of people's minds when they think about school resource officers and just the risks that are in in unfortunately inherent in schools now. So, like, without getting into specifics that could compromise security, how do you think about keeping the buildings safe?
Speaker 2:You know, for me, it's it's important for the kids to know I'm coming in the buildings. It's important for the the public to know I'm in the buildings. Little example, we had a accidental lockdown at Wilshire. Mhmm. And I was at the high school during lunch.
Speaker 2:For everybody listening, it took me thirty three seconds to get from the lunchroom in the high school to the front door at Wilshire or, yeah, at Wilshire. So I can confidently say, those are probably the two farthest apart. I am at least thirty three seconds, or at most thirty three seconds away from your kids at any time. So, yeah. I mean, you're always thinking about it.
Speaker 2:You're always even even just a regular officer, right, you have that heightened sense of hyper vigilance. Right? When it comes to the school, I would say for me, it's even more because being a former student, I remember that being important for me. Mhmm. Feeling, you know, and I did.
Speaker 2:I to this day, I never felt like I was in danger at school at the schools. Mhmm. So but these are my kids now. I get to wear this uniform. They're not just high school students and the middle school students, Wilshire kids.
Speaker 2:They're they're my that's how I look at them. They're my kids. Mhmm. So I'm always thinking about the safety of them.
Speaker 1:I know that about you because when things happen that cause some anxiety, right, whether it be an accidental button being pushed or whatnot, you know, you feel those things.
Speaker 2:Like, I
Speaker 1:think that's the part of it that I don't think we all give enough credit to to our officers in the community. You're human too, but like but you are you're in that car and you're there in thirty two seconds. Thirty three seconds. Thirty three seconds. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So I I do think on that same vein, the nature of threats in schools has evolved over the years. I mean, since you were in school, since I was in school to today, like, how has your approach to safety planning changed during your time in this role? And and maybe that's not a fair question because you've not been in this role for for long enough, but, you know, I I guess, like, even as a department, are there things that you all are thinking about differently today than you might have five years ago?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. We train active violence incidents every year. Unfortunately, when you have those those bad situations Mhmm. Those school shootings, the best thing we can do is is learn from it, you know, and study that. We can look at what was done and what could we do different to Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Stop that or prevent that. So, we're we're always looking at stuff, always studying, learning.
Speaker 1:You know, I do know we've had across the region districts that run drills, you know, large scale drills that involve multiple agencies, but then also we've we've unfortunately, in our region had some large scale false alarms. Right? Or reports that that fortunately didn't didn't pan out. What does the learning look like on the police department side in terms of those events? What sort of coordination are you doing behind the scenes in terms of, like, learning from those events?
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah. We'll we'll have roundtable discussions. We'll go back and look at this is what we did. Why did we do this? What could we have done differently?
Speaker 2:Should we have shut this road down? Should we have called for this special team? It's unfortunate that those false alarms happen, but you do learn a lot from them. You you you realize, you know, maybe there are some cracks in in the plan that we had. I don't know.
Speaker 2:Is it is it Mike Tyson that says everybody has a plan till they're hit in the mouth? That's right. Yeah. Is our reunification spot set up properly, and how are we gonna handle the massive amounts of parents coming to get their kids? Sure.
Speaker 2:So, yeah. You you we sit back, we look at all that stuff right down to the nitty gritty of why did you park your car here?
Speaker 1:So Well, that's good because then on the school side, we're, you know, we're really heavily focused on, you know, obviously the safety first, and then and then second, coordinating the communication with the parents regarding those pieces of the puzzle that you're putting together. And I just know how how frequently you all are talking about improvement. Every circumstance is going to be slightly different from the last or Right. Greatly different from the last. And so just the more that we can talk about it and plan together, the better prepared we'll be in the in event that an unfortunate thing does happen.
Speaker 1:Right?
Speaker 2:So Right.
Speaker 1:What do you wish parents and families understood better about school safety?
Speaker 2:I I just wish they they trusted that the schools are safe. There is a lot of stuff that goes on behind the scenes that maybe some staff don't even know about, but it it's constantly at the forefront of police and the admin at our in front of our minds. Right? There's always ideas and new things coming out. Please trust us that everything that you bring up to us, we look at.
Speaker 1:What do you wanna our Haslett students to remember about your interactions? We talked a little bit about it through the DARE program or whatnot, but like just to switch back and close out on a more positive theme, like what what do you hope kids remember long after they've graduated related to their interactions with you?
Speaker 2:You know, I I hope they just remember that I was there for them, that they had somebody in their corner at all times. And, you know, I I hope they look back and think, you know, Officer Casaday, he was a great guy. I know he had my back. Mhmm. And I hope he's doing okay.
Speaker 1:What impresses you about students today?
Speaker 2:You know, just the simple see something, say something. Mhmm. They've they've grown up in a world where they grew up fast. But these kids are resilient. They're they're good kids.
Speaker 2:They make me proud to be a Haslett alum.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:So these it's a good group of kids. I'm proud of all of them.
Speaker 1:Before we wrap up, I like to do a lightning round with people that I interview. So there are five quick questions that I wanna ask that'll just help the community get to know you a little better. There's no right or wrong answers, whatever comes to mind first. Are you ready
Speaker 2:for Dangerous. I like it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. They're they're really not that dangerous.
Speaker 3:I
Speaker 1:appreciate it. What's your favorite season and why?
Speaker 2:Oh, summer. Summer's up at Houghton Lake. Summer's out by the pool. Yeah. It's Okay.
Speaker 2:I hate the cold. Alright.
Speaker 1:Yeah. What's your go to restaurant or food spot in the area and what's your order?
Speaker 2:Mayfair bar.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:It's a bacon cheeseburger, mayonnaise, mustard, ketchup, lettuce
Speaker 1:Alright.
Speaker 2:French fries.
Speaker 1:Alright. You've ordered that a bit. Yeah.
Speaker 2:A few times. Alright.
Speaker 1:Morning person or night owl?
Speaker 2:Night owl. I hate getting up early.
Speaker 1:Beach vacation or mountain getaway? You may have already answered that.
Speaker 2:See, that's tough though. Yeah. It depends on what we're doing in the mountain getaway. If it's a hunting trip, all for it. Okay.
Speaker 2:Otherwise, beach vacation.
Speaker 1:What's your favorite way to spend a Saturday?
Speaker 2:My family. It doesn't matter what we're doing, just as long as we're all together.
Speaker 1:That's a great answer. Phone's ringing, gotta let you go. I just wanna thank for doing this. I really appreciate It's always good to give the community a sense of who the people are behind our district. And on behalf of our entire district, we really appreciate it.
Speaker 1:All the people. It's pretty
Speaker 3:easy. Right? Absolutely. Very close to this.