PEABODY — Two female police officers visited Welch Elementary School to talk to students about women in uniform and answer questions.
Their message came across loud and clear: There are no limits to what women can do.
Police Sgt. Stephanie Lane and Officer Joanna Kamouzis met with about 120 fourth- and fifth-graders last week in the cafeteria of Welch Elementary School and answered their questions about female police officers. Their visit coincided with Women’s History Month, making it even more special, said Michelle Massa, principal of the school.
“We wanted to make sure that we highlighted how amazing women in uniform are,” said Massa.
Through visits like this, students can see that they can be anything that they want to be as long as they set their mind to it, Massa said.
Lane and Kamouzis started their presentation with a little information about themselves.
Lane joined the department 22 years ago after studying criminal justice in college. She has served in various roles, from a 911 dispatcher to a detective unit officer, and has been supervising the overnight shift for the last five years. Lane is the only police officer in the Peabody Police Department (PPD) who is certified to ride a motorcycle.
Kamouzis has worked at the PPD on the patrol division for five years and has a master’s degree in criminal justice. She said she always wanted to work at a job where she could be helping people; she said a desk job was not for her.
Students wanted to know if female and male police officers do different tasks, if women get treated differently, whether it was too dangerous for a woman to be a police officer and whether it was hard to study at the police academy. There were questions about the uniform, the lunch break and police salary.
“We always get the ‘Do you tase people’ question,” said Lane.
Children also found it interesting how much equipment they carry ― such as a bulletproof vest, handcuffs, pepper spray, a baton, a gun, etc. ― and how heavy it is, Lane said.
A few weeks ago, the officers visited Carroll Elementary School and will eventually visit all of the city’s elementary schools this month.
“It is really cool that we get to do this women empowerment type of thing for all the little girls,” said Kamouzis. “Everyone is always shocked to see female police officers, so it is cool to expose the kids to it and encourage the little girls that they can do whatever they want to do.”
There are seven female police officers in Peabody, Lane said, but young girls usually correlate police with being men.
“We are starting with the fourth- and fifth-graders,” she said. “But hopefully, down the road in years to come, we can expand it to some of the younger kids, maybe kindergarten and first grade, so that they can see at a young age that we can do this job.”
The visits to the elementary schools are organized by School Resource Officer Eric Ricci, who is assigned to all eight elementary schools. He said that one of the big questions he gets from female students is whether there are female police officers.
So Ricci talked to Principal Tracy Smith at the Carroll School about trying out this program and he said the visit there went very well.
“It went longer than we thought it would go,” Ricci said.
He secured permission from the police chief to bring female officers to other elementary schools to show the students a different side of police. And now he also gets to bring with him the newest girl on the police force ― a 10-week-old black English Labrador named Ella, who is going to be a comfort dog for schoolchildren.
