Hazen High School’s new school resource officer is ready to guide kids positively and teach them valuable life lessons when he can.

Ben Flick was previously the only school resource officer for the entire school district. Flick said he’s been a police officer for the last nine years, acting as a patrol officer, starting at the Seattle Police Department, then moving to the Cle Elum Police Department, and most recently landing at the Renton Police Department a year and a half ago.

Flick said he joined the Renton Police Department because he had heard really good things about it. He said he heard it was a supportive place to work with great leadership, and he was interested in going back to a larger agency.

Flick said he’s always been interested in working as a public servant. His dad is a retired firefighter, so he thinks that ultimately inspired him to become a volunteer firefighter right out of high school and go on to work in public service.

After volunteering as a firefighter, Flick said he joined the National Guard reserves and worked as a medic. When he finished his time with the National Guard, Flick said he thought working in law enforcement was the right move.

“I really enjoy doing something that’s very needed. When you get to go to work and know that life safety is your main priority, it makes going to work a lot easier because you’re doing something that’s important to people and that you can individually affect people’s lives,” Flick said. “Even rendering lifesaving aid or stopping violence from occurring as it’s occurring really makes going to work easy.”

Flick said he never feels like he’s just “punching the clock” when he goes to work because what he does is important — and he enjoys it. Flick said he thinks his job is really cool because he’s mostly dealing with juveniles, and he specifically enjoys the relationship-building aspect of the job.

Flick said he’s able to show kids that law enforcement is not just there to enforce laws, but also to mediate, be informal counselors, and help. He said it’s a privilege to teach young people that police officers are much more than they might have thought they were.

Flick said he has a heart for helping the youth and wants to try to keep negative influences out of the schools so the youth are not swayed into any kind of criminal activity.

Through his time as a patrol officer, Flick said he’s interacted with juveniles in possession of stolen vehicles and stolen handguns. So he’s in a good position to sway the youth away from those negative things and help navigate them through difficult times. He said he thinks some kids are influenced to do negative things because many people influence youths through their various platforms, whether they know it or not.

Flick said there are gangs in the area, and some youths are more at risk of joining or being affiliated with them than others. So, if he can spend four to six years in this position and so much as just one student says they were heading down a dark road, but interactions with an SRO changed their mind through positive interactions, then that would make his service worth it, Flick said.

“There is sometimes in our culture a glorification of things that are not good, and young people are very impressionable,” Flick said. “So, our goal here is to try to impress upon them that they should stay away from those criminal activities because it’s going to lead them into a life of very unpleasant things and even physical injury or even be killed.”

Flick said he will take any chance to turn students’ bad behavior into learning lessons. He said he would tell students there is a lot of grace right now, but if they continue to engage in criminal activity, there is no other choice but to throw the book at them with criminal charges. Despite having some grace for students, Flick said there is no other option for the higher-level crimes, but when they can, they will attempt to turn it into a learning experience.

Although the officers will address criminal issues, Flick said the school handles disciplinary actions, and on a day-to-day basis, his job is to build relationships with students. He said he’s focused on saying hello to kids and keeping the kids and the campus safe.

Flick said another large part of his is helping the staff and students feel safe, especially with the proliferation of school shootings. Flick said students and teachers tell him all the time that they feel safer with him around the campus, and if there were a school shooting event, he would be the first to address it.

“Absolutely our primary function as the first officer present, when a school shooting occurs, is to engage threat immediately. In a nutshell, how that works is if we do not have dynamic intel, which is a fancy way to say if we’re not hearing shots being actively fired, we begin searching and securing,” Flick said. “If we do hear shots being actively fired, we immediately rush to that threat and engage it in whatever way is appropriate.”