NPD hires first Nome-grown police officer in years

By Ariana Crockett O’Harra “It’s always been what I’ve wanted to do since high school,” said Son Erikson, a newly hired officer at the Nome Police Department. “I’ve always just felt like I wanted to help people, wanted to do good.” Erikson grew up in Nome and he’s NPD’s first home-grown officer in a long time. It can be hard to find officers with local connections to the community and the department has relied on hiring officers from the Lower 48 who serve in Nome on rotational basis. Erikson was in college at the University of Alaska Anchorage studying criminal justice when he came home for the summer. He ran into Chief of Police Michael Heintzelman at the gym, and they had a conversation. Heintzelman urged him to apply for a job, and after thinking over whether he wanted to complete his degree first, Erikson applied. “I was just back and forth, and really, once the opportunity presented itself,” he said. “I jumped right at it because you never know when that opportunity is going to present itself again.” He is currently in his fifth week at the department after being sworn in September 18. Right now, he’s working 12-hour shifts, on that same two-week schedule as other officers. The transition from college student to police officer has been alright. “I feel like I’ve been adjusting pretty well,” he said. “It’s nice because you’re in work mode for 14 days, and then you get to decompress a little bit.” Erikson is the youngest you can be as a police officer – sworn in just before his 21st birthday – but he feels he’s up to the task. “You have to be professional. You just have to treat every call like it’s serious,” he said. Heintzelman admits that in a small community, it is difficult to be in law enforcement as a local. “Everybody knows everybody, so he’ll have a lot of friends in the community, and now sometimes your friends do stuff that they’re not supposed to,” he said. “That’s sometimes difficult for some people.” Erikson said he thinks having connections in the community has helped him so far. “I know a lot of these people from this community personally, so I feel like it helps gives me an advantage on communicating with people,” he said. “There’s a little bit of connection just because we grew up in the same place and we knew each other’s families, so I feel like it will help me ongoing.” He has already pulled over people he knows, and he said when he has to handle something more serious, he’s ready. “No favoritism, because police officers have a job to do,” he said. “They have to be professional and uphold that loyalty.” Erikson’s training will take months. He is currently working through four months of training in Nome, partnered with officers on the force. In the new year, he’ll head to the Alaska Law Enforcement Training Academy in Sitka for more training. After that, there will be weeks of more training courses. It’s expensive for the department to train an officer from the ground up – roughly $130,000, according to Heintzelman. It’s an investment into Erikson the chief is willing to make. The thing that’s surprised Erikson the most about his training is how varied his knowledge has to be. “It’s like being a little bit of everything. You got to be a little bit of a therapist. You got to be a little bit of a lawyer,” he said. “You gotta just have knowledge in everything. There’s so much that goes into it that I didn’t know before.” Erikson said he hopes that becoming an officer in his hometown will inspire others in the community. “Maybe not be a cop if they don’t want to, but just to be a good human being and not get into trouble,” he said. “It feels good that I can give back to my community and protect and serve,” he said.