Students and deputies build boats — and relationships
By Melhor Marie Leonor, Naples Daily News
While deputy Dan Rogers holds together the shell of a boat, a student marks the wood, another steps forward to start hammering.
By the end of the summer, there’ll be a shed, three boats, and close to a dozen chairs — the products of a summer partnership between local students and Collier County Sheriff officers.
In between hits of the hammer, students pepper officers with questions about their jobs and quickly get answers. The idea is that when the summer ends, the woodwork will be accompanied by stronger relationships between students and the law enforcement officers who regularly keep an eye on their schools.
“You get to interact with the kids one on one, and they get to see a different aspect of what being a cop is,” said Cpl. Debbie Gross, who was based at Golden Gate Elementary last year. “They ask a lot of questions and compare us to what they see in the movies.”
How many people have you handcuffed? Have you seen bodies?
“We asked them how many people they’ve killed: zero. But they’ve gone on chases,” said Sailor Robinson, an eighth-grader at Gulfview Middle.
At the sheriff’s office aviation hangar tucked behind the Naples Municipal Airport, Sailor and other students joined officers on Monday to begin the program’s second boat of the summer.
“A lot of these kids are doing things they’ve never done before. They’re painting, they’re staining,” said Rogers, who has been building boats as part of the summer program for six years. “We’ve built 25 to 30 boats over the years.”
In the week that it takes to build the 11-foot, 8-inch boat, students will take on different roles.
“I’m pencil man,” said Richie Mattes, a sixth-grader at North Naples Middle. “They line it up and I mark it for the other guy to drill the holes.”
The other guy is Christian Porter, who drills. Sailor comes in to help hammer, and by Monday afternoon, pieces of wood begin to look like a small boat.
“Tuesday we’ll attach the bottom. By the end of Thursday, the whole boat will be painted. Friday, the boat floats at Rookery Bay,” Rogers said. “They’ve taken something from a box, and five days later, there’ll be a boat.”
The boats are donated by local businesses — this summer, Tamiami Ford, Exquisite Timepieces and American Fertilizer and Supply Co. The businesses will get the boats to sell or display, after students get to to take them on a shakedown cruise.
“We’ve learned kids don’t know how to row boats anymore,” Rogers said. “We try and show ‘em.”
Last week, a different group built chairs at Oakridge Middle School — which they get to take home. Earlier this summer, a group at Palmetto Ridge High built a woodshed, which now sits at the sheriff’s office substation in Golden Gate Estates.
As they work, students cash in the access to police officers and let their curiosity run free. Over a hot dog lunch Monday, students prodded officers with questions about the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri after the shooting by police of Michael Brown.
Rogers isn’t surprised: “Each summer, there’ll be something that they’ll ask us about. Whatever’s been on the news, they’ll have questions about.”
Gross said they’ll ask students to explain what they’ve heard and mostly defer to parents.
“We tell them that with complex issues, you have to sit back and look at both sides.”
Earlier this year, officers from the youth relations branch of the sheriff’s office were prodded with questions about police violence after an incident at Gulf Coast High that saw students get pepper-sprayed by an officer trying to break up a fight. Online, dozens called for the firing of the officer.
Rogers, who has been stationed at area schools since 1993, said that mostly, relationships are good. His father, former Collier Sheriff Aubrey Rogers, started the youth relations branch in 1977.
“We’ve been in the schools for so long, we are a part of the schools. I think we are much better off here because of that,” said Rogers, who still runs into former students he worked with. “Everyone has a deputy story. They’ll tell me, ‘Hey deputy, remember when you caught me doing this and that?’ ”
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The Naples Daily News is located in Naples, Florida.
