Essex County Sheriff Coppinger Tells WHAV Listeners How His Office is Different

Sheriffs in other counties are drawing scrutiny for their spending and other practices, but Sheriff Kevin F. Coppinger appeared live on WHAV to demonstrate how Essex County shines.

This week, the legislature withheld $162 million request from county sheriffs following complaints in Norfolk, Hampden and Suffolk counties. Coppinger, who stopped by WHAV’s “Win for Breakfast” program last Friday, discussed instead how his office prepares inmates for re-entry and helps correctional staff stay on top of mental health. Among the job training and re-entry programs the Sheriff’s Department runs is the farm at the Pre-Release and Re-Entry Center in Lawrence.

“We average about 3,600 pounds of produce. This is our time of year. That’s one of the things we do. We teach the inmates also vocational skills. The farm is incredible. We hire an actual farmer to come in and teach the inmates, but the inmates do all the cleaning of the fields in the spring. They plant them. They take care of them all summer. Then they harvest them and we take the harvest. We take some of it to feed our inmates in all our facilities. We also donate a lot of it to charities and non-profits,” Coppinger explained.

The department also has a partnership with Northern Essex Community College which runs classes for inmates.

“Our philosophy is, while they are in there, no pun intended, we have a captive audience. Let’s do what we can and we partner with President (Lane A.) Glenn and the staff at Northern Essex to come in and teach the inmates, whether it is high school equivalency or maybe a college level course. It’s amazing when you see the inmates transition to a learning environment,” Coppinger said.

Finally, the sheriff talked about an initiative to help relieve his staff’s stress level—a comfort dog.

“His name is Pasky. Pasky was named after Officer Anthony Pasquarello, who was one of our correctional officers and it’s a sad story. But, at the age of 37, he passed away during the peak of Covid. He was a great officer. He just caught COVID, got a bad case of it and we lost him and it was troubling. So, in his memory in cooperation with his family we got our first comfort dog and we named it Pasky in honor of Officer Pasquarello. It just kind of keeps his memory alive with our officers. He’s there for the staff,” Coppinger said.

The former chief of the Lynn Police Department with 40 years in law enforcement, Coppinger was first elected Essex County Sheriff in 2016 for a six-year term. He is currently serving his second term.

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