Mike Braem Memorial Scholarship

I have the heart of a protector. So many people in my life tell me that they cannot imagine me in a role where I am not trying to protect and serve those around me. Even as a young child, I would always try to stick up for those around me who were being bullied or ostracized. I tried to fulfill this desire to protect through my time in the Marine Corps, and although the experiences and leadership I developed during my service were meaningful and valuable, the desire to interact face-to-face with those I serve was still overwhelming. I want to serve in law enforcement because I care deeply about people fulfilling their full potential. My goal as a law enforcement officer is not to give the most speeding tickets or arrest the most criminals, but rather to encourage those who are headed down the wrong path or making harmful decisions to realize their full potential and inherent worth with the hope that they will make more positive decisions for their lives and community. I live in an area where people's poor decisions and interactions with drugs and violence have hurt the community as a whole, and I would love to do my part to help people who have gone down the path of criminal activity either out of desperation or malice to correct their errors and begin building up the community and the resources surrounding it. In this quest to better my community and help those around me, the people who inspire me the most are retired New Hampshire Fish and Game Conservation Officer, Wayne Saunders and retired California Special Operations Game Warden, John Nores. Although I have never met these men in person and have only heard them speak through their podcast "Warden's Watch", their stories from search and rescue operations as well as their work conserving wildlife and natural resources while protecting those who enjoy the outdoors inspire me, appeal to my love of the outdoors, and encourage me to promote appreciation and respect of our beautiful natural resources in those I encounter. In addition, John Nores's work standing against the cartel in California inspired me a great deal. As a Hispanic man of Puerto Rican descent, I have a special place in my heart for those people and communities who have been adversely affected by drugs and drug violence. I have seen the negative effects of drugs and violence in my community of Newark, Ohio and I want to make an impact and help those who have been negatively affected by drugs. Although I do not know where my law enforcement career will take me, whether it be working with natural resources or protecting my community, I have encountered inspiring stories of people bettering their community and I have a deep desire within me to follow the example of those excellent law enforcement professionals who went before me and provided insights on how to better their communities.

Ever since I was a kid all I could imagine myself doing as a career was being a police officer. Today I can proudly say that I have accomplished that goal and get to serve in a small city in Maryland. As a law enforcement officer, I see it as part of my duties to serve the community with compassion, trust, and hard work. I am currently on a specialized unit where I get to truly combat the issues of gun violence and drug usage/overdoses that plague my community like so many others. I am able to help assist those who have abused drugs with my unit's close partnership with our county health department and I get to help investigate and solve cases related to illegal drug sales and shootings. While doing all of this I still believe a focus on community relations is a must, I volunteer to participate in coffee with a cop events, I’ll help out at community events and sit in dunk tanks, and I’ll carry around stickers for children. Helping build trust in confidence in the police is a goal I have for myself and my entire police department which I believe will help leave an impact on all of our community members. Being a police department comes with many different responsibilities, but the one that sits above the rest is the impact you can make every single day by helping those in need, working toward rebuilding trust, engaging the citizens, and having compassion. With that, I can make a different and leave an impact. When I was younger, I took a strong liking and desire for law enforcement and becoming a police officer. I can thank an officer from my hometown police department that engaged with me along with my friends answering our questions and stopping and saying hi while we played outside. I can also thank the U.S. customs officers that were advisors in my police explorer post that helped show me that being a police officer is what I truly wanted to do. Every officer who interacted with me played a role in some way toward my inspiration of becoming an officer and I can thank each one of them for their help and mentorship along the way. These officers offered mentorship that helped me explore different law enforcement paths, answered my millions of questions, and guilder me toward obtaining my degree and following my dreams. Without their help, I may have never achieved my goals and may have taken a different career path.

As a 4th generation Butler who has pursued a career in either Law Enforcement or the Military, helping people is in my blood. I always wanted to be a police officer as I was growing up, watching my father serve the same community I serve today. There was never another job to pursue for me, it was always Law Enforcement. After my father's untimely death, I took the torch from him to continue his legacy in public outreach and victim's assistance. My father was a cop's cop through and through. But he also cherished the community he worked for. He was instrumental in implementing the DVLA (Domestic Violence Lethality Assessment) into Utah Law Enforcement which has saved the lives of victims since it was introduced. I would like to continue in his footsteps and make changes that count on my own. I decided to better myself by pursuing a degree in higher education like my father before me did. I did not want to choose a degree that would only help me be a better police officer. I wanted to choose a degree that would help me be a better person and a better officer. Unlike the majority of police officers today, I did not choose a degree in Criminal Justice or Business Management. Rather, I chose to pursue a degree in Psychology. I believe a degree in Psychology will help me better understand the community I work for and make it so I have more tools in the toolbox that are not only on my duty belt. Police work is not the same as it was when my father took the oath in 1986. And it will not be the same years from now. The community looks at Law Enforcement differently than they used to. There might not be as much trust as there once was. I intend to repair that trust, one Law Enforcement-community encounter at a time. Although I do not have the same amount of public interaction being a detective as I used to on patrol, I still have ample amounts of opportunity to impact the lives of anybody I deal with, 'bad guys' included. Overall, my father was my inspiration to be a police officer. My father continues to be my inspiration to be a better police officer than I was yesterday. 10-42 Chief Butler. 10-42 Officer Braem. Your sacrifices will not be forgotten. There are still good cops in the world to carry on your legacies.

Law enforcement has always been a career I've been interested in since my freshmen year of high school, and the reason that I did is that I have always wanted to be someone people can rely on for help, a dependable person; and how I started my path towards law enforcement was signing up for the San Diego Sheriff's Department Explorer Program, a youth volunteer program that allows you to help in community events and learn about the field hands-on by riding along with Deputies. So far, I have been with the program for 2-3 years and plan on doing it until I age out at 21 and possibly apply for the Sheriff's Department. Former Kern County Deputy Sheriff Troy Michael Braem was known to be a very charismatic person by his family and the community he served. He was a person you wanted to be around both during the good and bad times when life gets difficult; Deputy Braem has many of the attributes I would like if I do get into law enforcement. How I plan to impact the lives of those in my community as Officer Braem is to be the positive person Deputy Braem was when serving the people of my community; I want to be able to get out of my shell and be confident enough to get to know the people around me, especially in the college I go, I believe you cannot serve a community that you don't know, and the only way to serve said community is to simply get to know the people in it. As mentioned before, I try to learn as much as possible every time I go on ride-alongs in the Explorer program, more specifically, I try to learn about the people I can encounter, I understand that there will be people that will not be as cooperative or people who are not favorable of law enforcement, whether it's people who have a bad perception of them, or criminals. Knowing this, my goal to impact the lives of the community is to not only know the community but also to protect the community by going after those who can be dangerous to people. The person who inspired me to pursue a career in law enforcement, or at least explorer the career was my criminal justice teacher during my freshmen year of high school, Mr. Dan Settle. Mr. Settle is a former Deputy Sheriff for the San Diego Sheriff's Department, and throughout my years of high school, he was someone I could definitely rely on for help. Mr. Settle was the one who introduced me to the Sheriff's Explorer Program in the first place so that I could explore the career even further. Overall, without the help of Mr. Settle, I would not be where I am today, and for that, he is both my inspiration and the reason why I am pursuing a career in law enforcement.