Courtesy photo Outgoing Nashua PAL Officer Mike DeBisz, left, and incoming Officer Bennet Stusse join Jeremy, a PAL Youth Safe Haven member, in a recent photo.

NASHUA – Officer Bennet Stusse, a U.S. Coast Guard veteran who most recently served as a school resource officer and a trainer with the department’s Racial Ethnic Disparity (RED) program, is settling in this week to his new job as the Nashua PAL officer.

Stusse, who PAL members have begun calling “Officer Ben,” succeeds “Officer Mike” – veteran officer Mike DeBisz – at the helm of the PAL program, which has grown and become increasingly popular since its founding in 1989.

PAL officers, who serve under the department’s community policing division, are assigned to various community-based initiatives, including mentoring youth, problem-solving with families, and a variety of community outreach efforts, and oversee PAL’s Youth Safe Haven, where its athletic and sports programs are based.

PAL development director Jen Miller said the organization “is excited to welcome Officer Stusse,” who she said attributes his Coast Guard service and work as a police officer “for bringing him a sense of discipline and purpose to his mindset and his work, which he hopes to share with PAL youth.”

She said Stusse “is looking forward to continuing his community policing focus” as the PAL officer.

“I want to see kids feeling strong – building their physical, mental and emotional resiliency,” Stusse said, adding that “I’m not here to change people. I’m here to maybe have them thinking about how change can impact them.”

Among his initiatives, according to Miller, is “getting a ‘Cone With a Cop’ event … going by the end of the summer,” referring to the Nashua Police Patrolman’s Association’s partnership with Hayward’s Ice Cream.

Shaun Nelson, PAL executive director, said the organization “is so thankful to the Nashua Police Department for their support of PAL’s mission. We are excited to have Officer Stusse join” the program.

Nelson said PAL is looking forward “to many adventures ahead” for the organization, which, according to its statistics, serves more than 2,000 youths through sports, afterschool programming and “positive interactions with Nashua police officers.

As for DeBisz, who became PAL officer four years ago this month, Miller said he spent much of his time working with members in its Youth Safe Haven, where programs such as boxing, cross-country, football, street hockey, basketball and cheer are based.

Some of DeBisz’s favorite activities, Miller said, “included helping with homework and taking PAL kids fishing, a routine that led him to create, with the help of program assistant Jenn Benoit, the “Fishing With Officer Mike” program.

The program, Miller said, “gave DeBisz a chance to interact one-on-one with kids an create countless memories.”

DeBisz was also a “key organizer” of PAL’s Tactical Christmas, a holiday-season program that provides gifts, toys, clothing and such items to struggling families whose children would otherwise have to go without.

“The best thing was that we never had to say ‘no’ to anyone in need,” DeBisz said, reflecting on being part of the Tactical Christmas program. “If anyone asked, we could always put something together to help them during the holidays.”

DeBisz also calls his time working with the boxing program as “really exceptional,” according to Miller. She said he “was able to help keep PAL boxers on the Olympic track.”

DeBisz notes that “two guys are nationally ranked now, and I got to be a part of that.”

He also feels that his engagement in “many constructive conversations” with PAL members “made me a better police officer. I was able to get to know the people we serve … building their trust in me as I got to know their stories, and helped them through tough situations.”

Nelson, the PAL executive director, said in thanking DeBisz for his “service and dedication to our PAL youth,” that there are “so many community members who are lucky to have been motivated by Mike’s energy for four years.”

For more information about PAL, contact Miller at 864-506-4980 or jen@nashuapal.com, or go to www.nashuapal.com.

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