Meet Officer Ed Larente

By JACQUELINE CAIN | Staff Writer
jackie@miltonindependent.com

Milton Police Department put the money from a federal grant to use by hiring Ed Larente, who started as a full-time road officer on December 12. Larente is the 16th officer on the Milton books.

The department applied for the Community Oriented Policing Services grant in the spring and received the $226,477 grant award this fall. The money will pay for

Larente’s salary and benefits for three years, Chief Brett Van Noordt said.
By accepting the grant, the town agreed to keep Larente on for a fourth year, but the chief assumes Larente will be part of the department for longer.

“The way Milton has been growing, five years from now we’ll certainly need him just to keep up with calls for service and other things that are always going in here in Milton,” he said. “We expect it to be busier than it is [now]. If you look at it historically, the volume of calls for service has historically increased.”

Since graduating from the Vermont Police Academy in December 2009, Larente worked as a deputy sheriff in the patrol division of the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office.

The Montréal native moved to Vermont eight years ago and previously worked in software development. While he had his desk job, Larente volunteered in Georgia as an emergency medical technician and firefighter before deciding to enroll in the police academy.

“I mean, it was sitting at a desk,” Larente said about his previous work. “Obviously, I like to do other things, a little more physically. So I decided ... I’m going to change my career.”

In his two years with the sheriff’s department, Larente patrolled in Richford, Enosburg, Sheldon, Swanton, Highgate, Georgia, Fairfax and previously, St. Albans Town; the sheriff’s department lost that contract to the St. Albans City Police Department in July.

The St. Albans Messenger recently reported that the Swanton Town Selectboard voted December 20, based on community input, to include a $116,000 proposal for policing services from the Swanton Village Police on its Town Meeting ballot instead of the $110,000 proposal from Franklin County Sheriff Robert Norris.

The sheriff’s office also laid off six people after losing the St. Albans contract, Cpt. Jay Sweeny said. Given these uncertainties, Larente was worried about the future of his job there, he said.

“I was one of the last hires at the sheriff’s office, so I would be one of the first to go. I survived the St. Albans Town layoffs,” Larente said, “but … I probably would be on the chopping block if I were still there.”

Larente wanted to switch to municipal policing for other reasons, too, and originally applied for a job in Milton last spring, he said.

“There’s more of a ranking structure [in Milton],” he said, referring to the department’s sergeants and corporals as well as the chief. “I have more people to look to for direction.”

In the sheriff’s office, deputies’ immediate supervisors are sergeants. The office has a lieutenant, though he doesn’t have direct oversight of deputies, and the captain and sheriff don’t have regular supervisory duties, either, Sweeny said.

Like all full-time police officers in Vermont, Larente is required to complete at least 25 hours of training annually to maintain his certification. He is looking forward to learning about topics relevant to Milton, like a commercial motor vehicle enforcement course.

“Milton has a big industrial park; there’s a lot of commercial motor vehicles coming through,” he said. “I’m hoping to submit a request to take those courses.”

And Larente said he’s already learning on the job.

“I’ve been here three weeks, and I’m learning things I didn’t learn [at the sheriff’s office] in two-and-a-half years,” Larente said. “[For example,] I never took measurements at a car accident before, just because it wasn’t our policy to do so. It was only our policy there if we have a fatality or a very serious injury. But here, I’ll take measurements in lesser circumstances.”

The schedule in Milton also appealed to Larente, who has a 1-year-old son. The officers rotate 12-hour shifts and have seven out of every 14 days off.

“I’m pretty fortunate. My wife has a job where she’s able to work from home often,” he said. “Any days I have to be here, she can work from home, and when I’m off, she can go into the office.”

So far, Larente has worked the day shift, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. – the hours his new son is awake.

“I get home and get to see him for about 45 minutes, then put him to bed. That’s a little hard,” he said, though having days off with him is a trade-off.

The full-time position Larente originally applied for in May was given to Officer Charles Brown, who was then a part-time officer.

“Ed Larente was the runner-up in the process,” Van Noordt said. The department had already applied for the COPS grant and intended to revisit Larente’s application if it received the money, he added.

In addition to a stellar recommendation from Sheriff Norris, Larente was already certified by the Vermont Police Academy when he applied this spring, saving 16 to 18 weeks of paying his salary. Instead, Larente started right away with field training.

Larente was simply a standout candidate, Van Noordt said.

“His answers were honest and straight-forward during the oral board process,” he said. “He came across as experienced, seasoned and mature.”