By OLIVER GOOD

Staff writer

Aaron Slater knew he wanted to be a police officer from a very young age, and his dream came true when he recently became a full-time officer in Peabody.

“It’s hard to explain why I wanted to go into law enforcement,” Slater said. “I guess I just felt called into it like it was something I was meant to do.”

Nevertheless, he said doing many ride-alongs with his dad Gary Slater, who also is a Peabody officer, influenced his life path, too.

“We really don’t get to work together much because we’re on different shifts, but it is kinda cool,” Slater said. “Not many people get to say that they work at the same department at their dad.”

A graduate of Hillsboro High School and Tabor College, he was hired at Peabody Police Department in September 2016.

“When I was at Tabor I was in reserve with Hillsboro police department and the sheriff’s department,” he said. “I rode with a lot of different officers and saw there were a lot of different ways to approach situations. I still take some questions to them.”

This year he earned his law enforcement certification at Kansas Law Enforcement Training Center, near Hutchinson.

“Pretty much everything I learned there was valuable,” he said. “I thought I knew quite a bit before I went into the academy, but once I was in, I found out there was a lot of stuff I should be doing differently.”

At the academy, he plunged into myriad scenarios officers experience on the job. Learning how to communicate with people and handle specific situations was paramount, he said, with lessons structured “as similar to the real world as possible.”

“Going in, the academy was pretty nerve-racking but it got smoother the longer I was there,” he said. “But the real world can be more intense. You know it’s real, and it’s not OK if you mess up like at the academy.”

Slater works night shifts in Peabody, experiencing a certain sort of satisfaction doing what he felt called to do in life.

“I like being able to help people; I guess that is the big reason why I wanted to be a police officer,” Slater said. “I like making people feel safer and letting them know that there is someone there if they need them.”