ANAHEIM : Veteran Officer Heads for Campus

In his 17-year career as a police officer, Larry L. Hernandez has been a motorcycle cop, fraud investigator and trainer of rookie officers. The Brea officer has worked in the detective bureau and investigated juvenile crime.

But in the new assignment he began last week, Hernandez relies as much on what he has learned as a parent as he does on police skills.

As the educational liaison officer at Esperanza High School, Hernandez will teach classes, counsel individual students and also try to gain the trust of the school’s 2,000 students. He has to persuade them that he isn’t there to spy but to help them.

To do that, Hernandez said he must be more than just another cop. “I want them to respect me for who I am, not just because I am a police officer,” Hernandez said. “I want to let them know police officers are human too.”

To create that empathy, he will rely a lot on what he has learned about teen-agers from his own son, now 20. “I noticed recently that how I would tell my son to do his chores affected the outcome,” Hernandez said. “If I told him to do the dishes, it would never get accomplished, but if I asked him to do them, I would get a positive response.”

Hernandez’s new beat was created by the Yorba Linda City Council, which last year decided to fund the position at Esperanza for one semester. Although the school is in Anaheim, most of the students at the school live in Yorba Linda, which is served by the Brea Police Department.

The job resembles the work of DARE officers, who visit schools to teach students about the dangers of drugs and alcohol. But unlike DARE officers, Hernandez will be on campus every day, from 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

And while drug and alcohol education will be part of Hernandez’s job, the program’s emphasis will be on helping students resist negative peer pressure, make good decisions and accept responsibility for their actions.

“If kids haven’t become resistant to drugs and alcohol by (high school), there’s not a lot we can do” with anti-drug education, said Lt. Bill Lentini, Hernandez’s supervisor.

Much of Hernandez’s time will involve counseling students who seek him out or are referred by teachers. In addition, he will teach ninth-grade students in a course called “Here’s Looking at You 2000,” a self-esteem program designed by the school district, and will contribute in other areas, including classes in social studies and government.

When he’s not teaching or counseling, Hernandez plans to roam the campus, talking to students and being visible. Both Lentini and school district officials said Hernandez’s presence makes the campus safer and provides a better educational and social environment.

“Having a police officer on campus gives students an excuse if they need one, gives them a chance to say, ‘No, we’d better not; there’s a police officer here,’ ” Lentini said.