Effective last month, Officer Logan Pierson with the University Police Department received a promotion, which elevated his position from a 2-A officer to a 3-A officer.

The 2018 Southeastern alumnus has been working at the UPD for three years since the July after his graduation. He interned with the department as a university student.

“I worked the internship, so I kind of knew everybody, knew how things worked here. I had applied to a couple different places, and they called me and told me they wanted me to work here. So, I came and I’ve been having fun ever since,” Pierson said.

Obtaining the rank of Police Officer (PO) III was the next step in Pierson’s career progression with the UPD. Among his new responsibilities are shift supervising whenever a police sergeant is not present and training incoming officers.

“If there’s a shift supervisor, not much of your responsibilities have changed, but say there’s no shift supervisor, you’re the supervisor. And they expect us to train the new PO IIs, and we have three at the academy right now. When they come back, I’ll be training them,” he said.

The UPD currently has four shift sergeants, four PO IIIs and the other employed officers in patrol are PO IIs.

According to UPD Chief Michael Beckner, there was an opening for a Police Officer III, and Pierson applied when they opened up the opportunity to the department.

After applying, securing the promotion began with an interview process.

“We want to make sure somebody’s ready to be able to tackle a situation if something bad happens. So, we ask questions, different scenarios. We ask about different things, how he would handle different situations and he did very well. He did an outstanding job during the interview process,” Beckner said.

Being qualified for the promotion was not the only requirement the UPD considered when selecting an officer for the position.

Pierson said, “I had to show an interest in being promoted. I had to show that I can train people, that I know what I’m doing on the police side of things and know university policy procedure, department policy procedure.”

Over the eight months Beckner has been working as Chief at the UPD, he said he has seen Pierson act proactively as an officer, taking steps to educate and get to know students in addition to his duties.

Beckner said, “He’s very community-oriented, he’s very knowledgeable about laws and policies, and he’s very proactive on his duties as a police officer. Our main goal is to educate people, so he’s not always one that writes a ticket. He’ll educate somebody.”

According to Beckner, the UPD likes to see their officers take the initiative to further their careers, knowledge and leadership. He wants the university to know that the officers at the UPD want to be a part of the community.

He said, “It’s a credit to Officer Pierson that he’s taken that next step and he’s willing to give a little bit more to the community because there is a lot of responsibility and a lot of liability that comes with moving up.”