By Valerie Sliker, courtesy Wagener Monthly
Moses Brown was presented with the 2016 SC School Resource Officer of the Year award on June 30, 2016 at a law enforcement conference in Myrtle Beach. Sgt. Brown was again presented the award by his peers at a Wagener town council meeting on July 18th. This annual award is bestowed in recognition for outstanding contributions to the schools, the law enforcement agency and the community served Sergeant by its recipient.
Graduating from Voorhees College on a track and field scholarship in 2010, Sgt. Brown began working with DJJ on the correctional side, quickly moving up through the DJJ to the DJJ PD. Brown appreciates the variety of difficult incidents he learned to manage working “on the inside.” It was a breeze, he says, to come work out on the streets.
In the summer of 2013, Sgt. Brown accepted a job as an officer with the Wagener PD. He soon became the school resource officer and was promoted to Sergeant in 2014. Brown also serves as the training officer at WPD and will soon be over the Property & Evidence section.
Brown, the only boy among 5 children, credits his father, a Viet Nam veteran, for the stern and disciplined manner in which he was raised, keeping him out of trouble and with a healthy respect for authority. Brown adamantly pronounces that he doesn’t think he is better than his friends who got in trouble or incarcerated, he is just more fortunate having the father he had.
I spoke with Sergeant Moses Brown at town hall just before he received the award.
“Law enforcement was something I knew I wanted to do since I was little. Law enforcement for me isn’t about locking people up. I can say that everybody I’ve locked up, I can still go out and talk to. Nobody has hate. I give people respect from the mayor to the crackhead on the street, they’re going to get the same type of respect.
“I knew it was all about giving back. Somebody was always there for me. In this area, it’s kind of rough, there’s not a lot of dads in peoples’ lives. That’s the main reason I’m in coaching, to let the guys and girls know they need a male in their lives and if they need anything, they can come to me.”
Sergeant Brown’s involvement with the school isn’t limited to law enforcement, he also coaches. Brown was with the JV basketball team for the past two years and is moving up to the position of head coach for the varsity girls basketball team at WSHS in fall of 2016, when school resumes.
Brown has also been involved with coaching football at WSHS. Last year, Coach Willie Fox came down from Pelion and it was a bounce-back year for the War Eagles. This year will be a little different being in a new bracket, Calhoun County and Fox Creek moved up into another bracket, and the middle school coach has moved up to the high school coaching team, leaving a vacancy for a coach at the middle school. Also, we lost Coach McGhee to Silver Bluff.
Clearly, Sgt. Brown has an enthusiastic passion for encouraging and guiding our youth. He is to be commended for his involvement above and beyond the police department.