Marshfield Police Officer Discusses New PEACE Program

Wednesday, June 25th, 2025 -- 2:00 PM

The Marshfield Police Department has a new program they hope will help them engage with the community.

The Marshfield Police Department has started their new PEACE, or Police Education and Community Engagement, Program. I spoke with Officer Derek Iverson and he discussed the program in more detail including an event that was held the day of our interview on Friday, June 20th.

Listen to the interview with Officer Iverson here!

If you’d like to learn more about the PEACE program, you can contact the Marshfield Police Department.

(AI assisted transcription of the interview by Otter.ai):

Officer Iverson: "It's a program that we we created and we did it because we wanted to do more for the kids and for the community. And so what we did is we came up with an acronym called PEACE, and what it stands for is Police Education And Community Engagement."

"And what we want to do with the program has just do events and things with the community, with the kids. The first event that we've decided on doing is called Cast With a Cop and that takes place today (June 20th) from 10 to about Noon."

And what we did is we got in contact with our Parks and Rec Department. They provided Hamus Park for us. There's ponds up there that are stocked with fish. And we created our sign up list, essentially, for kids to sign up for."

"We bracketed the ages from eight to 15 years old, just because we didn't want to get two younger kids. But we didn't want, you know, we didn't want anyone too old, you know, that might not be interested in it."

"And we got 30 kids to sign up for it and we're looking forward to fishing with them today. What we're going to do is teach them some skills. We have the DNR helping us out, and we're going to teach them some skills on how to fish, and spend some time, just one-on-one time with them as we fish and get to know them as community members and us as police officers."

Riley: "Do you plan on doing activities like maybe on a monthly basis, or every other month? What are you thinking with that?"

Officer Iverson: "We're certainly looking at doing a few throughout the year. We've talked about doing a kickball event, or, you know, some other type of sporting event with the kids, just to be active with them, you know, play a game with them, you know, and have some fun."

"We're in contact with the Boys and Girls Club, and we're, we're going to be working with them hopefully in the future, and see what kind of ideas that they have, that we can we can work with different age groups of kids, but yeah, we're looking at maybe a few a year."

Riley: "What is the department hoping to accomplish by doing these PEACE events?"

Officer Iverson: "Just hoping to have more community involvement with our department. Letting our community know who we are as officers outside of doing our daily activities."

"You know they see us in the public when we're on crashes or we're doing traffic stops or investigations and things like that, but there's more to it, and we're trying to open their eyes to who we are, and it helps us get to know them better as well."

Riley: "And then if people are interested in learning more about the PEACE program, or just, you know, learning about where the next event might be held and whatnot, what's a good way for them to do that?"

Officer Iverson: "We'll be using a social media platform, probably Facebook. We'll go through our Parks and Rec Department. We have our own Facebook page, and then also our city newsletter is a good place to look for different events that are happening, as far as what you know, ways that the community can help."

"We're definitely looking for donations for the Peace program. If anyone wants to donate money to help fund an event or something like that, they can donate at the police department or at City Hall."

Feel free to contact us with questions and/or comments.